Playing Video Games without a Console

tompritchard

Came across an interesting new system that has just launched in Europe today - essentially it will allow subscribers to play video games through their TV with no need for a console, just a subscription.

Is this the end for the Xbox? Playstation et al? Sounds like a good money-saver if it is.

'The commercial model is based on a multi-screen (PC right now and TV in the near future) subscription for a fixed monthly fee of 9,99 Euros per month, for which subscribers can play without any limitations of time or usage. The games catalogue consists of 100% next generation video games titles, including some of the best and newest brands, with a mix of genres, including first person shooters, racers, fighting, action as well as children and family games.'

Check the link for more:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Portugal-Telecom-and-Playcast-prnews-1140068469.html?x=0&.v=2

bluenoseam

This has been talked about in various "guises" for years, the games industry fears Farmville/!!!!! Wars more than it ever will fear this stuff because ultimately people chose to buy consoles for the variety it offers. With this you're effectively paying a subscription for restricted gaming - you are 100% reliant on the service offering games, while you're limited by the amount of games available for any given console said "limit" is often times impossible to obtain given the costbase of games & sheer volume of them. On top of that there's also the fact games publishers wouldn't release anything if they don't get their cut - which on this kind of service they don't, so for example you wouldn't get a sniff of anything major, merely older versions (i.e. Fifa 2010) or knock-offs of major titles.

That article is also hideously vague, it mentions companies by name but doesn't mention a single franchise from any of them and of those companies listed, only 2 have had any serious play in the market of late - Activision & THQ, while Activison/Blizzard have arguably 2 of the top selling franchises currently (Guitar Hero & C.o.D) THQ don't have anywhere near the clout (UFC, Smackdown vs Raw). Then you ask yourself, are you really happy essentially renting a service which could be discontinued on 30 days notice as per the EULA? Dunno about you, but being the hoarder i am i've still got a Sega Master System which still works and still lets me play Alex the Kid whenever i want to - while there's no new games for it, it's still available to play unlike your subscription games which after 12 months & less subscribers than initially projected have shut down as it was losing vast sums of cash.

The games industry is looking into ways of preservation - for example, looking into ways of stamping out the pre-owned business, or atleast getting their cut of it, for example HAWX 2 & UFC 2010 both requiring 1 time usage codes to play online, once it's used that game cannot be played on a secondary account as all release formats of it have account based systems where that game is now "locked" to a single account. Once it's been traded in, said code is useless and the secondary purchaser MUST pay to play it online. EA are known to be heavilly involved in developing a software variant and as soon as they do you can bet that every other games company will pay top dollar to "license" the code for use in their products. Money saving in the games market, trust me, sounds good, but they're trying their damndest to break it up - and there's not a dang thing anyone can do about it.

tompritchard

Thanks for a very insightful reply bluenoseam, very interesting how new technology is developing and how it affects business interests!

one2escape

The tech is there however the mainstream is not ready for it yet as you need a reasonable fast broadband line with basically no fair use policy. It basically involves streaming from the from servers. This is how gaming will happen at the future but not for a while as they need the broadband lines to catch up to the speed they need. One has launched in the states called onlive and another is launching soon by Dave Perry. The "big" publishers are on board for it however it is the infancy we in console terms are 2 generations away from this at the earliest. in theory your xbox and ps3 would be able to do this now for any game now and to come in the future as all you need something to get on the net. Basically its all about the cloud.

one2escape

bluenoseam wrote: »

This has been talked about in various "guises" for years, the games industry fears Farmville/!!!!! Wars more than it ever will fear this stuff because ultimately people chose to buy consoles for the variety it offers. With this you're effectively paying a subscription for restricted gaming - you are 100% reliant on the service offering games, while you're limited by the amount of games available for any given console said "limit" is often times impossible to obtain given the costbase of games & sheer volume of them. On top of that there's also the fact games publishers wouldn't release anything if they don't get their cut - which on this kind of service they don't, so for example you wouldn't get a sniff of anything major, merely older versions (i.e. Fifa 2010) or knock-offs of major titles.

That article is also hideously vague, it mentions companies by name but doesn't mention a single franchise from any of them and of those companies listed, only 2 have had any serious play in the market of late - Activision & THQ, while Activison/Blizzard have arguably 2 of the top selling franchises currently (Guitar Hero & C.o.D) THQ don't have anywhere near the clout (UFC, Smackdown vs Raw). Then you ask yourself, are you really happy essentially renting a service which could be discontinued on 30 days notice as per the EULA? Dunno about you, but being the hoarder i am i've still got a Sega Master System which still works and still lets me play Alex the Kid whenever i want to - while there's no new games for it, it's still available to play unlike your subscription games which after 12 months & less subscribers than initially projected have shut down as it was losing vast sums of cash.

The games industry is looking into ways of preservation - for example, looking into ways of stamping out the pre-owned business, or atleast getting their cut of it, for example HAWX 2 & UFC 2010 both requiring 1 time usage codes to play online, once it's used that game cannot be played on a secondary account as all release formats of it have account based systems where that game is now "locked" to a single account. Once it's been traded in, said code is useless and the secondary purchaser MUST pay to play it online. EA are known to be heavilly involved in developing a software variant and as soon as they do you can bet that every other games company will pay top dollar to "license" the code for use in their products. Money saving in the games market, trust me, sounds good, but they're trying their damndest to break it up - and there's not a dang thing anyone can do about it.

Just remember that for CoD and the sports games they are looking to go the monthly fee option or the free to play but pay to get things model. The gaming market is changing radically. Look at the next Battlefield for the PC. It will be free to play.