Onlive *Finally* Shutting Down; Sony buying a lot of their patents

[tokilamockingbrd]

Shadow1980 said:

Mystro-Sama said:

You have to embrace the future or else you'll end up like Nintendo...

"The future." I hear a lot about the future. About how it's supposed to be so different from today. So I'd like to take a minute to offer my two cents about "the future." People often seem to have big ideas about what the future is supposed to be like. From what I've seen, the number of correct predictions about the future are usually outweighed by the number of incorrect ones.

Some people think virtual reality is the future. People were saying the same thing 20-25 years ago.

Print was supposed to be dead a long time ago (radio, TV, and computers were all deemed threats at various points). "Dead tree" books are alive and well and e-books sales are stagnant (though print periodicals have been hurt by the internet).

Blu-ray was supposed to be dead by now. Sales are growing.

Popular notions of space exploration in the 20th century grossly overestimated where we'd be in 2015 in terms of manned space travel. It might be another 20-30 years before anybody sets foot on Mars.

More often than not the big things that do happen are the ones that are least expected until they actually happen. The Internet. Cell phones becoming commonplace (and smartphones being a thing... a very obnoxious thing). The sudden dissolution of the Soviet Union (to use a non-tech-related example). When I was in grade school back in the 80s I imagine everybody's idea of what 2015 would be like is very different from what actually became reality. Hell, just look at Back to the Future II. Yeah, it's a comedy movie, but still we've progressed less over the past 25-30 years than many probably thought we would.

Nearly everybody's crystal ball is seemingly broken most of the time, what with people making big sweeping predictions about the future that involve major shifts in the status quo despite said shifts often having serious obstacles impeding them. Personally, I think it's probably best to remain skeptical of most predictions that don't involve staying the course.

While streaming may live as a supplementary means of consuming games, I think it will remain a relatively niche service on consoles, and I don't think that neglecting it will be something that hurts a console maker's fortunes. The demand doesn't appear to be there, there are serious infrastructure concerns, and digital on consoles in general still plays second fiddle to discs, which are still dominant for anything that's not an indie game or other small title. OnLive failed. The PSP Go failed. Ouya and other microconsoles are not major presences in the game market. Unlike PC, consoles are closed platforms with no competing digital storefronts to drive prices down and otherwise make things worth gamers' whiles. As recently as late 2013 at least 40% of 360 owners weren't even connected to the internet (the PS3 is probably similar). Many millions of households don't have good quality broadband internet connections. The majority of console gamers still prefer physical and the benefits that confers (first-sale rights, actual ownership of a product, etc.) and probably won't take kindly to digital being "forced" on them (so far we haven't been forced to buy mp3 players to listen to music or subscribe to Netflix to watch movies or buy a Kindle to read books; customers like choice).

Whenever I hear "digital is the future," I roll my eyes because it reminds me of all those other failed prognostications. While digital (either downloads or streaming) will continue being part of the future, it probably isn't the future of consoles. Maybe in a few decades when those of us who grew up on the NES are all old and gray, but not next generation and probably not the generation after that. It may be my crystal ball that turns out to be the one that's broken, but at least it makes boring-yet-plausible predictions that don't involve wholesale shifts in the status quo. A digital-only future isn't quite "flying car" territory (most people can barely drive land vehicles; giving them all aircraft seems like a bad idea), but it is more like "permanent off-world colonies," something that may happen eventually but not for a very, very long time, far longer than most people originally thought when the idea was first conceived.

And I really need to stop posting at four in the morning. I get in grouchy, rambling old man mode when I get tired.

Game streaming has a value if they can get it right. Companies like Nvidia and AMD should be worried about it. Streaming games from the internet is not that far fetched. A hovering skateboard however... (your back to the future 2 reference)