The End of the Modern Console As We Know it?

Could today be the day that the future of home gaming became a reality? OnLive Inc. certainly seems to think and hope so. Today OnLive Inc. announced that their new gaming service aptly named "OnLive Game Service" was coming to a home near you sometime later this year. Instead of picking up a bulky console, all you need is a small and svelte looking little box that looks to be no larger than a handheld gaming device. The hardware has USB (to work with any USB controller - Xbox controllers included), HDMI, Optical Audio, BluTooth (for wireless communication) and Ethernet. The only thing you really need to provide is an internet connection.

The premise behind the system is to do away with conventional game stores and conventional console hardware by allowing the user to either buy or rent games digitally where the games run and play on a series of servers streamed to your TV all with out any extra hardware. If you're a PC user, fear not. The service will be available to you too. Gone are the days of costly PC upgrades. They claim that they'll be upgrading their servers about every 6 months to use the latest and greatest technologies.

[no_more_trolling]

i hope not

[Tsar4ever01]

I'm not sure what this will mean for game consoles. after all, ONLINE's design to stream mostly PCgames to the home PC/TV/laptop and Macs, and Some third party games ported from the consoles. Won't this mean that the big 3(*X360,PS3,Wii) would have to restrict most of it's 3rd and 1st party exclusives just to stay VALID this gen and so on?

And this ONLINE demand concept, The games would be restricted to the games that ARE IN DEMAND, So what does that say about HOW much games would be on the servers. JUST How vast this ONLINE gaming's library is gonna be? Not everybody want to play the same types of games ALL THE TIME. What about being able to buy/rent/play certain games are NOT IN DEMAND, will these subcribers would be left in the cold?

In order to get all those vast old PC greats, the publishers would have to allow ONLINE to run em',right. Seems to be too many IF's in this to work out off the jump, looks like something's gonna take AN AWFUL LOOOONNNG time to pull off.

[BIOSHOT]

no halo no god of war no mario one sistem destroys 3 consols this is stupid.

[Crazay]

I agree Troll. I'm actually quite proud of my console and game collection. It's a focal point to my home theater.

[himdeel]

...I have a NES, Genesis, SEGA CD, Master System, TG16, N64, Gamecube, SNES, Saturn, Dreamcast, PS2, PS3, 360 (rrod) and old school block Gameboy. All of them still work and I fire each up every so often. It's cool having these systems and not being able to get a new system would kind of make me sad.

[TooTall19]

but this also means you wouldn't have to throw down $300 and hope they keep making games for it.

[Leio]

Really hope this will work well ..Just imagine the devs dont have to think about PC specs when theyre making games xD

[nix]

i saw the whole presentation at gamespot. pretty impressive.. i must say. well.. let's just hope not. unless the whole world gets 5MBPS internet connection.

[Crazay]

Or faster for anything in the 1080p range.

[TooTall19]

Settle down people. Even after this Nintendo still has innovative controls. I really hope this succeeds so the next-gen consoles will step things up. Perhaps 3D games on the ps4...

[I Call 9MM]

This technology has potential I must say. Now everyone at their office with a crappy PC can play high end games at work. I still see problems with this system. If they end up getting enough subscribers, that will put more strain on their systems and we might see some games dropping in quality to accommodate for it. Time will tell.