GDC kicks off and I'm already excited for the future!

Well, I'm not going to say I thought of this idea up before (I did) but I thought the idea of playing video games from a stream sort was crazy! Plus at the time, the internet connections weren't as powerful as they are today. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's something called "On Live". I think these videos do a better explaining it!




I'm really excited for developers because the ideas for this is endless. The whole spectating games aspect to this service is what has me going! Games like Counter-Strike have utilities such as HLTV for spectating but even with that, the amount of players viewing can only be about 2000 player. This is something that Video Game tournaments needed! On top of that, I'm really excited to see how developers interact with their communities. I see many "play against the developer" games about to spring up! I hope to also see many new innovative ideas come out since it looks like the developers get to choose their games price point. This will be a good thing with the economy it is at the moment.

With that said, here are some downsides to if this platform does take off. Did everyone forget how Nvidia and ATI are going to feel about this? Sure, the PC's that are running this service need to be beast machines but then the option to buy and upgrade personal computers becomes less attractive. Like, would you rather buy a lower pc and play Crysis on ON Live or upgrade the crap out of your home pc rig and play it from their. With money as an issue, I can see people going the On Live route (depending the pricing of the whole service + the game). Also, it's mentioned that you can max out all the settings on Crysis Warhead and play it from your computer. What happens when your game crashes on a computer half way around the world? I mean, if your computer crashes now, all you have to do is hit the restart and it reboots up. I'd like to hear how they're dealing with that problem. Also, they stated that colleges can use this service? Ha! College net isn't the greatest and I doubt it could handle the HD viewing that people are use to!

Here's to hoping for the best for this new platform! Here's to all the desk jobs that use this service and get nothing productive done!


EDIT:Here's a picture of what the platform will look like with the TV plug in and controller!