It's been reported this week that the end of games consoles could be nigh. Will advanced technologies really spell the end for consoles and what effect will this have on family gaming?
This particular story caught my eye, a company called "OnLive" has been preparing an online game streaming service for the last 7 years or so. There aim is to provide high quality games to any make of PC, MAC or TV. OnLive are billing this as a whole new ERA for gaming - and who can blame them. Personally, I can't wait to have a look at such a technology in action, it sounds like a real achievement.
Achievements aside, this opens up various new questions. I wanted to discuss a couple of them here. The most burgeoning question for me is: "Will we really throw away our consoles"? My initial thoughts on this are that we will not. Over the years we tend to lean to one or another console and most gamers have a fair amount of brand loyalty, we like the individual controllers and features. Another aspect is that console makers have cleverly opened up their consoles for other uses, they now serve as media centre streamers for music and video, and in the case of the PS3 - a high spec Blu-Ray player. Whether or not a streaming service could replace this is really a matter of conjecture.
What will happen to family gaming? In my case, my eldest child knows how to turn on the Wii or PS3 and load a game and start playing. Would this also be the case with a streaming service? It will be interesting to see whether or not OnLive's service appeals to youngsters. The Wii offers a completely different gaming experience for a child when compared to a PS3 or Xbox, will OnLive be able to replicate this? Such a service would remove the need to have games lying around the house, but let's face it, we kind of like looking at our games. After all, we buy DVD's that clutter the house simply because we liked the film, how many of us really watch our DVD's time and again? My guess is that we will want to hang on to real life copies of our games, and sell them on.
There are many more questions to be posed at this stage, such as copyright issues, and industry competition, not to mention the cost. Personally I believe that streaming certainly has it's place, but at this stage I'm not convinced it will be successful outside of the PC/Browser playing arena, time will tell. One thing is for certain, it is an exciting development.
