First heard about it here, the original post is below, with the link before it. This pretty much sums up my thoughts on Onlive quite well, usually I'd comment on an article rather than just repost it, but there's really nothing I could add to it.
Ctrlaltdel-Online
So obviously OnLive is causing a pretty big stir in the video games community, and with good reason. It's a fascinating concept that could revolutionize gaming. However it also stirs up a lot of fears and concerns and doubts that are all perfectly legitimate.
The implications and possibilities (and possible failures) of a system like this are too numerous to explore completely here (at least within a reasonable amount of time), but I do want to share some of my thoughts on it, as well as concerns and what I've heard.
When it was first announced, my initial reaction was "Wow, that's amazing" followed immediately by "But I don't want to give up that much control over my games.". And I don't. I don't want to rely on so many X factors to access and enjoy my games. I don't want to rely on the OnLive service functioning, as well as the internet service to deliver it. What if I wanted to travel somewhere that doesn't have internet? I could take my console. With OnLive I'd be completely cut off.
I don't want to not "own" the game I'm paying for. I know more and more things are going digital these days, but there's still a lot of comfort in owning a physical copy of something you paid for. You know it's there when you need it. I imagine it's the same reason people purchase the Ctrl+Alt+Del collection books even though all of the comics are available for free online. Sometimes you want tangible stuff that you know can't disappear with an internet outage or a corrupt hard drive.
I also don't like the idea of losing control over a game that I've bought. While I cannot honestly think of a time in recent memory where I chose not to patch a game because I didn't agree with the patch changes, I'm not sure I want to relinquish that option. I'm not sure I want to start playing a game, and then have it disappear because the developer decided it wasn't selling well enough.
So those are some of the things, right off the bat, that turn me off about the idea. They mirror some of the general concerns I've heard murmered about the concept.
"What about lag and internet/service outages?" Exactly. OnLive says they've developed new tech that all but obliterates latency but... honestly, haven't we all heard that before? The bottom line is, the service will be prone to hiccups and lag. Now most of us have come to accept this as a fact of life when we play multiplayer games online. But do we really want to introduce this variable into our single player experiences as well?
Additionally, not everyone has great internet speeds, and not everyone has uncapped bandwidth. These are additional speedbumps the service has to deal with.
However, there is incredible potential for a service like this. It's huge for people who can't afford the top-end gaming PCs, or who can't afford three different consoles just to play all the available games. That would be a fantastic advantage. Imagine it, having all games available through one service. How convenient would that be?
But who says there's only one service? Yes, OnLive is the first, but does anybody honestly think that, if this actually works, that other companies aren't going to launch their own versions of the service? Of course they are. And then this idea of a utopian, console-free, one-stop video-gamescape goes right out the window, because we're back to different services competing for subscribers, and competing for exclusive rights to various games. Want to play the new Call of Duty? Sure thing, it's on this network. Oh, but you want to play the new Starcraft? Sorry, it's exclusive to this other service.
And that's not even mentioning all of the companies who have built their business around asking us to purchase new hardware every few years. I cannot see nVidia or ATI lying down while a service says "Hey everyone, you don't have to buy a new graphics card, we'll run the game for you!". I can't see Microsoft saying "Sure, don't buy our console, we don't want the revenue from XBL, etc anyway."
I won't pretend to know the architecture of the intricate web of licensing and exclusivity deals that ensares the entire games industry, but I do suspect that some pretty strict arrangements would start popping up between developers and the console manufacturers. And I also know that a lot of development studios are owned by console manufacturers, or other publishers. I doubt Microsoft spent so much time and money acquiring a lion's share of the industry to turn around and let Bungie's new Halo game show up on a service that costs them console sales.
And Nintendo... Nintendo shits money and they've had an incredible case of explosive diarrhea for the last few years. What incentive do they have to license their titles to a start-up service that, once again, doesn't sell their hardware?
I agree that OnLive is a really novel idea. A streaming version of the all-in-one console we've all dreamed of. But it's an idea whose fate ultimately rests entirely in the hands of developers, and there are a lot of considerations and loyalties (and legalities in some cases) some of these developers have to come to terms with before they license their games to the service.
And the console manufacturers aren't just going to pack up shop, either. If anything, all OnLive will accomplish will be adding a fourth "console" option to the market. Which is actually really great, because as mentioned, some people miss out on some games because they don't have top-end PCs, etc.
However a lot of people seem to see this heralding a complete overhaul to the gaming industry, practically overnight. The "Death of the Console", and I just really, really doubt that. To be honest with you... I'd be surprised if it gets past being the Netflix of gaming. A great service, a great alternative... but not the end-all of gaming platforms.
20090310
Obama Gives England the Finger
No, he didn't absentmindedly flip the British off, but he did remove the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office, which England gave to us after 9/11 to show that they were with us, and has in fact returned it to the English. "But when British officials offered to let Mr. Obama to hang onto the bust for a further four years, the White House said: 'Thanks, but no thanks.'" What sits in the place of Churchill? A bust of Abraham Lincoln. Guess no one told him about the letter Lincoln wrote where he would have allowed Slavery to continue. . . But then, they don't teach the true history of the Civil War in the North.
Could someone please explain to me how a man who proclaims Lincoln for as one of his heroes then go against much of what Lincoln stood for?
As if that wasn't enough, Obama decided to give the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a DVD box set of America's great movies. Too bad the Prime Minister can't watch them though, you see, their DVD players can't play most of America's DVDs (They use a different style of player over there). Primer Minister Brown gave America a "pen holder fashioned from the oak timber of HMS Gannet, a Navy vessel that served on anti-slavery missions off Africa." Which of course goes great with the Desk they had already given us, made from the HMS Resolute, which symbolizes British-America goodwill (The queen has a twin to our desk, minus the door placed on by FDR to hide his wheelchair). The other gift is a framed commissioning paper of the HMS Resolute, the significance of which was previously mentioned.
Barak Obama's actions are nothing short of arrogant, and the audacity he has to treat America's long standing friends the British should not be overlooked. Obama needs to apologize to Great Britain for his actions, not that the Obamessiah would ever do such a thing.
If you wish to send a message to the embassy in America, they have a facebook profile which you can find here.
Could someone please explain to me how a man who proclaims Lincoln for as one of his heroes then go against much of what Lincoln stood for?
As if that wasn't enough, Obama decided to give the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a DVD box set of America's great movies. Too bad the Prime Minister can't watch them though, you see, their DVD players can't play most of America's DVDs (They use a different style of player over there). Primer Minister Brown gave America a "pen holder fashioned from the oak timber of HMS Gannet, a Navy vessel that served on anti-slavery missions off Africa." Which of course goes great with the Desk they had already given us, made from the HMS Resolute, which symbolizes British-America goodwill (The queen has a twin to our desk, minus the door placed on by FDR to hide his wheelchair). The other gift is a framed commissioning paper of the HMS Resolute, the significance of which was previously mentioned.
Barak Obama's actions are nothing short of arrogant, and the audacity he has to treat America's long standing friends the British should not be overlooked. Obama needs to apologize to Great Britain for his actions, not that the Obamessiah would ever do such a thing.
If you wish to send a message to the embassy in America, they have a facebook profile which you can find here.
20090303
Farewell
I got rid of my Nintendo Wii, traded it in to Gamestop for store credit. I don't play it anymore, there are no games out for the system that I want to play anymore. . . I'm actually kind of peeved about the whole thing. I mean, I've known about Nintendo's decision for a while now, but I didn't really focus on it. I think the Wii is a great system, and Nintendo came up with a great concept with it's Wiimote, the mii's, and a few other things. What peeves me about it is the fact that Nintendo said a big, "Screw you," to it's gamer base and has started coming out with titles exclusively for the casual gamer. Now people who would never have otherwise picked up a video game have done so, which is great, but at the same time, Nintendo is pretty much churning out garbage. I've seen the wiifit, and it's great that people are actually using it to get into shape, but it's a rather low quality product, much like most everything else that comes out for the system these days.
But again, what peeves me the most about the whole thing, is that I've supported Nintendo since I was a 5 year old kid playing NES. Through the years of Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda, these were the titles I kept coming back to even when technology far surpassed them. I have owned every Nintendo console to ever come out at one point or another in my life, stubbornly stood by the Gamecube when others said it wasn't that good. And then Nintendo came out with the Wii, and it very quickly became evident that Nintendo no longer wanted us.
I understand that in some ways I'm comparing a video game company to an ex-girlfriend, and I understand that there are more important things to life that video games. But there's also a decent chunk of history in my life that Nintendo was a part of. I still remember unwrapping the box on Christmas day and seeing the NES, which was the fist console I had which was actually mine. (I had an Atari for a while, but that belonged to my Grandpa, he let me borrow it for a while.) I still remember playing Duckhunt in my living room, and placing the gun directly onto the screen to try and shoot the ducks in the higher levels. I think I even still have my Nintendo gun at my parent's somewhere packed up.
Well, tonight was the end of my friendship with Nintendo. I don't imagine that I'll be supporting any of it's products in the future. It may happen, but I don't think it will be too likely.
But again, what peeves me the most about the whole thing, is that I've supported Nintendo since I was a 5 year old kid playing NES. Through the years of Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda, these were the titles I kept coming back to even when technology far surpassed them. I have owned every Nintendo console to ever come out at one point or another in my life, stubbornly stood by the Gamecube when others said it wasn't that good. And then Nintendo came out with the Wii, and it very quickly became evident that Nintendo no longer wanted us.
I understand that in some ways I'm comparing a video game company to an ex-girlfriend, and I understand that there are more important things to life that video games. But there's also a decent chunk of history in my life that Nintendo was a part of. I still remember unwrapping the box on Christmas day and seeing the NES, which was the fist console I had which was actually mine. (I had an Atari for a while, but that belonged to my Grandpa, he let me borrow it for a while.) I still remember playing Duckhunt in my living room, and placing the gun directly onto the screen to try and shoot the ducks in the higher levels. I think I even still have my Nintendo gun at my parent's somewhere packed up.
Well, tonight was the end of my friendship with Nintendo. I don't imagine that I'll be supporting any of it's products in the future. It may happen, but I don't think it will be too likely.
20090302
End of the Vacation
Well, I'm back in Michigan after a week in Maryland visiting my family. I'm not quite sure I'd call it a vacation, but it was paid time off of work, and I got to catch up on some sleep, though I still have years left before I'm completely caught up. I think I'll be dead before that happens. I very much enjoyed Rush Limbaugh's first ever televised address to the nation (look lower for the links) I hope to see more of them in the future. I originally saw it in the airport waiting to get on the plane from the Washington DC Airport, amidst a few liberals who looked disgusted, and a few of my generation, perhaps a bit younger or older, who were actually paying attention to what he had to say.
I hope that people will start actually paying attention to what people say, as well as what they do. The tendency we have today is to just ignore whatever is around us that isn't good, unless we are cynical, in which case we tend to ignore the good. I try to see both, though with my history of customer service, I lean more to the cynical.
Amidst trying to figure out how I'm going to break things off with one girl, my mom has been working at setting me up with a different girl. While I haven't actually met her in person, I have talked to her online and we'll see how things go.
Tomorrow is going to be my first day back to work in over a week, we have new BP/Pulse and Temperature machines that were implemented while I was away, as well as SOP changes that I learned before I left but have since forgotten. I understand that we need to go over them, but 90% of what I read of the changes I end up forgetting about two days later, unless it was a change to an SOP that doesn't yet apply to me, in which case I forgot about 5 minutes after the fact. Much of the time they either change one word to another which means the exact same thing, or they add something to it which either A. doesn't apply to our center, or 2. It's a change which our center had already implemented. My job becomes increasingly mundane each day, which doesn't help someone who becomes rather impulsive when they're bored. I don't think there's anything more dangerous on this planet than an impulsive human who has become bored.
I hope that people will start actually paying attention to what people say, as well as what they do. The tendency we have today is to just ignore whatever is around us that isn't good, unless we are cynical, in which case we tend to ignore the good. I try to see both, though with my history of customer service, I lean more to the cynical.
Amidst trying to figure out how I'm going to break things off with one girl, my mom has been working at setting me up with a different girl. While I haven't actually met her in person, I have talked to her online and we'll see how things go.
Tomorrow is going to be my first day back to work in over a week, we have new BP/Pulse and Temperature machines that were implemented while I was away, as well as SOP changes that I learned before I left but have since forgotten. I understand that we need to go over them, but 90% of what I read of the changes I end up forgetting about two days later, unless it was a change to an SOP that doesn't yet apply to me, in which case I forgot about 5 minutes after the fact. Much of the time they either change one word to another which means the exact same thing, or they add something to it which either A. doesn't apply to our center, or 2. It's a change which our center had already implemented. My job becomes increasingly mundane each day, which doesn't help someone who becomes rather impulsive when they're bored. I don't think there's anything more dangerous on this planet than an impulsive human who has become bored.
I don't know who came up with the name twitter, maybe there's some kind of internet lingo behind it or something. I don't really feel like looking it up, it's not that important to me. I do have twitter now, I'm not quite sure why, but you can find me here:
http://twitter.com/Arthuus
It almost seems like they took the whole facebook status bar and made a website for just that.
http://twitter.com/Arthuus
It almost seems like they took the whole facebook status bar and made a website for just that.
20090301
Rush Limbaugh @ CPAC
Much of what I believe about this nation, and what I believe politically, is covered in this speech given by Rush Limbaugh. I know it is not very likely to happen, but in 2012, I would love for this man to run for President of the United States of America.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)