My blog updating has been woeful of late. And I put the blame firmly at the door of OnLive cloud gaming! Instead of sharing my half-thought-through opinions on my blog, I've had my spare time sucked into Batman: Arkham Asylum...
Now, to be fair, I have been a more than willing accomplice in my own downfall. There are two factors. Firstly, Arkham Asylum is a mighty fine game for all sorts of reasons (with more than a nod to Grant Morrison's excellent graphic novel). Secondly, I am well impressed by cloud gaming as a concept and a service.
It has always been a problem with PC gaming that the games don't work on every PC. In fact, unless you have an unlimited hardware budget, or are an Alienware fanboy, the latest game, the one you really fancy, has no chance of running on your PC. So, you can fork out a couple of hundred on a new graphics card (and still find it doesn't work), or do the sensible thing and buy an Xbox 360. ...Until now. With OnLive, the game is a PC game, but you can play it on your PC (or MAC, or - they reckon, sometime soon - an iPad or Android device!). Your PC needs a reasonably tasty Internet connection, but that's it. The game runs on a machine on the cloud. OnLive get to worry about whether their graphics cards are good enough, or their processors, or RAM. It's not my problem. OnLive install the game and make sure it works - all I do is log in and play. Sweet! They also sell a "console", which amounts to a small box that plugs into your TV and does nothing but connect to the OnLive service and let you play the games. It's a lot cheaper than an Xbox or PS3, since it doesn't consist of much (no disks, no fancy graphics chips).
This really looks like the future of gaming to me. Not necessarily OnLive itself, but it's only a matter of time till MicroSoft and others (Sony? Apple? Disney? Sky?) start selling games primarily in this format. No distribution worries. No console ports. Bug fixes and revisions applied at the server end as often as the provider likes. The limitation is purely the availability of decent broadband - surely something that is going to get better and better anyway, regardless of anything else.
So there you are. I am predicting the end of the games console. Not now. Not next year - but it's coming, and we can already see what it looks like.You read it here first!
Now - it has to be said that I have been a willing accomplice in my own downfall. Not only is Arkham Asylum a fine game, but I am totally impressed by the concept and service of OnLive. The problem with PC games over the years (as opposed to the console versions), is that not all PCs will play all games. In fact, it's a reasonable rule of thumb that unless you are an Alienware fanboy with unlimited funds,
