Whyos

Since folks continue to ask questions about OnLive, I thought I’d follow up a bit on my earlier post, and include the information I gathered from discussions with OnLive at their GDC booth.

I liked the guys I spoke with, and they seemed open and forthright about the product, giving me the feeling that OpenLive isn’t bunk so much as the product of good technical people creating something moderately useful. But that product has, for strategic purposes, been positioned by their marketing and biz dev folks as something it truly is not; competitive with existing products or in any significant way market changing. Read More »

Today, Dean Takahashi wrote up a new game distribution technology, called OnLive, that’s announcing at the Game Developers Conference this evening. He feels that it has the potential to destroy retail, with a new technical model of games executed on the server side, enabling gameplay (video) instantly streamed back to the player. This may be a valid threat to retailers, and it’s a danger I’ve warned retailers about for years. Specifically, I first warned of it because PS3’s cell technology seemed focused on the fast video decompression necessary to this sort of system. But, despite the breathless adoration of Venturebeat, I would point out three things: Read More »

For those not aware of its background; Redbox was initially created by McDonald’s as a test of kiosks carrying a wide variety of convenience items. It later changed focus to copy DVDPlay’s successful, but underfunded, model of low cost nightly rentals distributed from kiosks at supermarkets, and Coinstar, who already possessed a significant footprint in desirable locations, took ownership. Read More »

Blockbuster today announced that it’ll be launching a new initiative allowing download of movies to a proprietary settop box (similar to Netflix’s Roku). It has been noted that there are getting to be a lot of awfully similar boxes out there trying to claim the living room (Roku, AppleTV, Tivo, and to some extent the game consoles). I don’t believe that Blockbuster’s entry is meaningless, though, as their audience is not that of Apple or Netflix, so, if this can work, it will probably be incremental to that market. Read More »