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.

When I quizzed these guys on how well the system would work in the real world, they were open about its limitations. The Internet is squirrely, and the way that most folks configure home networks (wifi, multiple users, etc.) degrades performance, while an instantly streamed video needs ideal performance. You really couldn’t play a frontline game on OnLive. The most you could do is get a basic feel for the graphics and gameplay, so it could usefully be positioned as a marketing device for frontline games, and I can see this being a worthwhile use of the technology. -The easy gut check on this is to think of clicking on any content on a webbrowser, and how often you have to wait a moment for connection and download to start, even with an edge network employed.

They did advocate for OnLive being a good place to play less demanding or casual games, but I don’t get how that business needs this sort of technology. Casual has a fully functional model in browser-based and small executable games, which tend to require similarly minimal processing power, so OnLive’s posited server side GPU advantage is basically obviated. When I first saw this sort of tech demo-ed by g-cluster for Comcast some years ago, it was intended to leverage the broadband network to help minimize the barrier to gameplay of cruddy settop boxes from MSOs. There’s a lot more going on around the television these days, so that’s less important, especially for anyone with an interest in games, even casual. My own feeling, though, is that the big push by OnLive to present itself as significant and strategic is largely to achieve presence at the headend of broadband providers (especially MSOs), because I don’t believe it will work well enough for any sort of games unless they have ubiquitous presence at the headend. -This is where the questionable feel of the thing comes in; they need to sound game-changing, but they’re not, and anybody that’s familiar with game and/or internet tech knows that they’re not.

Where the guys at OnLive almost had me on their product having a unique value was in their description of video compression and decompression technology. My feeling generally is that the problem models like OnLive must deal with best is optimizing video streaming, and that with all of the major entities putting significant resources to this problem, I don’t see how a game-video-streaming entity can compete. Hence, their core technology is never defensible.

But the fellow at OnLive responded that games have a unique need for immediate “bufferless” video with instant compression and decompression. Which seemed valid at the time, but not completely sayisfying to me. Upon further consideration, my opinion is this; while it is true that games have a unique need, all that “instant” compression and decompression actually is is highly efficient compression and decompression. And highly efficient compression and decompression is the holy grail for a number of powerful and important entities. The game-specific focus doesn’t really drive the need for a different sort of compression, it just changes the requirements for compression of the stream, most likely forcing the 1:1 ratio of “servers” to users that OnLive utilizes. The unique aspect of video for games distributed in this manner is in making the video feel like an unbroken experience, rather than sequential pieces, somehow masking the ugliness of connection irregularities, but that’s likely just a matter of aesthetics.

1. I saw G-Cluster demo this sort of system for Comcast a number of years ago (perhaps 2002?), and G-Cluster is running it today in a number of places for a broad variety of systems. -Including an HD iteration that OnLive lacks. If OnLive is enabling this so much better than a company that’s had a commercial product available for years, that’s most impressive. However, given that there is a functional system for this sort of thing that has not yet taken over the world, I’d also suggest that it’s far from a sure thing for success. Something that Takahashi glosses over is that the problem is getting the video to the user fast enough, not getting the user commands to the server. -User commands are trivial amounts of data. So, the solution must be largely a video compression solution, and not really game-tech specific, aside from optimizing the game on the server.
2. The statement that “I’ve seen it work” is meaningless, because any demonstration of streamed content has so many variables, and it’s so very easy to simulate good functionality.
3. Sony doesn’t suffer if this tech is real and significant (not certain yet), because they already have an appropriate hardware offering in the powerful and largely amortized cell technology, and streamed video has a lot of big brains working toward optimization of that side. MS similarly seems unthreatened. -If OnLive masters video compression technology beyond the numerous other entities working on that issue, that would be most impressive. The threat to Sony and MS seems more that eventually making this sort of thing work ends up being trivial, but that’s not good for OnLive either.

Lastly, it is worth noting that Infinium did not attempt to launch a similar technology, despite what Takahashi says. -They were a conventional streamed application play (along the lines of Exent, etc.) with the addition of a hardware element. Where OnLive is similar to Infinium’s Phantom is that it shares the same defensibility issue in that if it does end up being successful, its pieces are too easily reproducable using existing best of breed providers, so that as soon as it can fly, it can be surpassed by an aggregated tech offering.

Execution of the Redbox concept is brilliant, with a large red metal kiosk and simple interface that could really only have come from a company with McDonalds’ focus on brand and user experience. –Perhaps Comcast could bring MacDonalds on to help them out, because although their entire menu system stinks, PPV stands out a bit as especially lame.

But what sends me about the concept is that Redbox’s ubiquity and execution completely blurs the line between physical and online services. Because they use physical media for content distribution, combined with the flexibility of the virtual, their $1 a night pricing model makes a mockery both of conventional rental stores, and IP holders’ ongoing laginess in broadly enabling attractive new online models.

Redbox (or their lesser competition) are located in most supermarkets, where just about everyone finds themselves a couple of times a week, so they become the equivalent to a download service in terms of unthinking real time convenience. For those too cheap to pay even a dollar, or who simply want to play the system, Redbox regularly publishes online a large number of codes for free rentals that you can readily access online.

Before discovering Redbox, I never considered whether $6 PPV for films was good or bad, just what it happened to be within the Comcast monopoly. But when, a few times a week, I’m presented with the opportunity to rent the exact same films through Redbox for a dollar, via a far superior interface, PPV just feels daft. Redbox seems a case of logistics and user experience beating the stupidity of the physical world, and making something sublime.

That said, I still far prefer well-designed (non-Comcast) settop boxes, with reasonably priced downloads; so I’ll admit that my affection for Redbox is both for the clever hack it currently represents and for its transformative power than for the thing itself in the long term.