Let,s bump this up!

Originally Posted by Fatal1ty_18_RUS

I see your point
But the phrase "opportunity to change the market" (in my understanding) means that thr whole industry will turn into streaming-based only
So let me explain why it's not gonna happen

I think that streaming service can only and ONLY be applied to the PC gaming segment

If such a thing is applied to the console segment - imagine how much money can developers actually earn by spreading their games in streaming service online shops (let's call them like this for now)?

Today it costs millions of dollars to develop a game, especially when you do it for several platforms, which means that you gotta spend money and resources to develop and test the game on each announced platform

So, even with a streaming service, which means a single platform, the money go to the service holder, who pays some % of the income to the devs

The downside of it is that when a player pays 50$ a month (which includes unlimited access to the games library) - the devs literally get nothing from that

Today the Gaikai service (and Nvidia Grid) exist only because devs can afford to spread their games in these service, since they gain profit from the sales on other platforms

So I see several main downsides of the situation when streaming services take over the industry:

1. It creates a single platform, which means that the user has no choice, just a straight-on "subscribe and play scheme"
2. A single platform on the market means that there will be no competition, except for maybe the service holders, but it will just tend to lower the prices and maybe increase perfomances
3. Main rule of ANY market is there's GOTTA be competition. No competition = no progress = high chance of a fatigueness
4. Changing the market into streaming-based will only create chaos and it literally means an end to exclusives and such, no uniqueness
5. Since today most companies release their games on several platforms - it means that the devs can cover most of the money they spent on actually developing the game, and that means BIG money since the platforms have big audiences (and they only tend to increase more and more) which literally equals to 60$ per a game X number of platforms X number of units sold (mostly the numbers are more or less equal)
And 6. Since the devs wouldn't get much $$$ from spreading their games in a single streaming service - it would only lead to creation of several services from each of the big companies
I bet that today's Steam vs Origin example would be the best. We don't want or need that to happen with each gaming company, right?

Wow, sorry for the long post

P.S. Sorry for possible typos - typed this on my N7 lol

I now see your point too And I agree about the major plus is on the PC market that is related to the opportunity to develop a product in a "console way" (one hardware to run on) and then stream to several peripherals (that IMHO is something similar to what Valve is trying to do). However, if those streaming services are provided side by side with the "standard" distribution market (the service should be provided by manufacturers themselves), it could works quite well. (like the digital delivery grew alongside with boxed market). There is no problem if I have to install 2 different "clients" on my device rather than one (it's always better than have 2 devices IMHO). The other solution could be to make each console a "home server" able to stream, avoiding in this way the centralized infrastructure but relying on personal home bandwidth. Something like a "Social feature" like was present in the Nintendo DS with the streaming of the game on another device with a single cartridge to enable specific multiplayer modes.

Yes, exactly. That's literally the only possible way that streaming services could be applied to the console market - they would coexist as downloadable clients (from the online shop like PlayStation Store or whatever) along with already established market of boxed games (so we're talking GAME, GameStop, BestBuy, etc.) and digital versions (Steam, PS Store, Xbox Live Marketplace, DSiWare...)

But the thing is that streaming service WILL take over the PC gaming market as we know it today.

I think that this is the safest options for developers - they'll still need to develop a PC port, but since they will still sell the actual game on other platforms - they won't lose much money from porting the game over, since they can cover it with additional sales on consoles + digital versions and add-ons and such

That will probably attract much more developers to the PC gaming market, since they will be able to safely try and release a port of their game for the PC, unlike today when many companies just loose big sums of money after porting a game and nobody would buy it (since the piracy is very popular on PC gaming market) which would result in wasted $$$

I've seen a couple of videos showing around game streaming through OnLive with a Nexus 7 and I must admit that the concept looks very promising. I shall say that I was very excited when I started reading about the whole thing.

Sadly, internet connection in Mexico is very very crappy, so I don't expect to be able to play games like such on my country in a near future.