Alex St. John, known for his days at Microsoft and WildTangent, has the tough job of making hi5 as relevant as Facebook in the social gaming sphere. He’s long been a believer that consoles are soon to be extinct, but interestingly, he also thinks that games-on-demand services like the much hyped OnLive are “doomed.” The game industry is in a major transition period, and it’s going to be a challenge for publishers and brand marketers in the traditional space to adapt.
He writes, “Take the much anticipated launch of OnLive for example. It s a great sounding idea streaming games that require no installation, can be played anywhere, and are stored in the cloud with support for spectating! Sounds great; it s too bad that it s doomed. Is anybody out there aware that Valve is doing a 9-figure downloadable gaming business for premium titles already Although Valve is so wildly profitable that they have little need to hype the company to investors, I suspect that Gabe Newell is smiling to himself and thinking the same thing I am. This is going to be a fun show. Does anybody remember how many failed companies there are who have had the same idea and perfectly workable technology solutions for delivering premium games over the Internet?”
St. John ultimately concludes, “The hard to accept reality is that traditional games designed for retail distribution are simply dead in an online world and frankly the publishers of these games will ultimately die with them because they can t afford to adapt. Streaming the same content on-demand won t save them. The exciting part of this change is that it s a brave new world for new companies to step in and create the next-generation EAs and Take-Twos. I’d list Activision as well but they ve already effectively been bought by World Of Warcraft. I would not be surprised to see successful future games that are designed to be delivered as streaming video, but a new streaming delivery technology will not create a new online second life for this dying genre of content.”
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