Streaming Games Will Leave Consoles In the Dust
In fact, Nintendo Chief Executive Satoru Iwata said in his keynote speech yesterday at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco that digitally distributed games were becoming increasingly popular. Nintendo itself sees them as a conduit for small, third-party developers to reach consumers who own the company's game consoles. Nintendo's Wiiware store, which is similar in nature to Apple's iTunes store, offers downloadable games -- a vast majority of which are from publishers other than Nintendo.
In addition, services to facilitate digital gaming are popping up. For instance, Tata Communications' next-generation Content Delivery Network (CDN) service, powered by BitGravity's technology, lets media, Web properties and gaming companies deliver large files, videos, game downloads and other rich multimedia applications over the Internet at speeds up to four times faster than other industry players.
In addition, this week at the GamesBeat conference, taking place in the backyard of the GDC, a panel that included analyst Wedbush Morgan Securities' Michael Pachter, discussed the recently announced OnLive streaming gaming service. OnLive expects to launch its service this winter, with pricing below that of consoles. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony consoles have an entry point of around $200.
The panel's consensus? OnLive will create a highly valued experience for the consumer, and that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo will lose in the equation. Said Pachter: "I think we've seen the last generation of consoles."