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Playout Intelligence

Otoy joins the fray of companies offering video games on demand

Everyone is talking about console-less gaming or game streaming, but noone is talking about the Internet Service Provider’s business in it.

Great article from Venture Beat – and now we’re also talking mobile gaming. But again no mentioning of the (wireless) carrier business model or value configuration. Over-the-top IP airtime is expensive, and I am starting to wonder while this could be a killer application to boost LTE or WiMAX uptake rates, airtime is still expensive.
clipped from venturebeat.com
When OnLive came out of hiding in March and declared it could let gamers play fast-action games over the network — a futuristic service dubbed video games on demand — a lot of critics said it was impossible.
Otoy can demonstrate that it can deliver any game to any device by sending the content over broadband connections. I played Valve’s Left4Dead zombie-shooting game at full speed on a low-end MacBook laptop connected to Otoy’s servers. Then Urbach showed me how I could play the same game on a cell phone with relatively meager computing power. I noticed no slowdown, Urbach said, because most of the processing took place on a distant, centralized, web-connected server.
The key question is whether Otoy, OnLive or a third rival, Gaikai, can pull off server-based gaming for millions of consumers on the same network. If they can, they will turn the video game industry upside down by cutting out retailers and eliminating the need to buy high-end game hardware.
  • what do you mean when you say games on demand?
  • You're right, the "On Demand" might be misleading. I guess that's my point of the post, that many companies jump onto the band wagon of on-demand, and so do the blogs and citizen journalists. After all, these posts are advertisement funded (amongst other things), and who would read a blog post if its headline doesn't capture your attention? :)
    Maybe something like "remote play" or "streaming play" would be more adequate (please no more "cloud gaming"!).
  • JamesD
    Thanks for the useful info. It's so interesting
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