I Call Shenanigans on Phones Using OnLive

If you look at the way ISPs market mobile data plans its clearly skewed towards business users. Who need to access their email, analytics, and administrative panels at any given time. Lets take a look at AT&T’s price scheme for a second. Business users can pay $35 a month for 200MB or $60 a month for 5GB. Smartphone plans start at $35 a month for unlimited usage, and $65 a month for tethering with a 5GB a month data plan. No business is going to pay for their $35 a month for a 200MB plan if you can get an unlimited plan for the same price. Lets be serious they’re only giving cell phone users 200MB of bandwidth for the $35 a month before they start traffic shaping. The use of the word ‘unlimited’ is marketing. Like Coach, Inc. calling their products designer, yet they have over 10,000 employees.

Then just yesterday PC World published this article. AT&T provides Internet ala carte access like AOL did in the 90’s.  I’d hate to compare them to Acai Berry diet programs, but in many ways thats exactly what they are. In my opinion what they’re doing is just a form of a negative bill option payment system. Which is where a company bills you after you trial period is up on their product. Instead of AT&T giving their product away they charge their customers for amounts they know they’re going to exceed, and jack up the prices on overages higher than a credit card company.

When you watch an HD video on Youtube that lasts 10 minutes you’re using about 75MB of bandwidth. Lets just say you have a regular ole $35 a month plan. You can play less than 30 minutes of OnLive on your phone a month, Huzzah! User you minutes wisely. If you play your cards right you can play for 45 seconds every day. If you have the $60 a month data plan you’re talking 11hrs of play time. Which is much better, but you got to remember the phone plans start at $29.99. Plus the cost of your OnLive subscription. So lets see… thats atleast $1,200 a year + the cost of your phone.

AT&T’s network is spotty — thank god the iPhone is WiFi enabled.

Truth About Cloud Gaming

The MicroConsole proves OnLive was forced by the economic crisis to play its hand to early. What kind of Internet based gadget slated for release in 2009 doesn’t support WiFi? Sure, the Palm Prixi doesn’t support WiFi, but it’s a gone phone. A phone doesn’t have to be connected to the Internet to function. The MicroConsole so half-assed there is no way it’s a commercial product.

I honestly believe they wrapped up a testing prototype in a commercial shell and called it a product. If they couldn’t secure venture capital, and prove their worth by April there’d be no OnLive. Investors were going to can the project. We really don’t know how long they’ve actually been developing the product for. A lot of that stuff is PR fluff. Like the story behind Digg or Myspace.

The way they cut Gaikai off at the pass wasn’t so much brilliant as it was absolutely desperate. I mean, right now to stay relevant they’re forced to show off quirky gimmicky things. Like playing OnLive on an iPhone or any phone in general. They have to play their hand that way because their product lost the ‘wow factor’ a while ago, but I’m fine fine with that. If you want to scale out a business like this you need investors. There is no other option. Their business model is about shaking up  the video game industry. The way things are right now it’s like they’re putting a V12 into a Geo Metro.

As time goes by I find consumer cost to be a larger and larger elephant in the room. Hypothetically the cheapest OnLive could go would be $9.95 a month, free MicroConsole, $50 a controller and $35 for a headset. The majority of gamers own at least two controllers. So the cost per console generation is $732. For most people thats about the cost of having an elite RROD, and going out and buying a new one.

Is this a revolution in gaming? No, thats an overstatement to say the least. It’s going to cost more money than traditional console in the long run for a couple of reasons.  The first is pretty obvious. You’re paying for the luxury of not having a mountain of games in your room. Secondly, buying stuff online isn’t like purchasing something at a store. Since you’re not exchanging something physical you piss money away like its nothing.

OnLive Over Confident

Have you ever looked at a TimeWarner ad? They talk an awesome game, but for whatever reason they never advertise the price of their services. Companies do things like that when they’re not confident they’ll be able to sell you their product. Remember how we were supposed to get an early summer stress test? Welp. That never really panned out now did it? It ended up being a small private beta test with NDA agreement to boot. Which doesn’t exactly ooze confidence like their previous PR campaigns.

If your product is so insanely killer why bother with the NDA agreements? It’s because they’re far from ready to release their product. Instead they’re forced to bait us with silly things like playing OnLive on an iPhone to stay relevant. Nothing in business is greater than having your brand labeled as the first of its kind. Who the hell even cares GaiKai exists? No one. It’s doomed to live in the shadow of OnLive. I honestly believe they announced their product to cut GaiKai off at the pass. Dave Perry and OTOY totally got incinerated, well played.

If OnLive launched this year it would be very DreamCast of them. From a business standpoint I don’t understand the risk. The video game industry is down about 25% year over year, and they were expecting to be flat this year.  It’s a great example of marketers and consumers not seeing eye to eye. $60 a game is $60 a game no matter how to try spinning it. Let us not forget rhythm games having all but collapsed under their own weight. All the Modern Warfare’s in the world wouldn’t make this year stellar.

With the likelihood of this recession double dipping rising, and populism screaming like the roaring 1920’s we might be in for some chop. The no more bailouts and stimulus hoo-rah-rah could be real kick the balls. In terms of venture capital investment in OnLive. Assuming none of that happens November 2010 is much more likely.

We’re Back!

Sorry, I had to focus on school amongst other things over the past couple months. Oh good lord! I have to go through mountains of comments(831) to root out whats spam and what isn’t. We’ll be posting anything that comes out from OnLive over the course of E3. Unfortunately they will not have a booth at E3. However, I’m sure they will announce something during, or soon after the event.

Tiger Woods PGA 2009 OnLive Port - No Thanks

For the love of god! I hope there is a golf game on the OnLive service. One that doesn’t make me delighted at the thought of a child with Progeria getting stuck by semi in front of my window. Tiger Woods PGA 2009 for the Wii has to be one of the hardest, buggiest games I have ever played. If you skip through things too quickly, out of play shots will be in play. Say you hit in the water and you want to play as quickly as possible, well, you’re fucked. Because can’t hit the damn thing more than 20 yards from the bottom of the pond. Stuck in a loop that took 40 minutes to get to. Seriously, if EA decides to port this game to the OnLive service please fix the bugs.