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.