No more gaming consoles...

[[SS]Snakebite]

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/A...-Gaming-104736

AT&T Invests In Onlive Streaming Gaming
Ironic, given HD gaming will demolish AT&T's proposed caps...
12:06PM Wednesday Sep 30 2009 by Karl Bode
tags: business · gaming · bandwidth · caps · AT&T
Back in March a company by the name of OnLive unveiled their new broadband gaming service, which aims to replace the traditional game console with what's essentially a broadband-connected dumb terminal. Under the system, which has been proposed in various forums for years now, major title games are completely streamed over your broadband connection -- for a monthly subscription fee.

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Initial demonstrations were on closed networks, and of course everyone wants to see this service in the real world -- where the company admits you'll need to live within 1,000 miles of a data center. For Standard-Definition gaming, OnLive says it needs a 1.5 Mbps connection. For HDTV resolution (720p60), at least 5 Mbps is required.

Earlier this month the company announced they'd entered open beta, and today the company unveiled they've received a third round of funding from a group of companies, including AT&T. It might be the biggest video-game related funding boost this year, and AT&T's instance instantly infuses Onlive with more credibility. At least in the business world -- nobody knows if this service will work as advertised yet.

Of course AT&T's investment is ironic, given they're testing metered billing in two markets, imposing caps between 5-40GB with overages between $1-$1.50 per gig. It's not out of the question that a heavy Onlive HD gamer could blow through a thousand gigabytes a month. As such, you can look at AT&T's caps in two ways: a great way to capitalize on the bandwidth explosion as more data-intensive apps come to market, or a great way to cripple innovation as customers worry about having to take out second mortgages to use the content of their choice.

[[SS]Grifter]

Yea, good idea, but I really don't see tha ttaking off.

[DatGuy]

wont take off, not enough people own or can afford the higher end connections

[[SS]Rator]

That's been on the horizon for a while now and yea who knows.

[[SS]ProXimo]

I think that Digital Gaming is the Future.

I personally don't think this future is near yet, because more people are on slow connections than we think.

Even if I know it's where we are heading. There are some things I will miss.

1. Looking at my gaming collection in all it's glory. Stacks of games I have collected over the years that bring back memories, simply by looking at the box. I can get over this but I will miss it.

2. The ability to borrow games. I see this as a big downside to Digital Gaming. With game prices going up more and more. I like the ability to borrow a game from a friend and letting them borrow one of mine. I get to experience more games this way and it's just something gamers have been doing for a very long time.

3. The ability to have as many games as I like, without concern of hard drive space on my console. MGS4 is a 50GB game and I can only see this become more common in the future. I know hard drive space is coming down, but having large games like this will eventually hit a ceiling. This is not true when it's Disc based.