Zelnick: OnLive 'beneficial' to gaming industry, doesn't fit with Take-Two's business model

Personally i can only see benefits. If it works the way they claim it will.

Better for the consumer
+ no more getting up for inserting discs!!!! :p
+ Can't lose a disc nor can it be stolen
+ more features (think netflix and its algorithms like advising what you might like)
+ virtual cabinets. Very important for collectors that want to see all the stuff they own. (Database features - no more manual sorting, call (using voice or touch) for all titles developed by a certain developer or genre and they will be displayed in beautiful ways like coverflow or something similar)
+ no more crazy costs for hardware
+ lower game costs for the consumer (think steam deals and bigger market is lower prices + competition between online platforms will increase dramatically)
+ supercomputers can run games more beautiful than the best hardware you can afford
+ social features (the usual, what are m friends playing, watching them play, voice chat through different games, achievements,...)
+ Expand the platform, why not offer movies and music. In the future people will laugh at us when they find out we had channels that controlled what we see instead of choosing ourselves what we want to see from a database of every piece of video ever made.
+ tie in other social features > why not give it functions like last fm / flicker / facebook / twitter / ... for people who want to use it
+ internet browsing together with the social features like stumble and what news a i following
> basically this one little box could do it all and do it better by tying everything together through a global network

Better for the producer
+ less cost is more resources available for use on game development
+ direct contact with the players (what do we want?)
+ statistics about games (think steam, death rates and choke points made visible to improve gameplay)

Better for the environment
+everything from the boxes and plastic used for shipment, to the fuel used for cars, boats, planes shipping them and the boxes and the discs themselves will be cut out of the loop. Not to mention the energy used for making all this stuff that is just used for shipment.

and prolly lots more that i am forgetting at the moment and even more features that still need to be invented.

If onlive doesnt work the way it does and brings us unplayable lag then ofcourse it will fail. But one day in the not so far future everything will slide into place and the revolution will begin!

DaFreak, you and others seem to be forgetting in regards to the environment with digital distribution, they need a lot more hard drives and servers than now, and servers eat up electricity which is not good for the environment as most of our electricity comes from polluting sources.

Being able to buy a game used only a few months later at 80% off is ten times greater than all that stuff you said DaFreak. Digital distro changes all that..

I would be willing to pay more for a game if i can have all those features i described. In theory the system of used sales could also be digitized but i agree that i don't see that happening any time soon =p In digital form games could be sold again indefinetly. In theory you would only need 1000 copies of a 7 hour game for millions of people. This system would not work on digital formats. Perhaps with a limit. You are allowed to sell your game a month after you buy it. This would mean that people have to rate it on their "want scale". Do you want it badly enough that you wanne pay full price at launch or would you pay half price a month later?

On the environment issue. The electricity used for maintaining servers and producing the hardware neccesary is negligible to what the entire music/movies/games distribution sector is using now. The fuel for all the shipping alone would compensate for that.

@DaFreak

So your saying that those 50,75,80,90% off sales I see on Steam all the time are just for my eyes only?! Perhaps that is why I've been feeling a little smug lately....

I don't like collecting games because it reminds me of all the money I wasted on games when I could have saved it all for a down payment on a house or something.

Is the PlayStation Store down for anyone else? Mine is saying that "This service is not available in your country/region"...

Yeah, the Store's down for me too. I'm in Canada, if that's relevant.

Yup, it's down.