STEAM vs Onlive : A case of who streams wins?

  

The 2010 same old same old  end of year/ Christmas Steam sale was shockingly blown away by the magic of instant no install play anywhere Onlive gaming and a freeplay fortnight that liberated many a jaded core pc gamer from having to download gigabytes of game data and more importantly freeing them from a constant hardware and software upgrade cycle.


Jump to 2011 and Steam vs Onlive is now a weekly duel , for your gaming time , last week this took the form a battle for the digital skies as Iceman  Steam  faced off against Maverick onlive  Every week two tribes are warring over the digital game delivery turf ..... who will win ? .. You will.... 


Take last weeks Tom Clancy's Hawx 2 sale on Steam , 50% off sounded like a good deal , but I could not  be bothered with downloading another 12gb of data , hold on , clicking on the onlive icon I can play the game instantly . No install no drivers , and I can play from desktop , joojoo(see below) and Toshiba Libretto ..effortlessly. Frankly the game is not that great so I will take the instant demo on the Joojoo , and not even bother with booting up my desktop pc.... 


There you go think of the time and money I just saved , thanks to onlive.


check me playing Hawx 2 , note the use of the joojoo touch screen to target and launch ordinance 

Welcome to the future , 2011 is going to be full of similar happy dilemmas , and as onlive picks up more AAA content , eventually lets say a Call Of Duty or 8 , you know that this is the way you will chose to play. 


Steam is awesome but for many the grey lining Gabe's cloud is the lack of real competition,no other digital game delivery service comes close when re  AAA game distribution.Retailers even threatened to think about maybe sometime in a parallel dimension refusing to stock games that required Steam , but that was last year ....


The arrival of  onlive changes all this and with new games appearing every week ,for the first time in years I have a choice , to go for the traditional download and install , and have to upgrade hardware or just click the onlive icon and play near instantly a demo of the game , which I can take any where  and play across the many devices  I have lying around or can scrounge from passers by...


The great seed that  Steam planted insheeption style into the brains of core gamers is the revelation that really you never own anything digital , even the the Bluray/DVD spinning in your ageing BR drive has a shelf life , and now we know in essence even physically bought games are only leased - as long as companies keep gaming servers going .  When games get too old they will all be abandon ware anyway google any of your grandpas favourites , and you will find them out there in the cloud ,more than likely you will find them playable in a browser...on your phone!


So whilst the casuals are making with the funny eyes with Nintendo 3DS games I can play full spec pc games on  almost anything with a Windows , or Mac based OS thanks to onlive.

Needless to say you need a Mac or Windows based device at present , if you go for a tablet this year and are serious about serious pc gaming then make sure it runs Windows , it is worth it to see full spec PC games run magically on your tablet without installs , hardware or software worries... or ever having to download an app..


Is there room for both Steam and Onlive ,at the moment yes,  but as our pc gaming habits change from the endless hardware upgrade and software upgrade routines that Steam requires ,Steam's market share will dwindle . And this is a good thing what made Intel great was competition from AMD , nVidia and ATI drive each others progress , and now Steam has onlive to contend with this can only mean benefits for gamers .... 


I can see a scenario where core gamers collect games on Steam but also purchase them on onlive for convenience , yes gamers are that crazy... they build 10 k gaming rigs to browse websites and play dos box games....


To counteract onlive ,  Steam must go the way of streamed gaming , as the games companies it relies on will see a far more beneficial return from completely cloud based games services like  onlive and the rise of browser based gaming ..Browser based gaming is no longer just minimalist facebook social gaming but full blown PC games , like the recent Beta of Battlestar Galactica online shows .


It is likely that the greatest advance in PC gaming , like all the best revolutions , just very quietly  happened,  and soon gamers will demand the  release of all major PC games through the cloud , whether on an updated Steam or onlive , or through a humble browser ....  and just think you will be able to status update your grandkids that you were virtually there in amongst the thick of it... And they said freedom isn't free !







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