Originally Posted By: drakino
Similar concept, but a different business model. Our goal is to enable game publishers, and retailers a way to embed instant demos into their web sites. After playing, you would need to still buy the game at a shop or online.


Which is interesting, because that's only going half way with the potential of the service.

During the Beta, I was incredibly interested in the OnLive service because it would have enabled me to play games that I wouldn't otherwise have been able to play because of underpowered hardware. That was its selling point for me.

For instance, I played all the way through Borderlands on OnLive with fairly high graphic settings, when I wouldn't have been able to do so on my work laptop normally. I played through all of Crysis:Warhead on OnLive with a decent frame rate when it would have been nothing but a slideshow on even my desktop machine.

OnLive worked incredibly well for this purpose (actually playing games), *AS WELL AS* providing live demos of the games. The demos were interesting because they weren't manufactured-demos, they were just a limited-time use of the *actual* game. That, too, was a big deal to me.

If OnLive had had more actual *games* available to them, I would have bought some. I had actually *pulled the trigger* on a pre-order of Dragon Age: Origins, and then poof it disappeared from their games lineup on launchday and I got credited for it.

I guess what I'm saying is that Gaikai is missing the boat on one possible monetization of the service. I'm sure they're studying OnLive's business model and deciding that people like me are in a minority, and that it's not worth their time to try to go after me as a market segment. Which I can't fault them for.

I just think that if services like OnLive and Gaikai could strike deals with publishers for larger game libraries, then that side of the monetization would be viable.
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Tony Fabris