DAILY MANIFESTO

Revolutionary Rationale: OnLive Are Geniuses

Posted on Thursday, August 25 @ 18:30:00 Eastern by Daniel Bischoff

Let's talk Deus Ex. Great game, right? Yes. Right. That's out of the way. This... Revolutionary Rationale has nothing to do with the game. But let's chat about the companies behind the game, the publisher, the retailers, the cloud-based-gaming company.

Really this whole mess has nothing to do with the developers. Eidos Montreal just made the game, and while they may have one opinion or another about the big push OnLive made with Deus Ex: Human Revolution, they've really got nothing to do about it. What? Are you lost?

Before DXHR's release, you could preorder the game via OnLive, the cloud-based-gaming service. Somewhere, out in the ether, your game would be rendered, sent to you via your broadband internet connection, where you'd input a command, and the game would respond, all without the engine, the graphics, the characters, the sound operating on your computer hardware.

Preordering the game via OnLive meant you'd get a free microconsole so you could play the game on your TV. You'd also get everything included in the Augmented Edition of the game. All of this would arrive at your door for less than the price of the game at retail (if you were buying the game for Xbox 360 or PS3). Even if you weren't interested in all that extra junk, you could preorder the vanilla DXHR and still get a free copy of the original Deus Ex. Wow! What a deal!

Psssh, no one wants to buy one of the biggest games of the year on OnLive, right?! HAHAHA, who do they think they are? Steam?! Hahaha.

No, OnLive isn't technically competing with Steam, despite their dependency on the PC platform. Regardless, they've made it plain who they ARE competing with: GameStop. Without the mega-retailer knowing, DXHR publisher Square Enix inserted codes to play DXHR via OnLive in every retail PC copy of the game.

You know by now that GameStop issued a recall of all these disks. This wasn't the result of conscious thought. This was a knee-jerk reaction after their decision to open every box and remove the codes was ripped to shreds on the internet yesterday.

Wow, they are so stupid! GameStop, you're so dumb! No, they're a business, they're all about making money, and OnLive is a competitor. GameStop isn't stupid, but OnLive is full of geniuses.

OnLive cut Square Enix a fat check to help promote their platform and DXHR. They also shelled out a ton of money and server capacity to support all those gamers who've now got a free copy of DXHR to play via the service.

This whole scheme was never meant to go through without an impasse. That check meant that Square Enix would never take a loss on the units GameStop is sending back to them. How many PC copies of DXHR do you really think were sold at GameStop?

Everything about this was designed, planned for, expected to result in one thing: GameStop looks evil, OnLive looks like a value to gamers everywhere. Even if you weren't on the receiving end of this transaction, you're feeling this way. As a gamer, you empathize with anyone robbed of something by a corporation. As a gamer, you like any company that gives you something for free.

TL;DR OnLive good, GameStop bad. And that's what they wanted you to think.

[Image Source]

Related Games: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Tags: revolutionary rant, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, OnLive, gamestop

Comments

TheJx4
Joined: Jun 2011

Posted: Aug 25th, 2011 at 7:56 pm
*claps*

That was great, especially with all this upbeat action-movie type music I'm listening to.

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Guernica
Joined: Mar 2009

Posted: Aug 25th, 2011 at 9:26 pm
The people at onlive do seem to be playing things very smart. Instead of trying to limit gamers who use their platform like some they are handing out freebies and being the "good guy" for the gamers. That's how you get customers. Not by extra DRM or any other evil pyramid scheme. Of course... this could all just be an elaborate pyramid scheme by onlive...

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danielrbischoff
Joined: Nov 2009

Posted: Aug 25th, 2011 at 10:29 pm
OnLive pretty closely resembles the Ubisoft "always-connected" DRM model though. Of course, the very connection required to play in OnLive's case is the service you're using in the first place.

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Guernica
Joined: Mar 2009

Posted: Aug 26th, 2011 at 6:10 am
The consumer can't tell though... it's like their netflix but for vidja games!

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tinymhg
Joined: Jun 2011

Posted: Aug 26th, 2011 at 5:44 am
IDK this business model may be the wave of the future, but I don’t think it will generate the revenue needed for the game developers to create AAA titles. I could be wrong, first time for everything. I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.

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Rinnon
Joined: Nov 2005

Posted: Aug 26th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Well to me, Game Stop/EB Games always looked Evil, so this didn't really change anything.

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