Crytek researched videogame streaming for two years before coming to the same conclusion that I did after a few seconds of watching OnLive: We aren’t ready for a videogame streaming service until broadband gets faster and more reliable.
“We had our research in 2005 on this subject but we stopped around 2007 because we had doubts about economics of scale,” Crytek’s CEO Cevat Yerli toldGamesIndustry.biz. “But that was at a time when bandwidth was more expensive.”
“We saw that by 2013 – 2015 with the development of bandwidths and household connections worldwide that it might become more viable then,” he added. Cevat explained the Crytek didn’t want to wait around for us to get bet connections and broadband infrastructure, so they dropped the idea.
OnLive will be doing what Crytek thought wasn’t possible for a few more years, and he’s being a good cheerleader about it. He said that he hopes it works and thinks the service “could improve gamer’s lives.” If sitting on the couch all day, constantly navigating between hundreds of games is improvement, that is.
