OnLive Gets 100th Game, Facebook Integration

OnLive has been busy working on new agreements, and at E3 they will be showcasing their 100th game, Red Faction: Armageddon, which will be their first exclusive PC demo. Now that the OnLive library has hit 100 (up from the 19 they launched with), it's going to have an easier time getting players to sign up. Which in turn should make it easier to get more games to join their library.

More important, perhaps, than the milestone of 100 games is the expanded integration with Facebook. OnLive is clearly planning to leverage the viral marketing aspects of Facebook games by integrating Facebook into their games. It's not just posting messages to your Wall, it's an attempt to add spectating, video clips, and other advanced features to all the games OnLive serves up, all plugged into your Facebook account.

Done properly, this could help OnLive get more new members as they leverage the social networks of their players. OnLive is also pushing a new SDK to enable developers to take full advantage of their Facebook integration.

Meanwhile, OnLive is also pushing into the UK this fall. I'm sure they will be looking at Europe soon after. PLus they have more announcements lined up for E3. They are putting out their story early, which is a smart move to avoid getting lost in the wave of announcements that will be coming out of E3.

While OnLive is trying hard, it seems to me their ultimate success is still in question. They've made it to 100 games, but their $9.95 a month all-you-can-eat service has about 50 games available. Otherwise, you can rent games for 3 days, or you can buy them. The advantage of buying them from OnLive as opposed to just getting them for your PC is that they will have the most high-end graphics available... though of course you will have to deal with potential lag issues. The 50 games on the service are not your most popular titles, of course. It remains to be seen if publishers will want to let OnLive get the rights to their most popular games.

The other issue is still the high bandwidth required for the service to work properly, and even then you can still get into lag situations. Perhaps these issues will be less important over time, but the marketplace is changing. Will OnLive adapt itself to what players want? It will be interesting to watch what happens.

Smartphones Are Game Controllers With New Tech

Just the other day I noted that Qualcomm has a new chip to make it easy to connect tablets and smartphones to HDTVs, by beaming the output wirelessly. If you already have your HDTV on the Internet (with an Internet-connected TV, or by a computer connected to it), now your connection to a smartphone is already here. Brass Monkey makes an SDK for game developers to turn smartphones (iOS, Android, and others) into game controllers, and they've just acquired Emotely, adding instant multi-user capability and HTML 5 support.

What's it all mean? Well, for starters, a variety of controller options for games that are being piped into your HDTV. Users can even create their own control configurations and share them. This technology is usable right away if you've got a web-based game that can be shown on your computer or your TV, and you can have up to 8 players in the game with a simple app. This will be a supercharger for the Apple TV/Android TV boxes, enabling very cool gameplay options. Instant party games where everyone hauls out their smartphones and plays the same game. Your smartphone, while lacking joysticks and buttons, has a dizzying array of sensors and a nice screen that can be configured in near-infinite variety to meet the needs of each game. Plus you can get hidden information... the drawbacks of a touchscreen as a controller are minimized when you have a screen dedicated to a control interface, rather than trying to have the screen do double duty as the play field and the controller.

I expect game developers should be all over this, as the SDK seems very flexible and easy to implement. It's going to be another nasty blow to the current console market. Sure, Nintendo's new console will have a controller with a screen... but they will be expensive and have several orders of magnitude fewer games.

Board games should be heading for the family room TV with this technology... it's a major opportunity for the adventure game field, if only they can figure out how to grasp it.

A tip of the hat to Steve Pieraldi for spotting this technology... it's definitely a gamechanger... ahem.

DC Comics Reboots; Digital Versions Get Same-Day Release

Superman, Aquaman, Green Lantern all have popped collars... it's a dark future indeed.

DC Comics has decided to reboot its lineup, possibly in response to the ongoing lawsuit with Siegel & Schuster heirs over the rights to some of Superman's basics (his costume, Lois Lane, Kryptonian origin, etc.). Thus they have a chance to eliminate the elements they might not control about Superman, and start the comics over again.

It's not just Superman, it's all of their major characters. They'll be revising costumes, starting 52 different comics from issue #1, and generally updating and revising everything. It's a major redo that's sure to piss off some old fans, but they hope to bring in many more new ones.

One of the biggest things about this redo is that DC plans to begin releasing the digital versions of their comics day & date with the print versions. This is going to ignite a firestorm of protest from retailers, no doubt. They feel the delayed release of digital titles is crucial to their business. They may be right... but the fact that digital titles are so ridiculously expensive has to be helping them.

This is an important step towards sanity in the comic book business. Let's face it, digital comics are the future. As tablets become ubiquitous, it's an opportunity to get past the high cost of printing and get a whole new generation hooked on comics. But as an entertainment value right now, comics suck. For $4 you get some fraction of an hour's entertainment (if it takes you an hour to read a comic book, you have bigger problems to worry about). You can get a good iPhone game for less than $4 and spend far more time than an hour playing it.

The real wonder is that DC and Marvel haven't figured out how to leverage the gold mine of their old comics. Thousands of issues gathering digital dust, because they're trying to sell them for $3 each. Insanity. Try some different price points and see how many thousands or millions of new comic fans you can create. The older the comic, the lower the price should be. It's the inverse of the printed product; who really cares about Spider-Man issues from the '60s? Complete story arcs for $1 or $2 would be a reasonable value.

Maybe this move by DC brings the day closer when comics will fully embrace digital distribution. Meanwhile, comics retailers will need to figure out how they will survive as the market moves in that direction.

Smartphones Converge With Set-top Boxes

Wireless HD video from your smartphone to your TV... made to order for gaming.

It's pretty clear that smartphone technology is heading for our family rooms, and a new technology announced by Qualcomm will help make it happen. Qualcomm's got a tri-band chip that will offer dual-band WiFi, Bluetooth, and 60 GHz wireless  video transfer for speedy HD video. So you won't need to hook your tablet or your smartphone up to your TV with a cable; you'll be able to shoot video right to your HDTV.

Sure, you can play videos you happen to have on your smartphone... but really, the benefit of this technology will be playing your smartphone or tablet game on your big screen. Your controller is also your game machine... and at the rate the mobile video tech is advancing, these game machines in smartphone clothing will be surpassing current consoles soon.

If you thought the possibility for disruption of the current console market depended on Apple or Google or others producing dedicated boxes for the family room, think again. The capacity to destroy the current console market could be built into every tablet and smartphone in a year or two. Keep an eye on what's announced at E3, and see if any of it will in any way be a useful response to this apocalyptic technology. I'm betting it won't be...

Portal 2 ARG Examined

You may recall the interesting Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that Valve ran to promote the launch of Portal 2. It excited some controversy, with some fans becoming upset that the game didn't work exactly as they had thought. The whole process is examined in depth in this Gamasutra article, which is worth a look.

The controversy arose because the ARG was designed to reward the players with the early release of Portal 2; the amount of time the release would be moved up depended on the amount of time all players spent on the indie games being promoted by the ARG. This wasn't exactly clear to everyone; some people thought the game would be released early merely if enough people purchased the indie game bundle.

This was a rather complex ARG with a lot of moving parts, and the article goes into depth on how the plan was created and executed. This is a good guideline for creating your own ARG, showing what sorts of considerations go into it and how involved the process can be.

I applaud them for their ambitious and creative marketing attempt, even if it had some flaws. Even the controversy helped them, I think, by publicizing the promotion.

Lodsys Still Trolling App Developers

An excerpt from Lodsys' blog posting. See, Apple made them do it.

Some guys can't take a hint. Even though Apple sent a public nastygram their way, the guys at Lodsys are not shying away... they've moved up their lawsuit filings apparently because of Apple's action. So some app developers (like Iconfactory and Wulven Games) are going to have to respond to the legal actions. Meanwhile Apple must be trying to sort this all out... and Android developers are next on the hit list. It does take some chutzpah to see if you can anger both Apple and Google at the same time. Lodsys' lawyers will no doubt be racking up more than few billable hours.

A nice way to kick off Apple's Developer Conference coming up... I bet there's a resolution by then, or at least a clear signal from Apple that developers need not be scared by this. Hey, Apple, I hope you're handling the legal issues for these small developers... it's tough enough making money on apps without some patent troll costing you all your profits in legal fees.

Paper Games Up, Origins Moves

Sales overall for the paper game business were up in the first quarter of 2011, led by stronger sales of collectible card games. The two leaders in RPGs are D&D and Pathfinder, with Pathfinder making a stronger showing in the hobby stores while D&D does better in mass market channels. I think it's pretty clear that the old-line gamers tend to prefer Pathfinder to the new edition of D&D.

Meanwhile, Hasbro's sales were down 12%, and it's reorganizing its games group and relocating it to Rhode Island, in the process laying off 75 people. Wizards of the Coast is doing well, though, on the strength of recent Magic: The Gathering sales.

In other gaming industry news, the Origins convention is moving from its traditional lat June/early July dates to late May/early June, beginning in 2012. Why? To cut costs for exhibitors and attendees, since the convention hotels offer lower rates earlier, and airfares would also be lower. This has the added benefit of moving it further away from GenCon, so the two big summer cons have some breathing space in between.

Board games and non-collectible card games have been holding their own in the hobby trade, but mass-market sales have been weak. I expect that the wider availability of inexpensive games on smartphones and tablets to continue to pull dollars away from traditional games.

The big transition that's staring the RPG industry in the face is the move to e-books. The high prices that many publishers place on their e-book versions of their RPGs is not sustainable. Just as we've seen indie authors undercutting traditional publishers in the e-book space tending to drive e-book prices down, similar pricing pressures will move e-book prices down for RPG books. The publishers are going to have to change their business model, which is never easy. As tablets really take hold, customers will value properly prepared e-books for that form factor. This will take extra effort, but when you no longer have to worry about printing costs there's some room in the budget. Print-on-demand should be able to take care of the traditional hobby store market, though special editions will always have a place if your fan base is big enough.