InstantAction to offer embeddable console games

SAN FRANCISCO--It seems that the 2010 version of the Game Developers Conference here isn't just about social and iPhone games. It's also about services that can stream console-quality titles directly to gamers.

On Wednesday, OnLive announced its launch date--June 17--and said it would be working with partners like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, THQ, and others to deliver AAA games to anyone anywhere.

Rival InstantAction made a similar announcement on Thursday. InstantAction's catch is that it lets players choose how they consume a game, whether it's to play by the hour or to buy. Publishers set the fees that InstantAction charges. And if players begin by renting and later decide to buy, all fees they've paid up to that point are applied to the purchase price.

Regardless of whether someone rents or buys, the games they choose--and no titles have been announced yet--play in the browser. However, the model allows publishers and players alike full choice over where the games appear: they could be embedded in Facebook, a reviewer's site, a fan site, an e-mail, or a player's blog. In that sense, InstantAction CEO Lou Castle said, the content being delivered by the service is much like a YouTube video.

And because all the games are streamed from the cloud--in this case, said Castle, InstantAction is the cloud--players can take their games with them wherever they go--even pick up where they left off, regardless of whether they do it on the computer they started with, or on another machine. If a game is embedded in a blog, the players can pick up their own progress when they come back to it. However, if someone else clicks to play, the game starts from the beginning.

Another plus, said Castle, is that InstantAction's technology allows players to begin playing quickly. OnLive asserts that games streamed over its service begin instantly. So in this regard, InstantAction may not have the advantage, but Castle said that InstantActin's delays are often just a few seconds.

In addition, InstantActin's technology enables progressive downloads but allows people to start playing, even while games are still coming over the Internet. Once the game is finished, it is resident on a user's computer. A full-scale, AAA console game sent over a high-speed connection would take about four minutes, said Castle, but players could begin the action in the interim.

InstantAction is designed to work on Macs and PCs and with all major browsers. However, individual games are subject to the same system requirements as they would be if players were playing off DVDs.

For publishers, InstantAction is hoping to offer new sources of revenue and a potentially large, new audience. InstantAction will take a 30 percent cut off the top of any fees a game brings in.

[aSiriusTHoTH]

That all sounds great, until an ISP seems a ton of bandwidth going out the door and decides to slow down people's speed or cap them. Then we are back where we started.

[IceN9ne]

I wonder what comcast and their monthly limits will have to say about these services? How much bandwidth are either of these services going to use?

[Thranx]

With Instant Action, it shouldn't be too bad. Modern hi-qual games are 4-12 gigs... even with Comcast's 250 gig cap, you're have to download Mass Effect 2 20 times to hit this.

Are you going to load 20 current AAA releases in a month? Not likely. Keep in mind that because of the way the service works, once you've loaded it once, you're not "restreaming" the content. Instant Action is loading the important bits first and the conent streams as you're playing... once it's loaded, you're done. No need to reload everything again.

OnLive gets a little more dangerious in that are, but think of it along the lines of streaming 720P video every time you play. If you play 3 hours a night, 5 nights a week at a bitrate of 1.5mbps (reasonable 720P rate), that's 16 gigs a night, 324 gigs a month. Ooops. Now, this is making ALOT of assumptions, and OnLive is claiming that they've got some wicked compression, so you may not be looking at 720P costing you 1.5mbps, it may be less (interestingly though that 1.5mbps it thier stated required bandwidth). I know I game more than 15 hours a week. *shrug*

As more content rich material becomes available (youtube at 720p, Hulu at 720p) caps are going to have to be re-examined.

[Thranx]

I don't see how Instant Action is a competitor to OnLive, they're only competitors insomuch as they're competing with Blockbust for game rentals or Steam for game sales. They're completely different services. Instant Action installs the beans locally and executes them locally. OnLive is a virtualization service. Two entirely different beasts. OnLive is selling flexibility and low/no load gaming, Instant Action is executing everything on the local box, installing everything on the local box. Very VERY different operations there.

Instant action is a decent service, but (imo) thier only previous claim to fame was a fabulously Tribes like FPS that you "run from the browser". (side note, they actually have Tribes 1 in the browser as well) I throw in the smarmy quotations because it really just launches from the browser, you've downloaded the entire game client which runs either full screen or imbedded within the browser window.

Don't take me the wrong way... I love the Instant Action guys... they're doing great work and I wish them the best of luck in this new direction.

[Thad Boyd]

Thanks for the explanation; I was wondering, from the article, how it qualified as "buying" if the game was streamed.

[stockyjoe]

Onlive sounds to me like they have the compression tech capability to stream very high end games, full graphics the works. What questionable is their pricing model and the real performance. InstantAction is more game's playable through a web browser that are more then just basic flash games. The only thing I notice is that the games have to be a bit more limited graphically and in regards to features, scale etc.

[TX-Sunset]

All of this is channeling us down a path that one day we will be forced to pay extra for unlimited internet vs internet with a trasfer limit. US internet Co. are trying to move us away from the one flat fee model to pay as you go; what many European contries do.

[stockyjoe]

Cheap distribution which is great. But one wonders about the calibre of the games. Especially when youre paying for nickels and dimes for this and that. I messed around with Quakelive and Legions. Both play pretty well, but again the games are bland and devoid of content or scale.