Sony Scared of OnLive?

OnLive was revealed last week at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and immediately videogame forums across the internet exploded with debates of how successful it would be. The news was big enough that major news sites such as CNN and FOXNews did stories on it as well as the traditional technology sites such as Cnet. Major game publishers Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Epic Games, Atari, Codemasters, THQ, Warner Bros., 2D Boy and Eidos Interactive have signed up to have games available for the format. Seems as though everyone is onboard for the ultimate gaming nirvana doesn't it?

Well not Sony. Sony released a statement today stating that it does not think that OnLive is on the right track amid concerns that expenses will be passed on to the consumer. As stated by Sony, "What will be the final cost to the consumer when you start adding up what [OnLive is] selling?" It is not clear whether Sony thinks the traditional method of gaming should continue (with consoles and game discs) or whether a totally new direction should be employed.

The bottom line... Sony does bring up a good point. What's to keep OnLive from charging $50, $100, or whatever they want for a month long membership if they have a monopoly on the service. On the flipside of the statement, Sony has just filed a trademark patent for the name "PS Cloud" as stated in my previous post (see below), so I take what Sony says with a grain of salt. I think Sony believes cloud computing IS the wave of the future and they are taking steps in that direction. Just like they say, "History repeats itself". It appears more like Sony is trying to sabotage the hype around OnLive's announcement with this press release very similar to what they did when Sega released their Dreamcast in 1999 by announcing they were shortly going to be releasing their next videogame system (then the PS2). I wouldn't be surprised if Sony would try to steal OnLive's subscriber base (shortly after OnLive releases) with a service of their own. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.