Tuesday, April 14, 2009

OnLive

I guess I am jumping on the bandwagon here, but for some reason today I could not stop thinking about how blindingly obvious it is that OnLive is perhaps the least-likely-to-succeed gaming technology idea I have ever seen.

The idea of how the subscription business model would have to work has occupied my brain all day. Like anyone who has ever played a video game over the Internet, I am highly skeptical of it as a technology. I see I don't need to talk about that because Eurogamer eviscerated it already. I am a little late to the party on questioning it's bandwidth assumptions, TheGameReviews also did that already (though I would have a lot more nuanced argument that I may make later).

What I question, is assuming they've magically programmed these two concerns away (and iuf they did, why on earth they're selling a video game equivalent to DiVx instead of making bajillions of dollars selling the technologies to, say Microsoft or Google is unfathomable), what must their pricing model be in order to profit, and is that level sustainable in the marketplace?

I thought about it, and came up with a simple-ish equation:

F>[(M*r/Θ)*C]

In this equation:
F= the monthly fees, aside from game purchases.
M = the cost of one hardware machine they need to run a game for one user
r = the ratio of machines to users required, expressed as a decimal.
Θ = the expected lifespan of one of the machines
C = colocation costs per Machine per month

Roughly, let's estimate the numbers as follows in what I assume to be fairly conservative numbers:
M = $1000
r = 0.25 (meaning one machine for every four paying subscribers)
Θ = 18 months
C = $22 (or the equivalent of $700 for a 16-slot rack running 32 CPUs at a fairly inexpensive co-lo facility with enough bandwidth to serve)
That leads us to a monthly subscription cost of at-least $36 to break even on operations. It doesn't service debt, it doesn't pay for marketing, doesn't pay back development costs or the investors much less pay management and overhead.

If I go crazy low I could change the variables to $800, 0.1, 24 and $18, that still puts you at $22/month break-even on operations and assumes they'll have exactly the right facility/hardware spending in place to service their customers.

My high end guess would be $2000, 0.4, 15 and $30, leaving a break even price of $83/month.

Now, maybe their service, despite the aforementioned technological problems, is pretty darned good. What I say, is a new XBox 360 Pro and 2 years of Live! service costs $400, or $16/month, there's no way anyone will pay for OnLive if the cost is much more than that, I don't see how it's possible, I think it's more likely the cost will be at least double that.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Creation and Mission Statement

Hi, welcome to PlinkoBlog.
I am starting my own blog again because I want to start writing again. I used to blog regularly years ago but it fell pretty deeply in to what many of the blogerati would deride as wankery. I intend to not repeat that mistake here.

First and foremost, I am going to do this anonymously. I work for a publicly traded corporation and I may have things to say about my industry at times. Let me say that I live in a small city in a Southern U.S. state. I am married with our first child on the way. I graduated from a large, well-regarded public university in the midwest. I am a liberal and an agnostic. I harbor no illusions about being read regularly much less ever making this a full-time occupation. Take that for what you will about seriousness or committment.

I have a few areas of interest I will try to focus on because they are of interest to me. I don't feel it's worthwhile to make inane declarations on subjects I do not understand. My main subjects (and their reasonings) will likely be:

Newspapers/Publishing/Media (I once worked in this industry and still have financial ties to it)
Secular/Sacred Society and Political Tensions
Imprt Trade, especially Apparel/Garments (this is my field)
Social Programs and Progressive Politics (my wife is a social worker, so it's often discussed at home)
Adoption (I am)
Gaming, Geekery (my main hobby)
Business, Economics (another interest)

Yeah, it'sa mish-mash, but so is every other interesting blog.