Your least favorite part of watching TV, now in your games! Today, Square Enix announced its new in-browser game streaming service Coreonline. Their twist on the model involves what basically amounts to commercials at regular intervals. I played Hitman: Blood Money for about 10 or 12 minutes before being asked to watch a quick video, at which point I got up to get more coffee. Upon my return, I went back to killing random suckers from behind. All without paying a dime. Neat!
Granted, as of right now, there's only two playable games on the service in the absolutely amazing Hitman: Blood Money and the not so hot Mini Ninjas, but Lara Croft and The Guardian of Light will be making its way to the service soon, and, I assume, there will be many to follow. You can play all of them for free with commercial breaks, buy specific levels to play uninterrupted, or just buy the whole game.
I've got to say, I'm a fan of the Coreonline model. I'm one of those guys that really doesn't mind watching commercials on Hulu, but it's really great to have the option to pay a couple of bucks to not listen to someone blabber on about some product I couldn't care less about. Do you guys think this is a viable business model for the future? Is this a good alternative to standard free-to-play models?
