GDC: OnLive model will impact console and retail sales and "appeal immensely to publishers," says Pachter

Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter just issued a note saying he believes OnLive will impact both console sales and games retail, and will be a hugely attractive proposition to publishers.

The full thing:

• Tuesday night at the Game Developers Conference, Rearden Labs introduced OnLive, a new cloud computing service that will allow consumers to play console quality games without a PC or a console.
• No business model was announced, and in our view, the success or failure of the service will ride on whether it is priced low enough to induce a large number of consumers to “subscribe”, in turn driving a greater number of games available from the publishers.
• In our view, the OnLive model will appeal immensely to publishers, who will likely derive greater revenue per sale than is derived through conventional retail distribution.
• We think that the adoption of a service like OnLive will impact console sales.
• Similarly, we think that the adoption of a service like OnLive will impact retail

OnLive, the upcoming Cloud gaming service, was announced at GDC earlier this week.