You're probably right, but as Wardell says above no one else is really doing it. And when new people try, like Origin, the gaming media and forums tend to eviscerate them for daring to fuck with the established preferred service.

Of course EA has the money and (seemingly) the determination to not go away and offer exclusives, which is the key to eventually toppling a number one. Whether that is a good thing or not....

In any case I think the main point is that totally offline singleplayer games with no social hooks are almost dead. Even indies seem to be focusing on adding those elements.

Exactly. Now GfWL is doing that without the DRM. And look how people are reacting to that ...

Incorrect.

I've never tried it, but I heard from countless sources that creating an "offline account" is absolutely possible. I remember somebody recently posting that he was able to install and play a GfWL game without being online once.

Maybe they changed it, but I know people were saying that here on the forums.

They have changed (since around Dead Rising 2 release), it was possible before (e.g. for the Batman A.S., Dark Void, RE5 etc..)but nowadays, while you can still play with an offline account, you need to activate the game online once.
That's until streaming takes over, unlike for movies or music, for game streaming can effectively kill piracy once and for all.

That's why I am sadly pretty sure that publishers will push as hard as they can in that direction as soon as it become a viable enough alternative.

Imo, streaming is to expensive. It will never generate the extra income needed to afford it. Diablo 3 was the most anticipated game of the decade. Try such a stunt with a game of less degree and you will see a substantial loss in profits.

It's too expensive if publishers, unless they are big enough, tries to create their own data warehouses, but not necessary if they uses an existing one. That's similar to digital distribution; it's way too expensive for most publisher to even think about creating their own "Steam" (i.e. mirror most of Steam services, not just distribute a bunch of games like the HB store), yet alone tries to concurrence Valve's behemoth.

Between NVidia who worked a lot to improve the virtualization of GPU, Sony who bought Gakkai and even the Microsoft guy who said that consoles (current and future) still had at most 10 years to live before being replaced by streaming, everybody is lurking in that direction for worse or... worser, I am pretty sure that Ms has some "Azure gaming" or whatever similar project (especially now after Gakkai purchase) and I would be very surprised if Valve didn't had their own streaming project somewhere down in the pipes.