OnLive is live!

[Ixiohm]

I found this blog post and thought I would contribute it to the discussion:
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/06/Thoughts-on-OnLive
According to the post OnLive seems to actually perform worse for 2D titles than for 3D titles in the graphics department. Which might make I less attractive for Arcen.
I hope to be able to test it myself, but I live in Sweden so that is likely to take a while But, I will be sure to follow it's development anyhow.

[eRe4s3r]

When I looked at F.E.A.R. 2, I made a weird discovery -- the OnLive version is definitely not running at maximum detail as I had originally assumed. I asked OnLive about this and they said that they don't necessarily max out the settings, they choose what they feel is a good balance. 

that review also mentions that cursor based games (ie exact click and point) are a pain - but that was to be expected with any kind of delay. Your mouse has literally 0 delays so it'll always be a major pain to adjust.

What i really worry though is that for online games their security isn't up the standard. When someone can log in with your account he might not be able to cheat, but he can still get you banned. Particularly wonder how thats going to work for online games with serial based ban systems (like bfbc2 + pbhub)

[RCIX]

@Ixiohm: that blog post appears to nail what the tradeoffs of OnLive are well: it's selling software as a service. That may seem outrageous at first, but think of movies: when you go to a movie theater to watch the movie, you don't own it. Same with netflix and hulu. It seems a fair deal (as long as software as a product doesn't go away).

Also, up to this point, i didn't think that there would ever be a complete takeover of cloud computing due to certain high-resource-intensity and low-latency demanding programs needing a local PC, but this service (will take) just took away one of the major classes of those apps

Just musing here, but i don't understand why they don't make the client slightly thicker: install a bare-bones UI package for each game (maybe a few megabytes), then run the interface on the client. That wouldn't really add overhead, and would turn the overall time-delay problem into basically a lag thing (which at least RTS gamers are used to dealing with).

It's also interesting to see how people are either "i think onlive should sink and show everyone that cloud computing is not for games" or "it's gonna be the bread and butter of everyones gaming in a few years". I don't think it will be this way (some people will still want total paranoid control of their stuff ), but there is certainly a market for it.

[Affine]

It's definitely an interesting model. Colour me skeptical about latency, though, especially for 'twitch' multiplayer games.

[eRe4s3r]

Onlive demands full retail price for games + subscription = fail ;/ Nearly couldn't believe it when i read that, but they also only grant a TIME LIMITED access , at most 3 years for your "purchases".

Now who wants to still use it? ;P

[Rustayne]

So wait, you got to pay a monthly fee + buy the game for their service?  That seems absurd.  With consoles, you can rent games for a monthly fee, and never have to buy them.  What in the world are these folks thinking?

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah this ones a really hammer -> http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/full-list-of-onlive-pricing-options



Retail prices + 15$ sub + Rental that they openly only grant "Until at least 17th June 2013"

After this date your purchase can (and probably will) become null and void, and non existent, non usable and never recoverable.

You yes, you rent access to a service to pay full retail price for a 3 year rental where at the end of it you don't own anything.

[RCIX]

The thing is though, and i see a lot of people missing this, is that it's also basically a video-based social network. You can watch other people playing whatever, you can watch "brag clips", etc. Obviously not a draw for the crowd here

They also plan to add a no-subscription version of the service that will allow you to play demos of games and rent them for a cost. Basically blockbuster without the need for manually getting games.

[Rustayne]

Well I hope it crashes and burns.  Personally speaking I see no need for this type of service, and quite frankly if you can't afford a computer to run these games well, then just save enough for a console and your set.  I mean if you got enough money to drop 50-60 bucks on a game + 15 bucks for a sub on top of that, might as well own the game and play it when you want, and have an xbox 360 with a live sub.  At least there it isn't as expensive, and they can't "yank" your game cause you forgot to pay them.  This just isn't smart business.

[rubikscube]

ok , so we pay some few dollars a year, and we get to organize our games and play whichever we want and buy them at ease? that's a great idea.