Tendo City

http://gizmodo.com/5567770/onlive-stream...me-finally

I was willing to cut some slack to OnLive as a great option for people who love things like the Netflix service and would prefer not to pay for expensive computer upgrades.

Unfortunatly, as a small aside after talking about the connection, this guy outlines that the service is NOT Netflix. It's a ripoff.

First you pay $50 a year. This gets you... nothing. You have to "buy" or rent the games you want to play even AFTER the yearly fee. That is ridiculous. The service should simply be the fee. Yeah the fee would end up being higher, but if you're paying a fee at all, you should actually GET something out of it. All these users are initially paying for is the right to pay for more things. It would be like if Blockbuster had a yearly fee JUST to keep being a member of their store but you got nothing out of it, still needing to pay for each rental.

Secondly, the "buy" option isn't really "buy" at all. It's more like renting for the duration of your signup for the service. They don't send you a permanent copy, and if you ever leave, your "buy" is gone, needing to be bought again. The rentals are also ridiculously short periods of time. They're using outdated "rental store" models where you pay $5 to play a game for 3 days, or $7 for 5.

Whatever interest I had in this system I've lost. This is worse than Gametap's model. Yes you had to pay for each game there, but you didn't have to pay a yearly fee in addition to that. The account setup was at least free.

This service was originally promised as an alternative that might actually threaten the current model of everyone buying their own copy of the game's code and then buying their own hardware to run it on. This implementation will kill them before they even get off the ground. I think it'll end up going the way of the Gametap service.

If this sort of thing is going to have any chance whatsoever, they need to follow the Netflix model. Figure out a monthly fee that's both reasonable and covers whatever you need covered, and give permanent access to everything you have liscenses to for play for the duration of that user's account, until they cancel.

I am so truly shocked... :P

First -- You don't mention performance. OnLive cannot match up to a high-end PC, graphically. Not even close. Really, the image quality is not very good -- we've known this for some time, but just look at the screenshots in that thread for more confirmation. Graphics detail options, etc. are very limited at best, I believe, too, so you have little control over the graphics. Also, there is more lag than there would be on a computer by your desk, which can be a problem in some games. And your geographical location and connection can affect lag. Also you need a fast, fairly high-end connection to do this... that's not going to be cheap. Lots of negatives there.

On the points you mention, though, if there's an upfront fee for buying it, sure -- you are buying a box after all. But it should be just that, a single fee. Then you pay for the games you want. I mean, their exuse is that they need to run this service and it costs money, so they need to charge a fee... and while they might sort of have a point, people are not going to like that idea... and the idea that you haven't really bought anything, and lose access to all of it as soon as you stop paying them their fees, isn't exactly going to be popular. And it shouldn't be.

I mean, I kind of see their point, the service DOES cost money to run, and the industry does have an issue with that, with how gamers (certainly including me) expect things to be free while to the companies do have to pay to keep these services running... but they're really got to come up with better ideas than this. This way is not acceptable. You suggest one way, of having games be free like Netflix rentals are. Another way would be to raise game prices a little to cover server costs or something, perhaps also add more pay content of some kind, something, have a "premium" service that requires pay or something like that (hopefully not, those things are stupid, but I'm being realistic here...)... but basic access to the games (and online multiplayer, etc, I would hope) that you have paid for should of course should be free. More than that would be great too, but in these paid DLC and fees for everything days, my expectations for that are sadly low. They aren't low enough to find OnLive a decent deal, though. :)

(On that note Sony is doing something similar with Playstation Plus, games they give you "free" through the service only remain playable as long as you are signed up to it... stop paying and you lose access to all the free games they have given you. At elast that is only free stuff, though... so far.)

I mean, objectively, it is kind of a cool idea... but it's far too early for this kind of thing to work, and even beyond that it has huge problems in control interfaces, the fact that many people do like to actually own things and that is impossible on OnLive or any other such service, the required fee to keep basic access to the service, the kind of internet connection it requires, etc, etc.

Netflix does just fine with purely a monthly fee for their streaming service. Paying for permission to BROWSE A STORE is just stupid. Either charge purely for the game rentals, or pay a flat monthly fee.

According to them the response time is surprisingly quick, so that's nice. However yes, the video quality is pretty blurry.

Oh, and you don't need the box at all. The box is only there for people without computers (or computers too slow to show streaming video), so that box charge would only be for some cases. For that demographic, a blurry game is better than no game, so they'd probably be fine with it.

At any rate, I prefer to own my games because I really never know when I'll have the time to actually play them, and I like going back again and again (plus being able to modify them any way I want). This isn't really for me. However the current pay plan is just insulting.

<img src="http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/1100632405_k8Jbq-L.jpg">

So it's got too much input lag?

The reviews all tend to agree that playing a game on OnLive is less offensive than a poke in the eye.

Well that sounds like some high praise indeed... :)

Cloud gaming, meet the sun's rays of rejection.

How does WOW/MMO's run on it? anyone have the info? is this basically for people who want to play minesweeper online? Cost of system + game + 50 a year + 40 a month for your interbuttz isnt horrible when you consider... no, wait. That's horrible.

Also, the bandwidth issue really is a big one. ISPs in the US want -- and in some other countries have -- bandwidth limits, so that if you go over a certain amount of bandwidth you pay extra. Needless to say that is death to services like OnLive... there really is a fight going on (and coming) between ISPs who want more money for all the bandwidth people are using and people who do not want to deal with lots of extra fees, and we have no idea who will win it.

The other issue with ISPs is they all don't want to admit the truth, that they exist solely to provide a big pipe to get people connected to the internet at large. They're currently pretending they do "so much more" but nothing's really come of it, except poor quality e-mail and a few "liscensed content deals" for things like E-SPAN.