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[ATF487]

Compared to $8/month for Xbox Live Gold (1-month sub to 1-month sub) it's actually not bad for what you're getting.

Of course I'd wager that the overlap between people that complain about the price of Gold is going to be 98% of those who will complain about OnLive.

If they can provide an attractive all-you-can-eat cost.. it'll be sweet!

Nobody pays 8 dollars a month for Live :lol

It's 4 dollars per month if you buy the year, or cheaper if you buy the cards when they're on sale/ebay like I do.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

That's not horrible if you consider you don't need to worry about upgrading your computer. The games will run like you have the newest hardware. With that said, I don't play PC games nearly often enough to justify this for myself.

The key difference is when you use OnLive you are renting games WHEN YOU RENT and renting games WHEN YOU BUY. Lets say you buy 5 games for $150. One month arrives and you know what, you don't want to pay that $15 month charge. Well you won't be enjoying your 5 games for that month. This makes Ubisofts DRM look like a pirates wet dream.

 

[Lotan]

I'd pay for it if it works and has decent games. 15 a month for a year is 180, extrapolate that over 4 years and you get 720 dollars. Your going to be hard pressed to find a game worthy computer that will last, and be up to date, for 4 years in the sub one thousand dollar price range.

 

[lockload]

Compared to $8/month for Xbox Live Gold (1-month sub to 1-month sub) it's actually not bad for what you're getting.

Of course I'd wager that the overlap between people that complain about the price of Gold is going to be 98% of those who will complain about OnLive.

If they can provide an attractive all-you-can-eat cost.. it'll be sweet!

Your logic is flawed i dont need to pay for xbox live gold when i buy a game off xbox marketplace and to continue playing it..

 

[Sloegr]

The games will run like you have the newest hardware.

Are you sure about that? I thought they were keeping the graphic settings lower than high end PCs can run.

 

[Phatcorns]

This pricing is preposterous. The $15 a month would be absolutely fine IF you could play their entire library at any time. If this price only allows you to play game demos or whatever other nonsense they think, it's absolutely not worth it.

I thought this was going to be really cool but if you charge extra just to play or even rent the game then you're out of your mind.

Boo-urns.

 

[Macmanus]

How much does the card itself cost? What are the licensing rules for games? Can I purchase my own license or do I have to purchase it through an arbitrary OnLive store?

Lots of questions have yet to be answered with this service, with the most important ones not being answered until the service has been up and running.

 

[brain_stew]

. The games will run like you have the newest hardware. .

Except they don't. Did you not see any of the reports from the beta? Onlive gives you super compressed 720p @ 30fps with medium/low graphics settings and laggy controls. A $60 GPU paired to any dual core CPU (which have been standard on bottom of the barrel amchines for a good 3 years now) will net you much better performance than that.

 

[Mrbob]

:lol

 

[impirius]

I'm impressed that they'll have both PC and Mac clients ready by June 17.

That said, I still don't see this working. Bandwidth and latency will be at acceptable levels at some point in the future, but... yeah.

 

[Turfster]

That's not horrible if you consider you don't need to worry about upgrading your computer. The games will run like you have the newest hardware. With that said, I don't play PC games nearly often enough to justify this for myself.

Uh, no. You'll get whatever your internet connection can sustain and settings they set on their virtualised server farm (hint: they'll be pretty low, they'll want to cram as many concurrent games on them at the same time as possible), so you'll get nowhere near the 1080p or higher with decent settings you could get on your own (not even all that recent) PC.

 

[abstract alien]

I'd pay $15/mo for this again...

OnLive, prob not.

Every time i think about the Sega of old, I cry inside. A company so ahead of their time, not even they knew what to do with their talent.

 

[ElFly]

You do realise that $15 doesn't give you access to any games, right?

They really really really should throw in a free game for the initial inscription.

 

[rainking187]

OffDead.

 

[Durante]

That's not horrible if you consider you don't need to worry about upgrading your computer. The games will run like you have the newest hardware. With that said, I don't play PC games nearly often enough to justify this for myself.

The games will run like you're watching a youtube video of someone playing with decent hardware. Except with worse compression than youtube does these days.

 

[WickedCobra03]

Nobody pays 8 dollars a month for Live :lol

It's 4 dollars per month if you buy the year, or cheaper if you buy the cards when they're on sale/ebay like I do.

Yeah, this year, it comes out to around $2.85 a month, which isn't the worst, but lets just pretend for a second that I have been a Live! member since November 16th, 2002. Oh god, thats around 950 to play online...okay, I am really thinking of canceling after this one runs out...

 

[Draft]

$15/month, and then you have to buy or rent the games, too?

D
O
A

 

[dionysus]

Buy a console on a year long payment plan, it is the same price, you own the console after a year, and you have higher image quality and no lag.

Only market I see for this is people who want a gamefly for PC games but dont' care about all the things PC gamers normally care about, like IQ and lag. So, about 5 people worldwide.

 

[dallow_bg]

Your logic is flawed i dont need to pay for xbox live gold when i buy a game off xbox marketplace and to continue playing it..

You don't even need Gold to buy the game.

 

[Slo]

Here's what you guys don't get. Right now I don't own a PS3 and my PC needs an upgrade. That's $300 and about $700 respectively. I want to play Uncharted 2 and God of War 3, and I'd like to play Metro2033 in DX11 without buying a DX11 videocard right now. It's like $15 a month to rent the hardware instead of shelling out a couple hundred.

Does it make long term economical sense? No. But in the short term it wouldn't be that bad of a deal when you don't have a stack of bills laying around.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

I knew this horseshit wasn't going to work out.

Does it make long term economical sense? No. But in the short term it wouldn't be that bad of a deal when you don't have a stack of bills laying around.

People with long term economical sense aren't buying videogames.

 

[Durante]

Only market I see for this is people who want a gamefly for PC games but dont' care about all the things PC gamers normally care about, like IQ and lag.

And not paying monthly to play their own games.

 

[B1gg_Randall]

And I had hope for this....btw what happen to the beta???

 

[dreamer3kx]

Onlive-Beta

 

[D4Danger]

That's not horrible if you consider you don't need to worry about upgrading your computer. The games will run like you have the newest hardware. With that said, I don't play PC games nearly often enough to justify this for myself.

It wouldn't be so bad if the games weren't full price.

who would want to buy their game and then voluntarily pay $15 to play it? that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

As for upgrading your PC, $180 a year can go a long way.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Hate to be a fanboy but with Ubi and now this, Steam's policy continues to look better and better. Sure, the ideal is to have a system like GoG where you don't need to be logged into a program to play but at least with Steam there is an off line mode. OnLive and Ubi can go and make sweet sweet love in a corner far far away and take with them the folks that don't mind literally renting their games.

 

[Hugbot]

Well, there goes any excitement I had for the service.

 

[Somnid]

If it works like they say it's not bad. Obviously as a risky startup they can't give stuff away, and they will probably start tweaking their model once it's actually up and running.

 

[dionysus]

Here's what you guys don't get. Right now I don't own a PS3 and my PC needs an upgrade. That's $300 and about $700 respectively. I want to play Uncharted 2 and God of War 3, and I'd like to play Metro2033 in DX11 without buying a DX11 videocard right now. It's like $15 a month to rent the hardware instead of shelling out a couple hundred.

Does it make long term economical sense? No. But in the short term it wouldn't be that bad of a deal when you don't have a stack of bills laying around.

Uncharted 2 and GoW 3 won't be on onlive. You won't be able to see any DX11 goodies because of the compression for Metro 2033.

I can see your point if you only want to play 1 game and then cancel the subscription after you beat it.

 

[Sanjay]

I guess its for the mass market casual people who don't have systems and its a way into gaming with just having a subscription for $15 a month and not dealing with having to own system A or B etc. The only thing I don't get is once u bought a game how will it work if you then want to flog it off? could be a good way for game companies to break the 2nd hand sales and make it legit.

 

[IMACOMPUTA]

Ridiculous, how can they expect people to pay $15 a month and then buy their games separately?

Should've been $20-25 a month with free rentals and an option to buy games as a download (to your local system)

I don't think you guys understand what ONlive is.
There is no downloading to your system. You stream the game from them... This isnt comparable to anything else because it doesn't use your computer to process anything. You're getting a direct feed of what you're playing on a PC in CA or something.
It's kind of dumb to criticize it as of right now. We have no idea what their pricing plan is for games.
I think if it works as advertised it's a GREAT idea. This could allow every laptop/netbook to be a gaming machine. I've always thought of how awesome it would be if they could make an app for iPhone to use OnLive, and connect a bluetooth controller (wii remote can be connected) and play something like crysis on your iphone at max details. That'd be insane.
If they offer you the chance to buy a game at like $10 and play it unlimited while you have a $15 subscription, that would be awesome. Even if it's a little more than that, i think it would be acceptable. (considering it works how it's supposed to)

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Here's what you guys don't get. Right now I don't own a PS3 and my PC needs an upgrade. That's $300 and about $700 respectively. I want to play Uncharted 2 and God of War 3, and I'd like to play Metro2033 in DX11 without buying a DX11 videocard right now. It's like $15 a month to rent the hardware instead of shelling out a couple hundred.

Does it make long term economical sense? No. But in the short term it wouldn't be that bad of a deal when you don't have a stack of bills laying around.

People NEED TO READ. You are not going to have access to any games that are exclusive to consoles. No Uncharted, no God of War 3. These games are ONLY PC games.

 

[dallow_bg]

Here's what you guys don't get. Right now I don't own a PS3 and my PC needs an upgrade. That's $300 and about $700 respectively. I want to play Uncharted 2 and God of War 3, and I'd like to play Metro2033 in DX11 without buying a DX11 videocard right now. It's like $15 a month to rent the hardware instead of shelling out a couple hundred.

Does it make long term economical sense? No. But in the short term it wouldn't be that bad of a deal when you don't have a stack of bills laying around.

I don't think OnLive wants customers that are only interested in this. They want long term subscribers.

 

[ascii42]

Uh, no. You'll get whatever your internet connection can sustain and settins they set on their virtualised server farm (hint: they'll be pretty low, they'll want to cram as many concurrent games on them at the same time as possible), so you'll get nowhere near the 1080p or higher with decent settings you could get on your own (not even all that recent) PC.

Well, my 2 year old laptop has a max resolution of 1280*800, and has fairly outdated hardware, so I imagine it would still be an improvement.
The service would be a lot more enticing if we could also run our own games we've already bought on the service. Another thing they could allow is for people to download games they have purchased onto their computer. This way they would still be able to play the games even if they cancel their service. As it stands, as people have said, losing games we will have paid for sucks.

 

[Ferrio]

Every time i think about the Sega of old, I cry inside. A company so ahead of their time, not even they knew what to do with their talent.

ya sega channel rocked. I used to stay up late every month when they'd refresh the game list.

 

[Slo]

Uncharted 2 and GoW 3 won't be on onlive. You won't be able to see any DX11 goodies because of the compression for Metro 2033.

I can see your point if you only want to play 1 game and then cancel the subscription after you beat it.

My specific examples aren't important to my point. As you said, I'm just coming from a place where there are games that I want to play but don't want to buy hardware for.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

I can see your point if you only want to play 1 game and then cancel the subscription after you beat it.

They'll probably force a contract of sorts to avoid those occurences.

 

[Slo]

I don't think OnLive wants customers that are only interested in this. They want long term subscribers.

Why do we care what OnLive wants?

 

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Yeah, why are we comparing this to Xbox Live Gold? Gold gives you access to online multiplayer, that's it. Nothing's being held hostage otherwise. Your Xbox doesn't spit out the disc you were playing and lock the DVD tray if you stop subscribing.

 

[brain_stew]

As for upgrading your PC, $180 a year can go a long way.

It will quite literally buy you a brand new high end CPU or GPU upgrade each and every year, more if you can be bothered to sell your own parts. I wish I could afford to keep my rig as high end as that.

 

[Slo]

People NEED TO READ. You are not going to have access to any games that are exclusive to consoles. No Uncharted, no God of War 3. These games are ONLY PC games.

If you capitalize more of your response, maybe it'll travel faster through the internet and penetrate my thick skull....

The specific games that I mentioned aren't important to my point.

 

[dallow_bg]

You also can't use ancient tech to play these games.
You will have to have a computer that can stream 720p video smoothly, and a fast enough internet connection.

 

[Omar Ismail]

To people responding to me:

OBVIOUSLY Live is cheaper per month when you pay for a year, and obviously OnLive will also be cheaper per month when you prepay a year.

Second, you're getting a HELL of a lot more with OnLive than you do with XBL.

Here's the fundamental question that will determine the success of OnLive (if they price things reasonably): Do gamers want to OWN titles in a collection like they do with music, or do they want to just consume and move on like they do with movies.

My feeling: Games are more like movies. Some people want to replay games and have a collection, while most just like consuming new stuff and moving on.

 

[dallow_bg]

Why do we care what OnLive wants?

I'm just saying, it won't keep them around for long.

Echoing the Dead on Arrival statements.

 

[autobzooty]

If you plan on using OnLive for several years, wouldn't it be cheaper at some point to just buy a computer that can run those games? I realize that there will be cheaper pricing available, but if you'll indulge me for a moment...

Using OnLive for a five year period would come to $900. That's enough money to buy a not-too-shabby PC. If OnLive is supposed to be the future of gaming, something that could potentially be integrated into just about everything, it seems silly to have such a steep price. They're practically undermining the purpose of their system.

And god forbid that you use OnLive to play a subscription based MMO. :lol

 

[brain_stew]

Why do we care what OnLive wants?

Well, if Onlive can't come up with a sustainable business model then all the games you buy over their service are going to be forever lost. So even if you want to sue the service only causally, I'd say its long term viability is pretty damn important.

 

[metareferential]

15 bucks a month is quite expensive, but you get something you won't find anywhere else:

lag on singleplayer.

Priceless.

 

[SuperÑ]

So they have 1 PC for each suscriber? Ummm..

 

[Pepto]

15 bucks a month is quite expensive, but you get something you won't find anywhere else:

lag on singleplayer.

You are wrong.

 

[dionysus]

Would make more sense if they just made onlive games more expensive and eliminated the monthly fee. Charge $50-70 per game, you can play that game forever on the onlive servers. Onlive could probably see $30+ dollars for each game in revenue.

In fact, if the numbers worked out that they could survive, I could see a lot of people signing up for this business model.