Agent X said:
I was actually looking forward to the arrival of OnLive, but after hearing this news my enthusiasm has faded greatly. $15 plus having to "purchase" games (or as others have put it, more like an extended rental than an actual purchase)?
I expected there would be a subscription fee, and also expected that users would have to pay for individual games. That didn't bother me. I was just hoping the prices would be a lot more reasonable. If the fee is $15 a month for the service, then I would hope for something like...oh, $5 to "purchase" a game, maybe $10 at the most. Yes, that's a lot lower than retail pricing, but since piracy and resale of used games would be eliminated with OnLive's model, publishers should be able to compensate.
Wait... you actually thought that they would let you buy the full version of a game for $10 or less? You think that piracy/resale and brick-and-mortar retailers account for $40 of every game sold? /facepalm...
Look, most of the people in here bitching are probably PC enthusiasts/purists. For a lot of other people, OnLive isn't a bad proposition. If you sign up for more than a month at a time, you get a reduced subscription fee, and the "hardware" (adapter for the tv and probably a remote or two as well) is going to be free with a subscription. The CEO of OnLive, whatever his name is, has said so more than once.
So, for less than the price of a WoW subscription, you get access to the service on your PC, TV, or phone and the ability to purchase games at reduced prices (albeit, probably not more than $5 or $10). A lot of people here don't seem to understand the value of plug-and-play to most people, of not having to upgrade and tweak your computer or fret over system requirements and compatibility. Hell, just think of all the people with Macbooks who would kill for this.
As someone who isn't a PC-gaming enthusiast but regularly sees PC games that I would like to play, I could definitely see myself picking this up. Never having to upgrade my computer? Hell yes! I don't care about how easy it is, I have absolutely no desire to. Anyway, a yearly subscription will probably cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $120, which looks good when compared to the cost of upgrading a computer. Cheaper games? Hell yes! Not being forced to tweak settings to get the game to run decently? Hell yes!... and before someone talks about how OnLive games look like shit, check out some of the Crysis demonstrations, they look more than good enough to satisfy me. My laptop could run Crysis at 720p and medium settings, and it didn't look near that good.
The amount of time that I have power in my house and not have an internet connection is absolutely minimal. I bet this is true for most other people as well. Also, being able to rent a PC game is great. Being able to play my games anywhere, on any computer or TV with a valid internet connection? Absolutely awesome. In a few years (hopefully, assuming America gets its broadband shit together), the people on this board will be laughing at people without 10 mbps connections, like they do at 56k right now, and by then OnLive will probably be able to stream 1080p. And all these people bitching about lag, mostly from that one preview from that guy who wasn't in beta? Just looking for a reason to bash. Both image quality and responsiveness degrade when you're outside of the server range, and the vast majority of the American population is well within the limit of OnLive servers. If ping is less than 100ms at the far border of a server's range (1000 miles), how bad could it be for most of us, who live a hell of a lot closer than that?
OnLive, to the majority of gamers, really only has 2 problems: the inability to mod, and the chance of not buying a game over the course of a month, in which case, yes, you are paying just to play your games. I'm assuming that OnLive will have some networking/social features beyond just brag clips to make the service more valuable in the event that you aren't purchasing games. Still, even if they don't, and you go a month without purchasing a new game, $15 or less isn't very much when leveraged against the cost of a computer.
Basically, I really do think that if the library of games is big enough (they're going to need a hell of a lot more than just the 16 or whatever they had in beta, I don't see why publishers wouldn't put most/all of their games on the service), the game discounts are good enough, and the servers are reliable enough, OnLive is going to be a great alternative to all the gamers who don't feel like wading through computer bullshit, a.k.a., me and a shit ton of other people.
