OnLive debuts with 23 titles, free membership offered

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Jos

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It's been a long time coming but OnLive is finally ready to try and silence its critics as the on-demand gaming service makes its official debut today. To celebrate the launch, the company announced a partnership with AT&T to offer U.S. customers a free first-year membership, with an optional second year at $4.95/mo. -- down from the regular price of $14.95. Those interested can sign up to the Founding Member Program until July 15; they'll pick people on a first-come first-serve basis.

This won't get you complete and total access to their whole library, though, but rather access to the community, free demos and other content. Full games will cost from $9.99 to $49.99, depending on the title, while for those who don't want to pay for something they don't 'really' own, three or five-day rentals for five dollars will be available as well.


If you haven't been following the news, the idea behind OnLive is that instead of running a video game locally, players connect via broadband to a gaming system that runs and stores their data and the entire game itself. The service hopes to mark a big shift in the way gaming works. Not only it promises a fluid and lag-free experience on Windows and Mac OS X systems with very low hardware requirements, it also gets rids of downloads, patches and physical discs.

The service is launching today with over 20 titles available, including Prince of Persia, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, and Mass Effect 2. A "MicroConsole" that can be attached directly to HDTVs will be arriving later this year.

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Thanks for the heads-up. I signed up although I'm not giving this much of a chance to succeed.
 
"This won't get you complete and total access to their whole library, though, but rather access to the community, free demos and other content."

WOW..$4.95 a month to play FREE demos!! Where do I sign up!! (sarcasm)
P.T. Barnum was right...There is a sucker born every minute.
 
"Full games will cost from $9.99 to $49.99, depending on the title, while for those who don't want to pay for something they don't 'really' own, three or five-day rentals for five dollars will be available as well."

Bascially, you dont own the game either way, even for renting after 2 weeks you might aswell of bought the game, however you still wont own a damn thing. I'd rather stick to buying a physical game, which I OWN.

Not only that but your still paying the same price for the game, even though there is NO PACKAGING.
 
Armanian said:
"Full games will cost from $9.99 to $49.99, depending on the title, while for those who don't want to pay for something they don't 'really' own, three or five-day rentals for five dollars will be available as well."

Bascially, you dont own the game either way, even for renting after 2 weeks you might aswell of bought the game, however you still wont own a damn thing. I'd rather stick to buying a physical game, which I OWN.

Not only that but your still paying the same price for the game, even though there is NO PACKAGING.

I agree,even though its an alright idea, i like to go to the shop and get a physical disc, all my games on steam are bought from game first then install it rather than just purchasing it straight off steam.

I've found that this helps, i have bought one game from steam and it was mass effect, i downloaded it and completed it, about half a year later my computer died on me and had to be re-built, now i could pop in all the cd's and get those games re-installed but mass effect ate 10GB of my bandwidth!

I think alot of these services will come out but until internet speed is improved drastically i can't ever see myself purchasing games not in a physical format.
 
Armanian said:
"Full games will cost from $9.99 to $49.99, depending on the title, while for those who don't want to pay for something they don't 'really' own, three or five-day rentals for five dollars will be available as well."

Bascially, you dont own the game either way, even for renting after 2 weeks you might aswell of bought the game, however you still wont own a damn thing. I'd rather stick to buying a physical game, which I OWN.

Not only that but your still paying the same price for the game, even though there is NO PACKAGING.

I tend to compare it (philosophically) to Steam... You buy a game from Steam, you don't have the physical media, same basic concept. However, when you buy the game from Steam, you have to download and install and patch and update (all done automatically, but still takes up storage space, etc). I can see how this attitude could justify the basic methodology of the new service.

But, you have to assume this service will stay in business, and that they will always have every title they have ever provided available until the end of time, for the buying model to pan out. I'm not too sure whether it will really make it, so I don't think I'd be quick to jump in right away.

And, it should be noted: it's roughly the same price as packaged software, yes. But Steam titles tend to be roughly the same as well, maybe a tad lower depending on popularity and such, without any packaging. And, you have to keep in mind, the service is still paying a licensing fee to the publisher for every title being played on their system (rented or bought). And they are providing and maintaining massive server and bandwidth resources to keep their streaming titles online and lag-free. AND they are providing all of the background computing and graphics crunching power to allow you to play on your lower end system (or TV, when the stand-alone box arrives). They have to make money, or they'll fold, and their overhead is nothing to easily dismiss.
 
hello ...

Onlive is one bright idea, that is just out of its time, the net is not ready for this & they will lose time & money going too fast. In about 3-4 years maybe would be a great start with small indie games first & cheap renting, as the games aren't ours, no need to go for a selling system.

It's too late, they already build it up & invested so much money, i would advise to go slowly, find a good user base from a specific niche market, remove the limitations & don't ever sell a game, certainly not at the price of a full disc based one, else it will fail. It's not only a matter of hardware, gamers do invest in multiple consoles, high end PCs, others just go for cheaper model but doesn't look after big games. The game streaming service can work ONLY if it can compete with the price not the hardware, for believe me most subscribers would have good enough machines to run the same software & maybe also an alternative solution in the form of a console ...

I wish onlive luck & hope they do know what they are doing.

cheers!
 
Oh yeah - another drawback to this is the resolution level of 1280 x 720. If I'm going to shell out $50 for a game, I want to be able to crank the resolution up as high as I can get it.
 
Oh wow, from 15 to 5 bucks; well done. HOWEVER, the service is still going to fail. Sorry...
 
I just don't get it. If I'm going to pay so much for a game I at least would like to have it in my possesion. I don't play a lot of games these days like I used too but I still like my library. It seems the system is the only one that really gets anything out of this.
 
TomSEA said:
Oh yeah - another drawback to this is the resolution level of 1280 x 720. If I'm going to shell out $50 for a game, I want to be able to crank the resolution up as high as I can get it.

As expected, something buried into the technical faq which reveals you'll be getting a castrated version of a retail game. There had to be a catch. So this service basically delivers medium-low quality graphics, which anyone who has bought a computer in the past 5 years can probably exceed with stock hardware, maybe with a budget graphics card added.

I guess this is good for people who like these sorts of games, yet have not invested into any hardware or the games themselves, who want a sub par experience as compared to consoles and PCs.

So we braced ourselves for the unveiling of a Corvette, and we got a Malibu.
 
as richy2k9 says the net is not ready for this , maybe with the next generation of the internet but not now. I think people are kidding themselves if they think this will run lag free , its not going to happen. Even when reviewers were trying it on a specially set up connnection under ideal conditions not far from the main building they noticed lag. Also the fact you dont own the games is another problem. This system is just designed to trick people who cant afford a decent PC.
 
this is going to fail, simply as that. The only people playing this are ppl without a gamesystem, low end PC, and are just that much into games :/ idk this... something like this should've been out before the 360 and PS3 came out its too late for this.
 
hello ...

thank you gingerbill. even if some improvement have been made lately, high speed internet is still not mainstream. I still believe that such service could work fine for a lot of small low-resource needing software but the pricing should be revised, it must never be close to disc-based or other services.

like for the various in-browser game (free or not with micro-transactions), or flash game sites, onlive could deliver true exclusive content to its customers, if i have to buy a game, i would prefer a higher quality & better control, so the reason of investing in high end machines.

well time will tell, but i feel sorry for so often i've been proven right much to other's misfortune.

cheers!
 
This will be launching In the UK next year. BT (the National Phone provider) bought some shares and all BT broadand customers will get it (and hopefully some full games) free.
 
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