On the surface this seems great. But obviously there are some technology issues that need to be overcome. Try playing a UT3 capture-the-flag map with lag. Very fun if you enjoy dieing ever 5 seconds. Also that 1280 x 720 resolution may be fine for some people, but it ain't for me.

I think Steam, D2D and other download vendors are ultimately going to kill this. Why pay for a subscription service when you can get the game for use on any PC at any settings you want for a whopping 5 or 10 bucks during one of their sales?

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I've been a beta tester for a while. I used to have a rig, but I couldn't keep up, so now I have a laptop. Before OnLive, I couldn't touch PC games.

First of all, OnLive really works for most of the games I've tried, and as they've steadily improved the service, more games also work great.

Second of all, you can't evaluate the service with a single test. You run into bugs, you send in bugs, and you get updates with fixes, and OnLive works fine again. I've run into the stuff similar to what they've reported that has been updated.

When I'm using it, I forget it's not local and I enjoy the games. That's good enough for me.

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This is for specific cases such as the guest rather than for everyone. Until lag is completely irradicated (in other words everyone has connections to ridiculous bandwidth wherever they live) it will be for people close to the servers if at all and since lots of money is being spent on large panels by a lot of people, it won't replace standalone machines any time soon (at 1280*720).

Currently a fad. Maybe the future. Interesting but not serious for at least 5 more years.

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Any chance that you'd be willing to clue us in on the games you've tried, Guest? What titles don't work smoothly and which ones run flawlessly at this point?

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I was reading/discussing this over at a gaming forum and OnLive kind of reminded me of this article I read last year.

[link]

The idea is solid and I have no doubt that certain individuals want this in the long run. More control over the content with eroding consumer rights. But it is simply to early for this. A lot needs to change before this can become the norm and accepted by the masses imo. For now its just a niche.

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I'd like to disagree with some people here. It is clear that there are some problems. But this is only the beta stage. If there are problems, the company will fix them. If the product isn't worth using, it will vanish, for the moment at least. But what people say about it being a fad is ridiculous. Who wants to dish out $1500 for a computer? Most computers can do everything but gaming for $600 or less. Why pay the extra $900 for a PC that can play games when an Xbox 360 or PS3 is only $300? And you don't have to upgrade your console every few years. The luxury of playing games on a computer is extremely expensive. This can get rid of that entire problem, given some time. I think people need to be a little more optimistic.

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This might be something for people that has low end laptops (like me) or PC's with integrated graphics.

Anyway, anyone who has a discrete video card will most likely play the game locally.

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That has to be the ugliest controller I have ever seen. It's copied the fat-ass Xbox controller and put the letters L,I,V,E on the buttons - during a game you would end up looking at the controller trying to figure out which button you're supposed to press.

Anyway I think is pretty promising, but with the obvious issue of internet speeds. If 720p needs 1Mb/s bandwith then 1080p would need twice as much.

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OnLive is clearly "swinging for the fences" with the approach it has taken to cloud gaming. A company called Spawn Labs is taking a more evolutionary approach that lets you keep your native/local console and game library, and gives you your own personal cloud gaming server (an appliance called the "Spawn HD-720") that lets you then play around your house on your home LAN, or out across the Internet. You can play natively at home while a friend plays in co-op mode remotely from their PC across the Internet. You can record game sessions in HD. Etc. So you get your cake and eat it too. This kind of approach might make more sense, worth checking out.

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All the titles run smoothly when everything is working. It's like any beta. I think I've tried most of them except a kids game they have. When they add new games sometimes there is some issue or other, but they so far have fixed everything.

I really don't know what all the fuss is about. It sounds like you've got guys with gamer rigs who are comparing OnLive to them. I don't know why they would need OnLive if they have a great rig and a big screen, or care about comparisons, since it's not for them anyway. OnLive looks sharp as a pin on my laptop's screen and games run great. I'm not a competition gamer, but I'm no slouch either. Maybe a competition gamer would notice something isn't perfect. it's fine for me.

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