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Weekend Open Forum: OnLive Games on Demand -- the future of gaming or destined to fail?
With such a limited library barricaded by a double-layered pay wall, it might be difficult to get gamers onboard the new service. Without revealing specifics, OnLive COO Mike McGarvey said customers can look forward to "original, exclusive" content from developers of all sizes, but it remains to be seen exactly what that entails.
To be completely fair, pricing for games has not been revealed yet. In our opinion, if new releases were marked down by, say, 30+% it might be easier to look past the monthly payment, though you would still forfeit a lot of control. For instance, they will always be locked behind OnLive's subscription. If for any reason you could no longer afford that fee, you would presumably lose access to your entire game library. On the other hand, with OnLive you are not expected to upgrade your PC as often, you can play your games virtually anywhere, and assuming it works as advertised, it could pose fewer hassles (no installs, driver troubles, etc). Considering that other experienced giants like Blizzard and EA have often had trouble keeping up with massive online demands when launching blockbuster titles, it will be interesting to see if OnLive can deliver a hiccup-free experience next June.
With all this in mind, and if there’s indeed a market for cloud-based gaming, is it large enough to keep OnLive in business? From what you’ve heard so far, are you interested? And if not, what would it take for such a service to win you over? Discuss.
User Comments: 65
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Most gamers have though xbox live at $50 a year was to much to pay. This at 14.95$ a month looks to offer the same things xbl offers on an unproven system. I will say this system is a game dev dream. It all but stops privacy, if the dev wants their gamers to move onto the next game they can just take the old one down. Using OnLive to me seems like a way to just **** yourself in the ***. I am sure if it works right it will be pretty cool but I really like the idea that I own my games.
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I think this will fail. Its overpriced and people don't have the connection needed to use it. I buy games on steam, I like that. I buy games on Xbox live, PSN. I like that. I stream Tv Via BBC I player, Sky player, and other video streaming sites. I like that. BUT I only do that when Nobody else is watchin TV. To watch Skyplayer it says u need at least 2Meg. I have 1.5 and it works fine with no cut outs so long as I only person using Internet. Streaming games. No. I will not do it. I will be shooting someone and then somebody downstairs will start watching a youtube video, downloading a PS3 demo and it will start to lag, cut out, Buffer, and FAIL.
Untill we all have high speed Internet connection, (I mean 20Mb +) it will be Right all my room mates, people in my hosue NO using the internet Im playign a game. That will be unfair and stupid. Its funny I start downloading a 15gig game on steam, it takes 20 hours. In that Time I get ''STOP LAGGING MY GAME'' AHHH stop downloading'' The very few people with un capped Internet connections with ISPs that do not have fair usage policys may get this to work. Thats a small market. This will only work in Large Towns and Citys (and maybe the lucky few who live near an Telephone Exchange)
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This will probably work on some areas, mainly US.The concept is actually ingenious because I can see this the final solution to piracy, but they need to prove it through consistency especially if the newer games requires a powerhouse system on maximum settings.
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Is it wrong of me to hope they fail?
I just wouldn't want the future of gaming sitting in their hands. It actually scares me.
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it is doomed to fail...since most ISPs have cap limits...
unless of course you are capable of paying for a premium "unlimited" internet access (which would make you more than able to buy dvd games priced at 50-60$).
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The future of gaming? Simply, NO. How many billions of dollars are invested in Hardware? Consoles, PC hardware and the distribution and marketing of games? That isn't going to die quitely.
And then there is the connection issues with streaming games, it might be fine in the US, Japan, Korea. But it will be a LONG time before I am able to stream games on my connection here in Australia.Downloading games from Steam and other digital distributors is quite a pain for me already on my connection.
Then there is the fact that I am opposed to a scheme like this, I want to own my games, well at least as much as I am able to currently. Digital distribution and DRM currently means that I am reliant on a third party being able to deliver or authenticate the content for me.
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I'll keep a slightly open mind with this but I just think it's going to fail. It seems awfully expensive for a new service that hasn't been proven. I think the latency/lag is going to be a killer for most games. If somehow performance is acceptable, this may be an option for some people.
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When I first glanced at this, I assumed it was some "all you can eat" deal for $15 a month, as long as you kept up the subscription. I think that could do really, really well.
But wait, what do you get? Download demos, ie "shareware" that companies sometimes PAY to distribute? Watch people play games, social features? Are you kidding me?
If that's the feature set, epic fail.
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I think it's the way things are going. Less CPU power at users' hands, more available remotely through a fast internet connection. Hook your phone to a TV or monitor and play a HD game. Countries are starting to make a broadband connection into a human right, and while in the short term the people who have the required connection may be the minority, I think it won't be long before that won't be the case. The terms of the service will likely adapt to what users are willing to pay, and we're already living in the age of paying for services and not products. I pay something for my phone access, I pay some more for internet access on my phone, I pay some more per month for music and TV on my phone (well, I don't, but people do). So paying some more for the ability to play high quality AAA games games on my phone won't be that strange. (And I realised that currently phones are just for spectating, but I definitely see this going that way.)
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damm.... me and my friend thought of cloud gaming yeras ago and then someone goes and does it lol.
This looks like a great system and its defiantly going to work, maybe not for a year or so but soon. A lot of people are starting to get 10+mb broadband now in the UK and gaming doesn't use a lot of bandwidth, check when your playing a game how little it uses.
This system is also cheaper than running a high-end gaming rig at home, and will be cheaper than next gen consoles. Can't wait to see it in action and i hope it works.
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There has to be something were missing here... or else EPIC FAIL!
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Tekkaraiden said:
I can see having to pay twice for a game the reason why this will fail. They will have to offer at least something with the monthly subscription to make this work.
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Don't seem very agreable this idea, I would pay 14,99 for WoW and never ever even see a console :P
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So for $15 a month you can
play game demos that can be downloaded elsewhere for free...
social networking that can be done on other established sites & with other programs for free...
watch someone else have a good time playing games which can be done over a person's shoulder for free...
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nokayapmat said:
it is doomed to fail...since most ISPs have cap limits...
I don't think caps will come into play as much as connection speed. You are not downloading the entire game, just transmitting data back and forth like any other online game. The game itself is stored on their servers.
I do like the concept, as I would love to be able to play games on a low-end laptop, but as soon as I saw the double paywall I thought "Too much." I wish them the best of luck, but unless the games have a one-time cost of less than $10 for unlimited play for an indefinite time, I'll have stick with playing only on my desktop at home, and maybe on a gaming laptop if I win the lottery.
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@epic fail and will have to go ad supported free and probably still GOOB.
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They don't offer anything new for the fee they charge, and everything they do offer you can find elsewhere for free... so... sounds like fail to me.
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Timonius said:
The pricing scheme seems a little wonky to me. For 14.95 per month you'd expect at least ONE full game to be playable per month. I wouldn't pay .01 to play demos and watch oher people play. Without any more details in terms of pricing I can't really give Onlive any more attention. This will be one of my last comments about it untill they can release more usefull information.
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I signed up to try to get the 3 months free for being one of the first. There is no way they are going to get me to pay a subscription though. Anyone serious enough about PC gaming to be interested in paying a monthly fee already has a good enough computer to just buy the game from the store. Unfortunately I don't think its going to work out.
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Good concept + bad pricing + limited content = fail
At least for now....
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I think that all this is not about improving users and gamers experience, it's all about getting piracy down to the minimum. It's all wasting of money, without results. There will be always some who will have idea, how to override the system. It's just metter of time, and, I don't like the $14.95 per month price. Why don't they all put that money that are they spending at protections and services like this and make a better games and earn money? They can't win the battle...
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Guest said:
gaming doesn't use a lot of bandwidth, check when your playing a game how little it uses.
Uh, yeah, that's cause the game is loaded on your computer. The whole point here is that the game is loaded on the server, you upload the controller commands, you download the video.
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I won't be signing up for this service. It's too much money. I just spent a bunch of money building my own computer. I will play my games the way they were meant to be played. There's enough lag in games already. If I play twenty games of Modern Warfare theres bound to be two or three games in there that have some lag. I can only imagine that playing Modern Warfare on this service that the amount of lag in games will increase. And for 15 bucks a month, plus the cost of games, plus the 70 dollars a month I pay to my ISP, that's a lot of darn money to be throwing around to play some laggy games.
While in theory this service sounds like a good idea, I see it failing miserably. It was nice knowing you on live.
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@Kovatch, there's no "they". OnLive is a completely different entity than the game publishers. And though I'm sure they're using the piracy argument to attract the publishers, without OnLive the publishers won't put any more money into games. And BTW most money in AAA games goes to art anyway, and I'm sure any piracy protection is a small percent of that.
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hello...
i'll come with my usual PROS & CONS with a pinch of salt. LOLOL...
PROS:
- this mean, having no media, therefore future proof & eco-friendly (i love this)
- if it works fine, no need to spend money on high end hardware or consoles
- piracy will decrease considerably
- refresh will be easily made, so old games can be put to 'bed' sooner!
CONS:
- it requires high bandwidth compared to online gaming of today, for it will be like streaming SD & later on HD content, with videos it is already a big problem & it is the same content being streamed at same or different interval. with onlive games, there can be same game being streamed at different levels to different players at same of slightly different times.
- the pricing policy is bad, if i need to pay for monthly subscriptions, i'd rather pay 60$/month to play at least 1 game for & all the demos & socialize, than pay 15$ as fee & even 10$ / game for the same period, it's a matter of hour we perceive it, we can spend a lot for all options, but if it's cheaper but we have to pay each time we make a move, it's a no GO!
- no control over the game, no ownership, another psychological issue, it's not 'mine' & i'm just renting a game at a higher price.
WHY IT MAY NOT WORK & WHAT CAN BE DONE!
- If it works, it will mean killing graphic chip manufacturers, i won't see why nVidia & AMD/ATI would bother release another super out of this word GPU that can handle trillions of instructions & load a whole world of textures just to have games like crysis up and running, maybe they'll build higher end pro GFX card that would be used on the onlive servers, but i doubt that the said equipments would stream what their GFX card have to render. the system must be more computational power sending data though several pipes to different users.
- the internet is still not ready for this, if somehow what i said in former posts (about google going broadband, bette ruse of fiber & the big new CISCO router that will 'change the internet'), yes if it becomes a reality soon, then this whole thing may work just fine, then the ISPs would need to remove the fair usage policy, for onlive is based on streaming, it's not like actual online gamig where fragments of information are constantly being delivered to the servers to update the status.
- it's too early, most consoles & PC have reached their apogee but not perfection in gaming, so as long as there will be development in these fields, people would keep following. for now onlive can work as an added service to existing platforms, i.e OK you can use it on all equipments with an input device, a monitor & connected to the net, if the service hit the XBLA & PSN, then you will have a possibility to have some curious or adventurous ones to adhere & who knows get stuck to it.
This is a great concept, that would be great to eliminate piracy & help save our planet, but for this to work, it should be a general service with packages fee or pay to use service (monthly package better for now) & with limited seats in order to prevent lagging sessions. I'm sure somewhere in the future, it may become a standard (10 years more), for now it should become a platform of excellence with true exclusive high level content that will attract some gamers to it, it must be free access without subscription & possibility to try a limited amount of demos free, someone signing up & paying a monthly fixed fee (even if it is around 30-50$/month) can play at least 1 new game every month with all the demos & some trailers) for now i would advise this company to pair with existing systems & make it an added service worth it, it's wont be good going on your own.
good luck to OnLive & long live the gamer's community ...
cheers!
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