OnLive launch titles 'in the teens,' 50-60 games by 2011

JASON???

JAAAAAAAAASSSSSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNN!!!

haha, good name!

I don't get it if I sign up for two years for say...$300 I get a free console that can only play connected to the internet?

haha that's hardly a deal at all.

The PC just doesn't have enough exclusives, to warrant having this for an extended period of time. I could see using it for a month to play one game on an old computer but any more and it seems like a waste of money.

in all seriousness, where do they get off charging a monthly fee?

steam is free and the games cost normal price, and they let you download the game unlimited times!

you could download team fortress 2 100 times and it won't cost you extra!

are you telling me that they are transmitting that much data to you that they need to charge a monthly fee?

and if they are transmitting all of that data, how the hell can the game come at a reasonable resolution without lag?!

And if it does come at a decent resolution, how many people can afford to pay the obvious fees that they will receive from their ISP for going over their limit for the month?

this just screams fail, i don't get it.

@Space
Not really. If you want to play multiplayer over the Internet with your friends, your paying $50.00 per year or so. Times six years lifespan(assuming you bought it on launch day and have played up tilll...now) means you would have already paid $300.00 in subscription feels. Yet, ironically, you don't have a free x-box 360 to show for it. You would have had to have bought that for $449.00 if you bought it on launch day. Sooo ...yeah....

If you got a free console for $300.00 that including 2 years of service, versus paying $449.99 for a console + paying another $100.00 for your two years of online service, I'm not sure how that's a bad deal?

The part that worries me more is when the company rep commented he expects demand to outweigh the service's capabilities at launch. Try to follow me here.:

A. Online service over the internet. Related to machine lag on remote side + internet connection speed between you and machien on remote side.
B. More demand than capacity.
C. Large volume on servers hardware + internet connection = lag if demand is higher than capability.
D. ???
E. Good End User experience initially.

Unless D is buy a whole ton of more servers from magic capital-investor faries, there could be some trouble. At least the economy is in a great position right now and there's no investors who would be worried about investing in a risky startup company that's very reminiscent of the 'Internet Bubble' collapse of the 90s.

@Brian
I can see you don't get it as you've stated a few times. Try reading about the service, then posting. It helps :)

The OnLive service is a Remote Desktop Service that transmits 3D applications/DirectX based applications. More or less, the monthly fee you pay, goes towards upgrading and maintaining machines in a server farm in say......California. In this Californian server farm, there are tons of computer equipped with iCore 965, 12GB of ram, nice crossfire 5870 setups, etc. Throughout the years, these systems are periodically upgraded at OnLive's headquarters. So next year, it might be a iCore Gulftown, 24GB of ram and a nice 6870 crossfire system your logging into.

Basically, your seeing a 'picture' of what an xbox 360/pc/ps3/wii somewhere else is producing. Its like having a wii remote with a 100km range and a 100km hdmi cord going from California to your house's tv. The only hard part would be changing the discs, which, of course you'd do through a menu that let's you pick what game you want to pay much like the xbox 360's install the game to hd option except without the cd check.

The reason they spend $14.95 a month is so that annually, they spend some money upgrading the computer your logging into. So ideally, unlike an xbox 360 or playstation 3 which both look a bit dated compared to a high end pc, your OnLive service keeps getting better fidelity over time. Whereas your xbox 360/ps3 don't really improve in graphics that much over their '10 year' lifespans compared to your pc counterparts.

Steam, your playing games LOCALLY. With OnLive your playing games REMOTELY.

With steam, any game you play is only good as your own hardware. If you want better graphics, you [should] research which graphics cards is best, ram is best, cpu is best, etc or whatever is your bottleneck then look for the reviews indicating which is the best price/performance ratio and then go make an educated purchase.

With OnLive, any game you play is as good as their remote servers. As they upgrade and improve their servers, your games keep looking better. More anti-aliasing, etc etc. You don't need to buy any new computer hardware, worry about getting a good deal or not, keeping up on cutting edge hardware, etc. You just open your 'x' year old computer and login to the OnLive service. As long as your computer can display a hd-video, it would be able to display the hd-signal coming from OnLive's servers. Even Intel on-board video cards can do 1080p decoding now adays. So you pay $15.99 a month, and you don't have to buy a new video card two years or more often to keep your games looking their best.

So yeah, your not paying for the right to buy games, your paying for the right to use someone elses computer. It's basically like paying to use an Internet/Gaming Cafe over the Internet except instead of being charged by the hour, your charged by the month and you have to bring your own games(buy your own games). As long as a seat was always available(server's arent' full or busy), paying $15.00 a month for unlimited access to a gaming cafe wouldn't be so bad, would it? Beats those the suckers who pay like $3.00 an hour to go to such a place.

what you don't seem to understand wes, is that this needs to transmit my input and send me the output in a timely manner in order to prevent crippling lag.

And i know you aren't streaming 8gb games and stuff.

But you are streaming High Resolutions (assumed, else what's the point?).

I understand how it works in theory, but in practicality i don't see how it is possible to Stream high quality video live, it isn't like you can buffer the video and then play it, you need a super high speed connection in order to not see video lag.

And even if you do have that kind of fast connection, no one has the bandwidth to be streaming 720p/1080p for an average of 4 hours a day (even more during summer or holidays).

It just doesn't make sense.

And the monthly fee is basically a ransom, i mean honestly? You pay for the games, but if you don't pay the 15 dollars a month, you will never be able to play it again?

It makes no sense. And i have a feeling that all the game publishers are only supporting it to see how it turns out, because i don't see how these multibillion dollar companies could possibly think this is a good idea.

HAHAHAHA Especially after that presentation the CEO did talking about how publishers were leaping at the chance to use the service.

Publishers: "O hai, we use yo service, but we charge u million dolla per title"
OnLive: "But...but we'll have to charge our customers 15 a month plus rental fees if you do that.."
Publishers: "O right, oh you go bankrupt then trolololo"

Of course they would be leaping ...... this is the ultimate form of DRM

Not only do you pay a monthly fee to access it
Not only do you pay to buy/rent the games

but you own nothing...

But worse.

An XBOX 360 could be purchased with the same amount paid to a little over 13 months of paying for this service. We'll see what the market does, but I'm betting it flops harder than Ron Jeremy.

"We all have 360's, PS3's or gaming computers; this service really only provides value to people that don't."

No, it doesn't. This mythical audience you speak of has to buy the micro-console. And then pay a $15 monthly fee on top of that. And then purchase games on top of that (Spoiler alert: publishers have zero incentive to discount games for OnLive relative to retail). And these customers lose all resale values to the games, because they don't own a physical copy.

They also lose value because the games themselves are laggy, and the realtime streamed graphics end up blurry and pixellated. That's assuming they can play the game because their internet service is working, and the OnLive service isn't down.

Also, it is super encouraging when McGarvey says that "demand will far outweigh capacity for the service's launch." That always improves performance and availability of an online gaming service.

we are gamers....if it doesn't appeal to us then who is it suppose to appeal too? sorry my grandma and aunts aren't trying to play Crysis 2 on their PC from 2000.....

Hate to tell you this, but Ron Jeremy doesn't "flop hard" as you say. He has a different form of hard.

I agree with Lonin, this platform is not targeted to anyone who says "video game" maybe once a week. I get the idea that they think they can sell to people who have good internet, but don't want to upgrade their computer just to play the latest (or any) games. (I'm not going to address consoles)

That's why I think this will not do well. I think they perceive a larger market than what really exists. They look at DA: Origins or Mass Effect 2 sales and say, "Wow, I want a slice of that". The problem is, not one person who contributed to that pie will want to participate in OnLive, in my opinion. Worse, the people who have crappy computers will continue to play farmville for free before they pay $15/mo + game costs, so the pie will not get larger. Worse Worse, the internet latency and other technical bugs/hurdles will turn away any who do venture out.

I see the idea, but I think it has issues beyond its technical limitations.

love that one

Oops, double meaning. Meant numbering in the teens, but probably be teens too.

Freudian slip?

haha I think that's a freudian slip on your part iisfrank!

Yes, but this time the rendering is done remotely by a server farm rather than downloading the game locally onto your machine and rendering it with your own computer hardware.

Ideally, even with a relatively weak store-bought computer with intel-onboard graphics, you'd pay $15.99 to be able to log into that server farm and play games remotely that look like a high-end pc gaming experience and you can avoid the hassel of needing to upgrade your pc since the rendering is done remotely.

The question is what will the server farm's 'experience' be like at $15.99 a month? That works out to like $200.00 a year in subscription feels which means that the server farm will only get upgraded for better graphics/speed/processing/memory/etc once every .....3 years? 2 years? depending on how incremental or generational they want their server upgrades to come?

It would be cheaper than upgrading your own pc which usually gets disposed of every 2-3 years anyways/given to a family member as a hand-me-down but I'm thinking the quality of service and gameplay might overall be less impressive...

they should make the service like a zune pass. pay say 30$/month, for unlimited games, then every, say, 3 months, you get to keep one. something like that.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/1/30/

I can relate to this

To get the benefits of the MMO business model without having to mess with actually providing content.

Well, a good PC would cost more than that, but it's still outrageous.

Naw for 360 with out tax you can get a great PC, Though the OS, Monitor and a DVD drive are not added in for that. OS you have choices linux being free, Monitor is like the TV to the thing, DVD drive is not necessary seeing as you can download the games.

Hell if it was $15 a month even if you had to pay like $75 for the console and you got blanket access to all of the games, they would be sitting on a gold mine ........

but the its would be a legal nightmare and a veritable circus, watching every developer and their dog demanding 110% of the profits. So corporate greed assures us that such a thing would never happen.

OnLive has to pay some dollar amount to the owning IP per game played.

Reasons onlive is a bad service

*not in 1080 yet,
*monthly charge
*Charge + games
*games will not be available forever
*Ubisoft DRM example is a good reason of how things can go wrong


Thats just a few for you.