OnLive's Perlman says Microconsole coming by end of 2010

I just signed up for the waiting list for a year of free service. I'll wait to pass judgment, but I'm not counting on it to replace consoles.

Well, good luck to them and their next-gen Gizmondo.

Wait, wait, wait.

Did you say "iPhone or Android"?

So, you're saying we'll be able to use OnLive wherever we want?

DETAILS. NOW.

OnLive, the instant laugh topic.

Meh. I got in on the free year and got a free game, as of yesterday. I have a really good wired internet connection, with a really low ping, ect. And it is pretty much unplayable because of all the lag. I'll give it a month or so to see if they get things cleared up a bit. It is a cool idea I guess, but so far from what I have been able to see (and the rediculous price points on the games), I do not see it really going anywhere. Unless you like playing your games at something like 1 frame a second with controller delays on top of that.

The single player games work fine, Unreal though... mouse had noticeable delay.

OnLive? More like OnLag amirite?

I don't understand why I can't use Wifi on my superfast network + computer, but I can game on an iPhone or Android phone?

OnLive confuses me.

"Let's stream video games from the cloud", they say. Hmmmm ... in other words, "watch myself play a video game remotely." And why, exactly, would I want to do this? Oh gee, I can play it on an iPhone. Crysis ... on an iPhone. After that "e-Peen moment", any real gamer would likely cancel their free demo and head straight back to the XBOX for a serious round of Halo.

For casual gaming, I can see it being ok. Lots of titles out there I'm never going to buy but then again for a service like this I'd want a low price and a buffet of new titles to really catch my interest. I'd rather throw down on XBOX Live. That gets me NetFlix and a whole bunch of other perks.

Even more you gotta remember: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch (TANSTAAFL) . All we're doing is moving the gaming console "out there" and locking the gamer out of any control over his library. I guess you could say that's already happened for NetFlix, but lag isn't an issue there. You can't buffer against lag in a video game. Evar.

whoever funded these guys must have been some old clueless farts.

The microconsole seems unnecessary to me, although, I'll end up with 2 computers that I can use, so, yeah. Although, it may be nice to get rid of any potential bandwidth overhead your own computer may be using.

And as for the service itself, I got in with the 12 months free and the free game coupon (used it on Borderlands). Basically, it feels only a slightly bit choppy, but the input lag is not bad at all. I haven't tried multiplayer though, and I have to say, they are doing a lot with the service. One thing I noticed was the Arena, which allows you to watch other people playing in real time. The interface of the software is also really good.

Basically, it works like a charm. The only complaint I've had so far is the way the display is handled. See, it's just playing a video on your computer. So, I'm guessing that it scales based upon connection, which mine is good, but not amazing (10Mb/s down, but only like, 1Mb/s up), and in high motion events, much like with video on YouTube or anywhere online, there is a bit of detail problems, where things will blur, and it can be choppy sometimes. There's also only a couple of instances where my input was read weird, and I ended up looking straight up for no reason, but it only happened a couple times within about an hour, and it wasn't but for a quick second.

So, in summary, the lag is not bad at all, hardly noticeable for me, although I recommend reducing any input overhead you have by turning off mouse acceleration and using overclocking filters to get higher response on your mouse, which I recommend 500Hz response so you get about a 2ms delay instead of the standard 8. You can be awesome and go to 1ms at 1000Hz though... =/

Although, there's not a lot of games yet. But the nice thing is, you can pay for limited time, so if you aren't too interested, you can just play the demo or get the full game for 3 days or 5 days, which is under $10.

Personally, I really like it. Granted, I have a 12 month free subscription, so I don't have to deal with the extra cash for now.