Just got invited to try OnLive

[Jarrod_38]

How much is this going to cost?

For me it's going to be a one free year membership after that it will cost $5 a month. Then of course you pay for the games the prices are different on each game.

Word of warning, this system will not work on WiFi, Ethernet is required.

Actually here is a work around that. Trust me it actually works. http://onlivefans.com/showthread.php?3589-Play-OnLive-over-WiFi-Workaround

is it free?

Refer to the first question.

Thing I hate most about Onlive so far, is its going to be very geographically restricted, going to be a US only thing and I really really hate that!

A slap in the face saying "sorry but you don't live here so therefore you don't get access"
They say they are going to expand into other country's but not for years after US gets covered.

So anyone not living in states.. we are out of luck.

Yeah it sucks that it's not available outside the US, but what are you going to do about it.

Also if anyone else has a question let me know.

 

[Rukus.]

This isn't the future of gaming anyway. Its the future for budget gaming, most publishers don't want OnLive to posses their game in fear of losing out.

 

[Jarrod_38]

This isn't the future of gaming anyway. Its the future for budget gaming, most publishers don't want OnLive to posses their game in fear of losing out.

Say what? How will the publishers be losing out? They will still be getting a profit from the games you buy.

 

[Cupcake]

This isn't the future of gaming anyway. Its the future for budget gaming, most publishers don't want OnLive to posses their game in fear of losing out.

What Jarrod said. It's not akin to GameTap where they license the game out and then people play them (which may cut sales and bring in a net gain of less money, if GameTap's constant struggling to even exist is an indication), the service allows you to buy games for standard store prices and attaches them to your account digitally a la Steam.

A computer/server on their end will then actually run the game for you and will transmit a live video feed of it seamlessly (ideally) to give you the illusion that you're running the game on your PC. It's a really neat trick that's been in the IT/business world for a while.

Developers aren't losing out, they're actually opening up MORE sales because people like Crytek can now sell Crysis to people who wouldn't buy it because their computer is too dated to run it.

 

[Passerby]

i just don't know i play a lot of games but im also a mapper and i run game servers for a community and we run lots of different maps and some server-side mods and non of this could happen in onlive.

 

[Jarrod_38]

i just don't know i play a lot of games but im also a mapper and i run game servers for a community and we run lots of different maps and some server-side mods and non of this could happen in onlive.

OnLive is new so get it some time.

 

[e MpTy]

The whole purpose of Onlive is to eliminate pirating.

They were not thinking about making it cheaper for you or easier but rather maximize there profits by eliminating pirating all together, and gaming company's will see this and eventfully fall in line with Onlive.

In theory it works anyway.

 

[Ph?bus]

The whole purpose of Onlive is to eliminate pirating.

They were not thinking about making it cheaper for you or easier but rather maximize there profits by eliminating pirating all together, and gaming company's will see this and eventfully fall in line with Onlive.

In theory it works anyway.

I'd have to disagree but still agree.
I think the primary point of OnLive is for game devs to get more PC gamers playing their games, but also to eliminate PC game pirating.

 

[Ma$termind]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for digital download, etc; I'm not one of those people who "must" have the physical box - I buy off of Steam all of the time. That said, I'm absolutely not a fan of paying the same amount of money for a game I lose access to as soon as I stop paying a monthly fee.

I understand this service needs to be subscription based - the bandwidth costs of running something like this must be huge. But, then charging the same amount as a retail game is just ridiculous. I would rather see a larger subscription fee (~$15-35 a mo.) to instead have full unpaid access to their entire collection. That would require a lot of cooperation between publishers to work out the game rights, but would be a whole lot more appealing to me. That way I could cancel my account at any time without losing anything I paid for separately. If I wanted to try it again, I could resubscribe at any time.

Also, as it is now, this means that I have zero access to the game files themselves, which means no modding of even single player games - another deal breaker for me, and one of the reasons I still buy most of my RPGs on the PC.

Overall, even if the performance is top-notch I wouldn't say it's the future of gaming. There will always be people who rather have a physical game copy. There will always be people who would rather have access to game files. There will always be people who hate subscription based gaming. There will always be people who want the best performance and graphics available (think this service can stream triple-monitor resolutions in 3D? I think not). To these people, OnLive offers nothing they would want.

 

[InkSix]

Well, I have it now to.

My opinion boils down to this: As it is right now, this is a service for people who cannot afford to get a console or a gaming rig. (which is ironic given the full game price and monthly sub)

I am astounded by how fast and smooth the menus and games pop up in OnLive, and everything is really nice looking interesting, but the games are the problem. No one that has a console or a gaming rig already will get anything worth while out of OnLive. The games currently on OnLive are all blurry and having played each of the games I demoed on both my rig and consoles already, it was a huge eye sore to see them in OnLive's quality.

If OnLive can upgrade their service in the future in order to display games in much better quality, this will be a hit. Until then, PC gamers will shun it, and console games will keep asking their friends why their games look blurry on the little micro console.

I played Dirt2, Red Faction : Guerrilla, and Borderlands, and I couldn't look at them for very long. It's like when I tried using a CRT after using an LCD for so long, my eyes took a beating.

And I'm not being a graphics elitest, I really could not take the amount of blurryness.


EDIT: And Dirt2 had control lag.