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Original post by SteveDeFacto Quote: Original post by GameCreator Quote: Original post by SteveDeFacto OnLive has dropped their subscription fee... Trial ends at the end of this year. Have always been curious but I also heard that the graphics settings they use aren't especially high. Can anyone confirm or deny this? No when I said they dropped their subscription fee I meant it: It is free forever! But you do have to buy the games if you want to play them for more then 30 minute of course but that's reasonable to me.

Good to know. This has to be bad for business though. I'm sure I'm not the only one who will use this purely for demoing games (no messy installs needed for a short demo). It's going to cost them in processing power and bandwidth and they won't get any money from it.

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Original post by ChurchSkiz This has to be bad for business though. I'm sure I'm not the only one who will use this purely for demoing games (no messy installs needed for a short demo). It's going to cost them in processing power and bandwidth and they won't get any money from it.

You're thinking too short-term. Today, OnLive is an afterthought for publishers. Soon (according to what I am certain is OnLive's internal strategy) it'll be a primary platform for many of the smaller ones, and OnLive will be pulling down pre-sale money on up-front licensing and support contracts. A couple of years after that, the first AAA-quality OnLive exclusives start trickling out; you won't be picking those up at GameStop.

There's a lot to like about OnLive for smaller publishers. It shares the same advantages of XBLM -- low distribution costs, built-in marketing, unpirateable (even more fundamentally than XBLM) -- and it's got a better story for wide market penetration than either XBLM or Steam.

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Original post by Sneftel Quote: Original post by ChurchSkiz This has to be bad for business though. I'm sure I'm not the only one who will use this purely for demoing games (no messy installs needed for a short demo). It's going to cost them in processing power and bandwidth and they won't get any money from it. You're thinking too short-term. Today, OnLive is an afterthought for publishers. Soon (according to what I am certain is OnLive's internal strategy) it'll be a primary platform for many of the smaller ones, and OnLive will be pulling down pre-sale money on up-front licensing and support contracts. A couple of years after that, the first AAA-quality OnLive exclusives start trickling out; you won't be picking those up at GameStop. There's a lot to like about OnLive for smaller publishers. It shares the same advantages of XBLM -- low distribution costs, built-in marketing, unpirateable (even more fundamentally than XBLM) -- and it's got a better story for wide market penetration than either XBLM or Steam.

Yes but I can also see some large negatives as well:

1. The lower-end the game, the less sense it makes to purchase it via OnLive. Why play Sam & Max onlive when I can play it lag-free on a 5 year old comp?
2. Bandwidth requirements are the same regardless of game quality. It costs them just as much bandwidth to push out Crysis at 60fps as it does Tower of Goo. I imagine bandwidth is either their first or 2nd highest cost.

OnLive is different than any other game portal. They have actual costs every time someone uses their service. A simple game being played is going to cost them real money due to processing and bandwidth. Compare this to steam who lose practically nothing if someone downloads a demo.

Not saying it can't work, but if they play it wrong they could easily go bankrupt on bandwidth costs. An online portal can fizzle out but they're not going to pile up insurmountable debt either.

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Original post by ChurchSkiz Why play Sam & Max onlive when I can play it lag-free on a 5 year old comp?

"This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem." Besides which, look at what you're saying. Sam & Max runs on a 5-year-old computer because it has to run on a 5-year-old computer. You think TellTale wouldn't want the extra graphical capabilities?

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2. Bandwidth requirements are the same regardless of game quality. It costs them just as much bandwidth to push out Crysis at 60fps as it does Tower of Goo. I imagine bandwidth is either their first or 2nd highest cost.

Sure, for now. But data transfer costs have been consistently dropping for decades now, and there's no sign of that slowing. Besides which, bitrates aren't far above those already being streamed either for free or at a flat rate by many other services. The trick to OnLive is the latency, not the bandwidth.

I would love to see OnLive succeed. I remember when everyone was bashing it and telling it can't be done. Current encoders weren't good enough so many thought it was stupid idea. They actually told about their technology and that they were doing different, but nobody would listen. I just love the WTF's that are popping up after people see it actually works.

I hate playing on my computer because you never know if there's going to be problems(and by never I mean you just have to check the forums to know). Consoles are so hassle free. But this would totally one up the consoles. I just wish there was a payment model where you would pay 1 dollar/euro for one hour of game play. I've noticed that that would be more cheaper than buying the games upfront for me. I probably need my flame shield for this though :)

Disclaimer: by everybody I mean lots of dudes and nobody I mean not everyone.

Just tried it, overall impression is very positive. On most games the lag was imperceptible in game (except for Just Cause and Fear), but the in game GUI was incredibly laggy, I suspect the GUIs run at unbounded framerate which sucks up GPU like a sponge, which for their case is very bad since they use the GPU to encode the frames...

Visual quality is good, sound good, my only complaint is the limited selection of games and demos, but hopefully with more publishers signing on it will increase. Overall, definitely a technology to watch, it is a game changer.

-ddn

:(

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Original post by owl :(

I had an in-game error too so they're not immune to it. Was playing Kane & Lynch and the game was playing ( I was getting shot and UI was up) but nothing on the screen was rendering. Tried restarting from checkpoints and then restarting the whole level. Only fix was to quit the game and restart.

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Original post by ChurchSkiz Quote: Original post by owl :( I had an in-game error too so they're not immune to it. Was playing Kane & Lynch and the game was playing ( I was getting shot and UI was up) but nothing on the screen was rendering. Tried restarting from checkpoints and then restarting the whole level. Only fix was to quit the game and restart.

I was not even able to run the thing. :(

It took me 2 minutes to download, install and uninstall. And now they have my e-mail address :( :(