[quote name='pROvIs']I have been in the program since Beta and I am one of the founding members who received a "free year," back when they were going to charge for the service. I think it has a lot of potential and is a very cool and relevant service, especially to those without consoles. There are a few things they need to overcome to be successful though.
1. Overcome the "Leasing/limited" ownership of games. Currently a game through onlive has less value to me than a game on steam or console. It just feels to limiting and without a major company backing it I don't know how long a "permanent" access pass actually is. I would love if they sold a game I could download/install and run/render from my PC like a traditional game but also have a license to run through their cloud services on the go.
2. Make this relevant to PC Gamers who already have a gaming PC. Number 1 would go a long way to improve this but right now there is no benefit for me to buy a game on their service that runs fine on my computer. I don't know how they will accomplish this but they are already starting to win favor by the mobility of the application. Being able to access apps anywhere on any connection. My only concern is bandwidth.
3. Make the experience uniform when playing from a Vizio BD player, PC, Tablet, Phone, or Micro Console. My only hesitation with the Vizio app is that it probably will only be able to have limited updatability and how will I connect a KB/Mouse or controller?
4. Overcome that last Millisecond of Lag. Although in many cases it makes no difference, I can still tell that the game is being streamed. This needs to go away and make the experience so similar it is negligible much like watching a 1080P movie from xbox streaming etc.
I like the concept of a Microconsole and would love to pick one up to play games on the go when I travel but Hotel internet is so volatile I don't know how it will perform.[/QUOTE]
Let me share my thoughts on your statements.
1) Publishers are doing everything they can to take away customer ownership of software. That is why so much is now only available via downloads. Publishers will never allow this kind of thing to happen with OnLive. I'm sure the complete lack of customer control over the games is a selling point to publishers.
2) People like us who already have an investment in pc gaming aren't the target audience. This is why it has no pc exclusives in it's line-up. OnLive is for people who would buy consoles. If Onlive lasts long enough, it will steal sales from (or influence) next-gen consoles. Publishers and investors are taking a long-term approach (see #1).
3) Those devices will probably have multiple USB ports to plug in kb/m or a controller.
4) For me the lag is more noticable using a mouse compared to a controller. Notice the microconsole comes with a controller. Can you even plug-in a KB/M and have it work? This brings us back to #2. I'm sure the lag will go away when new streaming tech comes along. Right now, I don't think there is much they can do to improve it. The biggest problem I have is that the graphics look soft with poor textures (very noticable compared to pc versions of the games). It may be 720p, but it's 720p with a thin layer of vaseline over it.
I signed up early also just to see what is was about. So far, it really doesn't have anything I would pay a Full Play Pass for.
