Onlive *Finally* Shutting Down; Sony buying a lot of their patents

[Ganoncrotch]

GribbleGrunger said:

ganoncrotch said:

I'm fairly sure their server farms were just fine for the 3 customers they had using them to stream games at compressed 720p in the regions even that was available. Better machines server side was not going to make input delay in single player games or weak links getting the video streamed to players any better.

I guess you could say that Onlive was ahead of it's time, but realistically it was a pipe dream to think it would work knowing the state of the internet in some regions, always reminded me of the phantom game console from 2002

I've seen this argument used in every single PSNow thread and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. There are millions and millions of more people with good broadband than consoles. Who cares if some people haven't got the internet infrastructure capable of delivering this service? Sony certainly don't, but they do care that the potential audience dwarfs that of their current audience.

The issue with onlive was if you wanted to play games at and above the lvl of graphics they were offering from the service it was cheaper and easier to just go and buy a ps3/x360 and that way you owned the game, didn't have to suffer input lag in single player games and if (when) the onlive service went under you would still own the physical console.

Not sure how much things have come along since 2010 when onlive launched but if people are going to invest money in gaming then going for the round about purchase of a streaming box, subscription fee, upgrading internet connection is a lot more complicated again than just going and buying a console or even a PC upgrade. Not to mention the fact that there is now a company who sold licenses to games you stream from their service which failed to consider when people look at potentially investing their gaming money in another service with the same model.