lolllllllllllll

The way this system would work would be far in the future. Also it would need to be free except for the monthly fee, so that I can do all my gaming needs for just the $180 a year, which may actually be cheaper than my current gaming budget. Also for it to be viable at all for the PC games it needs to have very small amount of lag, I'm talking 50 or less. I won't say it's not un-doable, I've hit dedicated servers, quite often, where my ping would be under 10, so if OnLive makes it happen this could theoretically be viable.

Once I can run my games on highest settings at 1920x1200 with everything on max for $15/mo with no lag I'll gladly join up.

$15 a month can buy me A LOT of games on Steam.

Let's say OnLive means NO MORE LOAD TIME for playing games. You jump in instantly and play, as a possibility. This sounds promising to me. Or let's say OnLive works out a deal with one of the three console makers to implement this for play over the network for their games. Or, the technology is used in MMOs, and players don't need to buy or download anything that way but just jump in and play.

If the technology works, it is here to stay, even if OnLive goes down as not a viable business model. There ARE places for this technology. Imagine game companies using it for software development, and being able to bring in outside game testers to play.

The other problem with Onlive would be once you buy your games, you can only play them while you keep your subscription active.

If anyone even thought that the DRM being used by Ubisoft for AC2 and future releases is completely unacceptable, imagine having your entire game library like this with the additional (huge) downside of only being able to play the games you bought if you continue to pay a subscription fee.

About the only thing the consumer is saving on with this business model is the set up cost of buying or building a game capable PC. As it stands, your $15 a month subscription doesn't buy you anything but the ability to play the games you purchased through Onlive.

I highlight dimension

Basically, this.

15$/month for glorified rentals of games you have to pay extra for is awful.

This will only work if games are REALLY cheap.

If we're supposed to pay $180 a year and then buying games at the same prices, I'd much rather use the $180 to upgrade my GPU and CPU every once in a while (and still be able to fully own my games, and play them without compression artifacts and at a higher resolution...).

The only advantage this has is that it makes gaming really simple, just plug and play. But IMO that's nowhere near enough to counter the disadvantages.

Please make this fail. It takes DRM to the extreme with little to none cost advantages.

The idea seems sound, but the implementation is just absurd. Talk about DRM to the extreme.

No thanks, that money could be better spent on a hardware upgrade and actually owning the games.