The D8 conference happened a couple months ago, but this video was release just a couple days ago.

Yeah, don't ask me why the WSJ releases the video from D8 in a trickle like this. Maybe it's so that the big shots who were there can feel superior for having seen all this weeks ago.

The only way I see this becoming more than niche is when the networking technology and infrastructure of our world provides more reliable and near instantaneous transfers (less packet loss/switching and less latency over great distances).

So for the foreseeable future of say 15-20 years I don't see this technology taking off past the niche like you said.  Once networking technology really expands passed its current barriers then services like this will be more viable as well as streaming of pretty much every service (video, tv, gaming, music, communication, etc).

Can someone explain Onlive to me clearly cuz im confused.

The games are rendered on a server then is sent to your device am i correct? then does that mean you dont need a powerful computer to play such games, if so are game's resolutions lowered or do graphics suffer(according to people)? and can Onlive work on any device such as phones too or just computers OS? 

I think the guy in the video did a pretty good job at explaining how it works and what it works on tbh. Certainly better than I could try and repeat.

You pretty much have it. A big server cluster does all the heavy lifting and streams A/V to a client device, while the client device returns input from the player. Their minimum requirements for PC are to have a dual-core processor, with no GPU requirement at all.

The service currently supports 720p, and needs better network bandwidth before it can support 1080p. A lot of HD console games have a native resolution of 720p or less, so it wouldn't really be a downgrade compared to most HD games. The service provides that resolution at 60fps, which is better than most console games, but due to network inconsistencies it can drop as low as 20fps. Most HD console games are able to provide a more consistent framerate.

Because the service uses high-performance data clusters, the graphical performance pushing those pixels and frames can be much, much higher than console or PC could do, and so it could offer effects that home gaming systems can't match, but whether that's cost effective for OnLive to offer that much performance is another question.

And for your final question, OnLive should be able to work on any device with fast enough network and CPU to decode the stream. The video demonstrates the service working on an iPad, though it seemed to be losing a lot of frames compared to the laptop. He tried to demo the service on an iPhone, but couldn't get it to launch, so OnLive clearly hopes to offer the service on tablets and smartphones in the future.

I have onlive, and it's pretty good

ahh i see, not a bad piece of tech. thanks.

Could u tell more. What demos u tried, how the lag is etc

I have it also. do you live in the US? You can get a year free trial. The lag is noticable, not game breaking, but getting close to it. Hopefully they will be able to speed it up. From what I  can tell, you can demo any game with full access to the games (except maybe saves) for 30 min which is actually pretty cool. I also got an email from them saying that basically all games that have dlc will have that included free in your game purchase. They have also sent me a few emails aboutsales they have had but I have not checked them out yet.