This is something very interesting a lot of you should read. It's the antithesis on Onlive.

http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/onlive-was-a-dumb-investment-by-dumb-investors/

I read it and agreed with every word. OnLive struck me as being fucking stupid from the word go.

Imagine my surprise when I realized this was written by Sean Malstrom, whom I generally can't stand. I'm not sure how I missed that.

Honestly that wasn't a well put together argument, besides points 5. I didn't read it all just the 5 points, but the major point should have been the fact that everyone doesn't have a great internet connection.

Although I agree OnLive is a silly idea... i dont agree with a lot of his arguments... im only going to bother calling him out on his first point

*Gamers dont like to pay subscriptions?
Tell that to Warcraft players, XB Live subscribers, etc

Do you not think the "Aside from MMORPGs," before "gamers don't like to pay subscriptions" takes the warcraft players into consideration.

And I can't exactly say I like my Live subscription fee.

I would disagree wit the poor argument part, but you have a good point on internet connections. One thing some don't understand is digital distrubution can really take off until internet connections are faster then going to the store and buying the game. Becuase if this, online distributions will not appeal to a mass audience.

@drpunk

i saw that, but why would you even leave MMORPG subcribers out of the picture when talking about gamers dont like to pay fee's? Theres no reason at all...

and just because you dont like your Live subscription fee, doesn't mean everyone else doesn't... with the millions of XB Live subcsribers, im sure there happy otherwise they wouldn't be paying

and obviously we would all like to not pay for anything, but for those that are paying are fine with it

Seeing as you have to pay for it or else you wont be able to even take your games online, how do you know that people are 'fine' with it? What if a silver account allowed you to play online instead of being required to pay for gold?

WoW and Live I would not consider proven model. Actually both aren't. Just because your the best in regards to profit doesn't mean you are the standard business model. No matter how you look at it WoW 12m active subscribers is very darn small in the large scope of all gamers. Live is the same, out of about 100m console gamers can Live really boast anything near 20%. No it can't. Subsription model is not a success. It's put up with by a small handful. It maybe the biggest handful in prior examples, but it doesn't mean it's a overall success for the game industry as a hole. Many view the idea of paying regularly a failure.

Honestly I do agree that Maelstrom is right on the point that this is a technology for the sake of technology. I agree that the customer isn't hindered by hardware but by interest. This technology won't change that since most gamers are interested in games with less hardware requirements. Though I get a feeling that he is coming from a perspective of an upstream market that is downplaying possibilities. However I also agree that the hardware barrier is going to be broken soon which makes online redundent.

How much will they charge for Onlive? $20 , $30 bucks per month if it's a year suscription?

Will they have different rates depending on games or charge more if you want better framerate/resolution (provided your internet connection can handle it)? For example: the rate for playing "The Witcher" is $0.35 per hour. The rate for Crysis Warhead is $0.50 per hour. Just random numbers. I seriously doubt they'll be streaming all these games at full specs all the time to everybody , that seems impossible to me...

Will they offer full-game downloads for those who just want the game and not play by streaming it (since they already have a capable PC to run the games, for instance) ?