OnLive Tosses a Bigger Bone to Early Adopters
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
Can't wait to see what happens. If it does succeed it has the potential to change the industry, if it fails, well, the fallout will be pretty interesting to watch. Win/win situation.
It's still cheaper in the long run to just buy a gaming console but hey, if it's cloud gaming they want then it's cloud gaming they'll get.
Mark my words. Onlive and cloud gaming is the future of our hobby as we know it.
We're just about 20 years too early here. Sowing the seeds though, and all that.
We're just about 20 years too early here. Sowing the seeds though, and all that.
It's not even THAT much.Jandau said:
Essentially you are just renting games in a walled garden, Onlive can pull any one of your games at any moment, and if the company goes defunct then EVERY SINGLE GAME you bout on Onlive is gone... poof... nadda. Disappeared and there is nothing you can do to get them back.
This is worse than any console. I can still play Dreamcast games today, but if anything goes wrong you LOSE.
I hate walled gardens... that's why I hope (and expect) Online to fail.
Exactly! That's why I was under the impression that all you had to do was pay a subscription fee. That would make sense to me as a consumer. I pay them money to play the games. When I stop paying money, I stop playing games. This way, it's clean and simple. However, the way they set it up, if I ever stop paying them money I automatically lose access to all the games I PAID for with my own cash...Treblaine said:
1. You are greatly overestimating their willingness to provide support for outdated machinery. You'll still be going to upgrade, you can just skimp about ?50 every other year by buying lower end parts. Their fees are higher then that.Flying-Emu said:
2. Server outage = no gaming for you. This "service" = DRM. DRM servers = unreliable pieces of shit. Connect the dots.
3. This is a US only "service" so you won't be able to game abroad. Personally, as an European, I'm basically excluded anyway.
4. If a publisher wants you to play a sequel, they can revoke your access to your current game.
5. If a publisher quits the program, your access to their games are revoked.
6. Input lag.
7. You either need a gigantic internet connection to receive the raw data or several top of the line videocards to decode encrypted data realtime with minimal lag.
8. If onlive goes under, you loose all your games.
9. No mods..
10. Running 25.000 games and encrypting 25.000 hd streams requires a ton of processing power.
11. The entire setup is fishy. Their "older, mid range laptop" "streaming" crysis looks suspiciously like an Alienware mobile desktop with a dust cover on it's back.
Was like "Cool, Onlive is awesome"
I read down the page and said
"Who the fuck would think OnLive was good idea?"
I read down the page and said
"Who the fuck would think OnLive was good idea?"
I'm not a big fan of games going digital to begin with, so all of this "cloud based gaming" stuff is pretty much anathema to me. I understand why developers want it, I mean they can remove all the power from our hands, and then charge the same prices you see now while gaining more profit from not having to pay for packaging, distribution, instruction manuals, and similar things.
The gaming industry likes to pretend people are "technophobes" and such, but I think the issue is largely that people aren't as stupid as they would like to think, and plenty of people, especially those that really are fairly "tech savvy" realize the repercussions of this no matter how advanced it is, and don't support it.
I look at how the PSP-Go seemed to fail, and the same basic arguements against that can be made here. While the PSP-Go didn't use a cloud, it's again an entirely digital platform with no disc involved, and people being expected to pay retail prices (or close to them) for games that they never really own or can control. This is basically a desktop version.
What's more is that online PSP-Go, this service basically wants you to pay a membership fee for the honor of paying them to play games.
I'd imagine they are bribing people with free service just to get people to try it.
Truthfully the only time I'd support a platform like this is if I was given no choice (and arguably that's what the industry wants to do... make it so we have no choice), or if somehow they could run it as a service like Netflix, where you pay a flat fee to play hundreds of games (some fairly new) for free online, and can then order the newest games one or two at a time as duration-free rentals or whatever. While this has been made to work with movies and TV shows, I understand the differances with the game business. Also I'll be blunt that even if someone found a way to offer games dititally for a deal as good as Netflix is for movies, I'd be very, very wary about them pulling a "Wal*Mart" and simply hiking the prices once all the competition was gone.... I'd need to see some safeguards in place, and really I have no idea how that would be done.
The gaming industry likes to pretend people are "technophobes" and such, but I think the issue is largely that people aren't as stupid as they would like to think, and plenty of people, especially those that really are fairly "tech savvy" realize the repercussions of this no matter how advanced it is, and don't support it.
I look at how the PSP-Go seemed to fail, and the same basic arguements against that can be made here. While the PSP-Go didn't use a cloud, it's again an entirely digital platform with no disc involved, and people being expected to pay retail prices (or close to them) for games that they never really own or can control. This is basically a desktop version.
What's more is that online PSP-Go, this service basically wants you to pay a membership fee for the honor of paying them to play games.
I'd imagine they are bribing people with free service just to get people to try it.
Truthfully the only time I'd support a platform like this is if I was given no choice (and arguably that's what the industry wants to do... make it so we have no choice), or if somehow they could run it as a service like Netflix, where you pay a flat fee to play hundreds of games (some fairly new) for free online, and can then order the newest games one or two at a time as duration-free rentals or whatever. While this has been made to work with movies and TV shows, I understand the differances with the game business. Also I'll be blunt that even if someone found a way to offer games dititally for a deal as good as Netflix is for movies, I'd be very, very wary about them pulling a "Wal*Mart" and simply hiking the prices once all the competition was gone.... I'd need to see some safeguards in place, and really I have no idea how that would be done.
Ok, who's up for eating his/her own hat if that Onlive thing works in the present conditions?
(Assuming that's all done "in the cloud" as they say, and not a marketing gimmick like the "quantum computer" from recent times)
(Assuming that's all done "in the cloud" as they say, and not a marketing gimmick like the "quantum computer" from recent times)
That's pretty much what I was thinking although if they can actually iron out the deficiencies within the first year and have a 90%+ reliability factor, they might have a chance. When I was registering for this wondrous offer, it took several times to get a green check on their speed test and I have a 15-20 Mbps pipe. Hopefully one won't have be within 20 miles of their now two(?) server centers.Kwil said:
Thats a good point. Why would i play a monthly fee and then another $60 for a new game? when i could just pay for the game and play for free online on my PS3Jandau said:
You're cute. Trying to dissuade me from a service that isn't even operational yet, you likely haven't tried, and that I merely expressed interest in.Asehujiko said:
Find a better use for your time
Walled gardens are anti-competitive, monopolistic and give you only an EXTREMELY NARROW corporate approved vision of a service.Cryo84R said:
And the biggest problem I have with most Walled Gardens is how they financially or contractually lock people in, either by asking for a huge investment (expensive iPad) or a long running subscription fee which contractually binds them. There there are things like content exclusivity or product exclusivity.
This can soak up customers, who would much rather use another service but can't for above mentioned reasons... this affects people even outside the walled garden as that is where all the money is.
See if OnLive is a success... then it will very quickly become the status quo whcih negatively effects the entire industry.