GDC: OnLive live demo

Right, just had the full OnLive demo, announcement of June launch, and partner listing in the PR bit: Daniel has the scoop at CNet, and the lineup includes EA, Ubi, etc.

Here's Steve Perlman doing a similar pres at DICE just a month back:

Overall thoughts, briefly:

• It streams games and requires no local hardware fanciness much beyond the ability to play video. Okay. 
• Min requirements for Standard Def video is 1.5Mbps broadband, which isn't enormous; Hi Def (1080) requires 5Mbps, which they reckon will be universal by 2011.
• Plenty of stuff to see and do: browse other people's games, spectate games, play games, watch movies, etc etc.
• "If we can do games, of course we can do movies": expectation that the movie-game hybrid is coming soon (if they're both streaming, you can see how it works...)
• $15 pcm subscription fee with games rental or purchase costs on top of that. This could get expensive, quickly, unless the rent&buy prices are far cheaper than retail.
• Financial benefits heavily, heavily weighted to the publisher/onlive partnership: the OnLive slide effectively cuts out retailers, pirates, second hand sales, friend-rentals, etc. 

Remaining questions that I have:

1. Does it work? No-one has the answer to this, we'll just have to wait and see.
2. How much are the little client box that you have to buy (because you do have to buy one, except for mobile, it seems)?
3. When you "buy" games, do you get to keep them? What if you quit the subscription, can you move those games elsewhere? (I'm guessing the answer is No to both, and that one's a classic dealbreaker for me).

Daniel's full piece at CNet.

Comments

[Mr Tom]

I remain completely unconvinced.

[bob_d]

I too am unconvinced. The economic and technical issues on their side are significant: that $15 a month would have to pay for the hardware equivalent of an Xbox360, their magical-instant-video-compressing equipment and a fat pipe *for one player.* How much lag can the service afford to have? None, essentially. They can't afford to have any interruptions, either; even a half-second pause could ruin action-game play. Have a couple of those in a single session and you'd give up on the service. Future proof? Only if the plug-in will always run on the current versions of web browsers and operating systems, forever (which seems unlikely.)
From the customer perspective, over the long term it's actually cheaper to buy a current-gen console every time one comes out (plus the online service for the console) than to pay for this service. Since any actual content, like movies or games, are beyond that monthly charge, the games, as you say, would have to be pretty darn cheap to bring people in. Currently the only people I see enthused about the service are those who mistakenly believe the $15 includes unlimited games.

On the other hand, if it *did* work, technically speaking, why would publishers like Ubisoft release on any other platform (despite the low-resolution)? As you point out, it cuts out all the things publishers complain about that reduce (theoretical) sales.