Tag Archives | OnLive

OnLive still has a lot of kinks to work out with its cloud gaming service and MicroConsole set-top box, but they’re easier to overlook when you can have unlimited gaming for $10 per month.

The so-called PlayPack plan, announced alongside today’s MicroConsole launch, will have more than 40 back-catalog games when it becomes available on January 15. Subscribers can still purchase or rent newer games a la carte, and they can suspend subscriptions for up to a year without losing their saved game data.

For now, folks who buy the MicroConsole can try the plan for free in beta, which includes 15 games to start. John Spinale, OnLive’s vice president of games and media, says new games will land on the subscription package, and on the service in general, on a weekly basis.

Continue Reading →

Although OnLive’s cloud gaming service is able to run on almost any computer, the key to success could lie in its MicroConsole, a tiny TV set-top box that’s still unreleased.

That’ll change on December 2, when the OnLive MicroConsole launches for $99 with a controller. One free game will also be included as a holiday promotion, and pre-orders are starting now. Games on the service cost between $4 and $9 to rent and $5 to $50 to “own” (access to the games, which stream from remote servers, is guaranteed for at least three years).

The cost of the MicroConsole is less than I was expecting, but just as interesting, I think, is this line at the bottom of OnLive’s press release:

“In addition to its rental and Full PlayPass plans, later this year OnLive will add a monthly flat-rate plan, providing unlimited access to a broad library of quality games and indie titles.”

Continue Reading →

Streaming is not just a delivery method for media, it’s a business model, but I don’t think OnLive realizes that.

Earlier this week, OnLive announced that it dropped subscription fees from its cloud gaming service, which handles all the intensive processing of modern video games on its own servers and sends back compressed video that runs on pretty much any computer. OnLive launched in June and was already giving away free 12-month subscriptions, normally $5 per month, as an introductory offer.

By dropping subscriptions, OnLive can bring in curious users without demanding credit card information. With free membership, people can still play game demos and eavesdrop on other gaming sessions. Rentals are available in three- and five-day increments, but if players want full access, prices are on par with retail, and guaranteed to run for at least three years. That’s where the offer gets icky.

Continue Reading →

Now that OnLive has finally revealed some pricing details, the cloud gaming service is looking more than ever like a dubious proposition.

OnLive will cost $15 per month when it launches on June 17, but that price won’t let you play any full games. You’ll still have to rent or purchase games to stream to your computer in addition to the monthly charge, at prices that are still undisclosed. Even if it costs less to rent or play a game — and it probably will, given that OnLive promises lower distribution costs compared to retail — OnLive will have a tough time competing with actual hardware for all but the most dedicated gamers.

Let’s say you spend $300 on a new console every five years. That’s $5 per month, already less than a subscription to OnLive. Now, let’s say you buy one new game every two months, at $60 each (a very generous estimate given that average game ownership per console hovered around six games after 24 months in this generation ), you’re basically spending $35 every month. That means publishers have to charge $40 or less for a game through OnLive (which makes $70 every two months when you add in the subscription) to make the proposition worthwhile.

Even if publishers are willing to go that low, the consumer is making concessions. Yes, you get instant gratification and the ability to play anywhere, but you lose the ability to buy, trade or sell used games, and there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to play what you bought 10 years from now. If OnLive goes belly up, so does your entire game library. And I wonder, if you decide to stop playing games for a year or two (say, you’re raising a baby), can you recover your library when you’re ready to start playing again?

The prospect of game rentals raises more questions. How much will an OnLive rental cost and how long will it last? In other words, how long do you have to rent a game before it becomes more feasible to “buy” it? Will the amount you spent on the rental be credited towards the purchase price?

I’m still willing to give OnLive the benefit of the doubt that its technology will work (despite one rogue report), and that cloud gaming itself isn’t a bad idea. But on pricing alone it’s too early to call OnLive a console killer.

Article updated to fix calculations.

Almost a year after OnLive promised to uproot everything we know about game consoles and PC rigs, a journalist broke into a closed private beta and reported his findings. The results leave something to be desired, but they also don’t give OnLive a fair shake.

OnLive shocked the games industry last March by announcing a cloud gaming service that could run even the most demanding PC games. The idea was to process games on remote servers, equipped with the latest technology, then send compressed data to the player, who would need only a low-end PC. Since then, no one in the press has been allowed to try the service, but PC Perspective’s Ryan Shrout gained unauthorized access through “a friend of a friend of a friend.”

The bad news? Games don’t look as good as they would on a high-end PC. Resolution topped out at 1280-by-720, and games looked sharper and cleaner on the local system than they did over OnLive, even when reduced to that resolution.

The really bad news is latency, which Shrout said was noticeable at best and terrible at worst. While the racing game Burnout: Paradise felt okay, the first-person shooter Unreal Tournament 3 was unplayable due to its reliance on lightning-quick reflexes.

There is, however, a big caveat to this experiment: Shrout was playing from outside the southern California area, where beta testing is happening, and OnLive showed a warning message saying he was experiencing high latency. He claims that lag measured 85 ms. OnLive once said that 35 ms to 40 ms is typical, and 80 ms is on the high-end.

Shrout also acknowledges that lag becomes less noticeable when using a game pad instead of the mouse and keyboard. Combine that with lower latency, and you might have a service that passes muster.

Though I’m somewhat skeptical about lag, OnLive’s business model has always worried me most. Word is that the service will combine a base subscription with individual game purchases, but we’ve yet to see actual numbers. Until we can measure how OnLive’s price measures up to the status quo, I’m not convinced it’ll revolutionize anything.

There’s a sweet, sweet buzz in the air this week with the unveiling of OnLive, a start-up computer game service that’s inspiring eerie prophecies on the demise of the console and the subsequent rebirth of PC gaming.

It’s a tall order, and I love being a skeptic, but we’ll get to that later. First, let’s talk about the concept.

To use an appropriate buzzword, OnLive is cloud gaming. Instead of relying on $5,000 water-cooled PC rigs with alphabet soup specs, OnLive handles all the processing on its own servers. Thanks to once-impossible compression methods, the data comes to the player over the Internet, allowing even $400 netbooks to play Crysis.

OnLive plans to demonstrate 16 games this week, but some reporters, such as Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat, have already watched a preview, and they like what they see. In addition to smooth gaming, OnLive offers player-friendly features such as voice chat and video sharing. With a small device, televisions can run the games in standard definition or 720p high definition.

Game publishers like the idea because it takes the focus off individual consoles and emphasizes the games instead. The possibility of cutting Gamestop out of the equation couldn’t hurt, either, as it puts more money into publisher’s pockets and less into the used game business. Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, Atari, THQ, Codemasters, Eidos,  Warner Bros., Epic Games and Ubisoft have already signed distribution deals.

With all this in mind, here’s my counterargument to the prophecies:

It seems like OnLive has all the bases covered, but if there’s one serious vulnerability, it’s what we don’t know. The service will be offered as a monthly subscription — presumably, it has to be done this way to pay for server upkeep — but there’s no word yet on pricing or service plans. Obviously that information would be premature now, but eventually OnLive will have to figure out how to attract enough monthly payments to stay viable as a business.

A little rough math shows that a new console every five years and three new games per year (that’s basically the consumption rate we’ve seen in the latest generation, according to Gamasutra) works out to roughly $22 per month, but the actual number depends on the individual player. To truly disrupt that model, I wonder what price OnLive will have to offer and whether it can afford to do so.

I’m not saying the service has no chance of obliterating the existing games industry, but we can’t rule out peaceful coexistence just yet.