Dedicated servers make things 'virtually lag free'? That's rich. Gamers have been playing on dedicated servers at least since Quakeworld (1997). The reality of online gaming is that there's going to be latency with the world's current infrastructure. The idea is to mitigate it as much as possible. OnLive creates even more problems with respect to lag. I'm willing to accept the possibility that onlive will do well, but there are a lot of obstacles (mental - tradition, actually owning games, etc. and technical - internet connection/latency) for the current gamer to deal with for it to get there.

Understand that OnLive is a akin to a decoder box. It has little processing power. It's like having 50 mile long controller and video cables (or longer if you're further from the server). Your single player game will lag.

It will also probably be in SD video.

Before anyone chimes in about how HD vid is available over the internet, remember that streaming HD movies are buffered. Maybe people will regress to playing laggy games with the added lag of buffering? "Look! I pressed a button. In five seconds, something will happen!"

Thing is though when you ignore everyone's theoretical thinking and think about the company's background things start to look a bit more realistic.

They say that they were in stealth development for 7 years and became known in 2009. I doubt this company would come out of stealth development if they believe their product will be a laggy piece of shit.

Another company tried to do this type of thing one time and failed miserably. I doubt OnLive will follow the same route of failure.

You're all so quick to say "yeh this will lag because of the distance" blah blah. You do realise the source of your internet connections and the power going to your house is all further away than what an OnLive server would be?

And whats your point? are you saying those things dont have lag?

No but they are reliable.

MAG only sends the most basic functions of the game, player inputs and environment changes, to make sure that the 256 simultaneous players are playing in sync. MAG servers aren't sending the entire video and audio feeds of the game to the player like OnLine is doing. So the comparison of MAG servers to OnLine gets us nowhere because they are completely different animals. And MAG is nowhere near lag free also.

When playing games online you sync peer to peer, or to a dedicated server, and the game is (hopefully) designed to send as little information as possible. The more information that has to be sent (and received) the higher the latency is going to be. The longer the distance is, for information to be sent, the more latency there also will be.

Now look at OnLive. You sit at home, press a few buttons, the inputs must travel all the way to a dedicated server where the actual console is located, then the video and audio feed from that console must go all the way back to your house. How does that possibly make a game playable? Imagine playing Heavy Rain or God of War's quicktime events under those conditions. Impossible. I just don't see how this is a feasible way to play games and have them still be enjoyable.

What would make sense is what SONY, MS, Nintendo, and dozens of PC gaming companies have already done. Just set up a store where there are downloadable games. Charge for a game, have the person download it to his or her console, then play the full game offline right from the console.

Let's look at the Playstation Network and the library of PSONE Classic Titles that can be purchased and downloaded. For example, Metal Gear Solid 1, a game that takes up 700MB of space if you download it to your PS3. If you download the title and play it off of your hardrive you are using 700MB of bandwidth from SONY's PSN server. If you stream a 480i video feed of all of the hours you play the game instead...you are looking at more than 700MB of bandwidth. So what's the point? You are paying to play a game under heavy lag, you are wasting bandwidth, and most likely monopolizing your home internet connection anyways.

If OnLive is anything but a complete and miserable total failure I will be truly astonished.

I was wondering if anyone's hip to the new OnLive gaming experience. I decided to jump on the bandwagon and register for it, (hey, it's the first year is free + one free game). Who knows, maybe VF5 FS could be available to play, *knock on wood.*

Onlive = Awesome stuff
Let me know when you guys get on.

Here is a good review on it.

Impressive!! I can't believe it's real time video!!

Do all the players on screen must apply for AT&T?

Why? What do you think normal TV broadcasts are? The point is not how good one-way traffic is...