ryan jauregui, iamoso

Today I received my beta invite to OnLive, dubbed the “Founding Members Program”. From their site, “OnLive connects you to the hottest games instantly on your PC or Mac® through your broadband connection.” What is cool about that statement is you do connect to the game nearly instantly and the load time within the game is very quick; -I definitely found loading to be much faster loading than the game systems I have at home.

Obviously the most important aspects about gaming are the graphic quality and control latency. I loaded up the demo of Assassins Creed 2 since I have played it before and had a feel for its graphical style. The streaming video quality was acceptable, but did not blow me away. I would compare it to mid-to-mid-high quality of a non-HD Netflix streaming. A bit fuzzy around the edges and the darker colors were blotchy. The controls were a bit off for me, I had a more noticeable latency that I did when I tested OnLive at E3. -Just to prove it to myself that it is the service, I went and played Just Cause 2 for 30 minutes. The graphics/colors we better, seemingly more clear for the most part, than than they were earlier. There was still the occasional blotchy mass and the video portions of the game jumped here and there.  The controls still had a very noticeable latency, almost annoyingly noticeable, this will need to be fixed.

Now to affordability… The service costs 4.95 a month, unless you get the free year (ends July 15th, waiting list) offered through the AT&T Partnership that OnLive scored. The games are honestly too expensive for my taste. Assassins Creed 2 costs 39.99 (unlimited play) and is guaranteed to be playable through OnLive until 2013. If it is necessary to charge for the games, and I do not think it is, charge 1/3 of the cost of the game new. I would not ever consider paying full price especially if I have to pay to access the service. Rather, what OnLive should do is charge a higher price, or least offer it. That higher pricing could allow users access to play any game of their choice and for new release titles, a smaller fee could apply, say $5 to $10 one-time.

There are some cool features that really astonished me when I was at E3. I liked the fact that, if I wanted, I could jump in to anyone’s game and watch them play their game in real-time. On top of that, you can rate their performance, leave them a message or request friendship. I also thought that the Brag Clip’s were a cool feature. Do something cool, hit the “Brag Clip” button combination and the last 10 seconds of your video are saved to the service for your friends to view and rate. I asked and yes, at this point, 10 seconds of recording is all you can do.

My final thoughts… At this point, if you can afford a console or some sort of gaming PC, it is probably the way to go since you can always purchase used systems as well as games and even use a service like GameFly. OnLive is, however, a glimpse into the future of gaming. Imagine the control latency mentioned above is fixed due to better technology, faster internet speeds and OnLive is hosting the dedicated servers for your favorite game. You load up your game, also hosted through OnLive’s server, connect and play. No latency since your game and the game’s dedicated server are hosted in house by OnLive.