They might but there is and always will be video compression artifacts (which gets worse with more action, not good for gaming) with Onlive which will always make a direct comparison unkind. Throw in laggier controls, a dated and limited software library, and it's nothing more than an interesting sideshow at the moment.
The virtual giveaway of hardware as well as changes to their plans for billing users are signs of desperation from a company that is probably bleeding cash and not seeing interest or uptake that forecasts favorably for turning this venture into a profitable business. Basically faced with the prospect of potentially going bankrupt in the next year or so, they are giving everything away hoping to drum up enough business to stay afloat. If it works, they stay in business. If it doesn't, it just means they go bankrupt sooner rather than later.
I still fail to see where in their business model they plan on actually turning a profit. It's a nice idea, but arguably 5-10 years too early.
Regards,
SB
Many people think it's doom or gloom for OnLive, but the fact that they will be intergrated into Vizio devices was a very strategic move. They want to become the Netflix of gaming, and they will.
I don't see OnLive as bleeding cash. I'm grateful that they ended the fees because I was in the beta, and then when they annouced it, I didn't join until October (when they cancelled them). They were sponsored by AT&T, and nobody paid a cent anyway. They stated that they made enough at that point to end the service fees. Thus, they gave the microconsle away to people who helped establish the service as a thank you. You can see it as desparation, but the usersbase has definately increased since then, and they have excellent customer service. Also, their holiday sales (up to 75% off), helped me to buy some indie games on the service.
Also, you do get better video quality when you actually purchase/rent the game. You get the worse quality while spectating, which makes sense. Demos themselves can vary. Most of the demos I've played were crystal clear, but I'm using Verizon FIOS.
People fail to realize that OnLive is making money when people play demos on the service (similar to Gaikai), not just from renting, or buying games. They just announced an update that is currently in beta (coming in the next few weeks) that will help mitigate even more lag. Yeah, the ISP infrastructure needs to improve, but if they make more deals with ISPs, like Onlive did with BT in the UK, things will improve even further.
Also, the PlayPack, even though it is for older catalog games, will greatly increase revenue for them, becuase it's what 95% of the current userbase wanted in the first place. Now, they need to EA games back on the service in addition to getting Activision and Zenimax on board, which I believe will happen in due time.
Also, they will be launching a movie service and they have already worked with Autodesk to have their software usable from the cloud. Gaming is just the start for them. OnLive is not going anywhere. The biggest concern I have is the game catalog. They stated that they are adding about 100 games this year so it should be on the up and up.
Also, they have different tiers of servers running different games depending on how demanding it it. They now have Metro 2033 on there, and that's pretty demanding. I do know that they internally tweak the graphics settings from time to time for optimum performance.
I like Steam, but I don't want to keep up with the latest hardware anymore. Also, I mainly use a laptop now with a crappy video card. It's much easier for me to use OnLive and play the games on their service than worrying about downloading and installing games locally. Is OnLive perfect? Heck no! However, it's convenient, and that means a great deal in my book.
