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After months of doubt followed by more months of nothing, OnLive’s finally back in the limelight. During this week’s Game Developer’s Conference, the streaming videogame service finally deployed its landing gear with a June 17 release date. Now then, onto the potentially – depending on how long the service lasts – million dollar question: how hard is it gonna hit your pocketbook?
Well, honestly, that part’s got us a bit worried. The on-demand platform carries a $15 subscription fee, which would be fine on its own. Unfortunately, you’ll also have to pay for individual games, which could definitely get pricey in a hurry. So far, actual prices for launch titles – which include Assassin’s Creed II, Metro 2033 and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands – haven’t been announced, but they’ll apparently be “competitive.”
Thankfully, there’ll also be an “a la carte” rental service for use with some games. Which, combined with the subscription fee, sounds a bit like GameTap’s Gold service – only without that crucial little “unlimited access” bit. But let’s be honest here: OnLive’s servers aren’t going to pay for themselves. And you’ll be getting a suite of social networking features for your rapidly dwindling buck, so… yeah, it’s still a whole lot of money.
Meanwhile, when competing service Gaikai launches, it’s going to be free-to-play and ad-based. Unless OnLive’s got some crazy tech-based tricks up its sleeve that put it head-and-shoulders above Gaikai quality-wise, we just don’t see ourselves subscribing. How about you?
Comments are closed on this article
ushim6
March 12, 2010 at 9:16am
This service even looks attractive to me, a no-longer gamer.
I have yet to play games like Crysis because I don't feel like spending another $200+ on the latest video card. Instead, I could head over to my school campus with their fat pipe(or head over to my fiance's that has FioS) and pay $15 + price of Crysis 2 and play it on my stupid 3+ year old laptop. How is that not awesome? A user could just choose to sign up for one month to play one game, or sign up during summer when he/she has time to play games, then unsubscribe.
I seriously hope their system delivers. It could be the shot in the arm PC gaming has needed. The service cuts a GREAT deal for the game developer(amazing share of profit) and there is no piracy.
HD gaming on laptop = win!
Joe D
March 16, 2010 at 1:28pm
can come from this ridiculous service. To start off US internet speeds are horrible and no way a regular connection will be "lag free" with this. Second the yearly cost of the service is $180 which will be on top of your already high internet bill. Add that cost to the cost of buying games from them. Which can't get any lower than $45 because if they did developers wouldn't make anything off OnLive's sales. You don't even technically own those games either because they are on OnLive's servers so they "own" your game. Can't wait to see the lawsuits coming from that! Another thing will be no dedicated servers or any user created content. Unless they find some way to handle that themselves. It looks like the titles are really limited for now with around eight or so developers on-board. Please tell me how they plan on supporting indie games with this service? I will definitely pass on this service. It's way to early for this service to work. Try again in 40 years or so.
check out this guy rant about other things in gaming.
"World of Warcraft is real life but with Night Elves and Orcs" quoted by my brother
Jox
March 11, 2010 at 6:39pm
Been following OnLive for a little over a year now and two things still concern me (pricing issues aside):
1) Unless there's been a change that I missed, due to bandwidth restrictions OnLive games (all of them) will be limited to 720p. 720p is ok, but it still looks kinda crummy when you know your TV can do better (and your PC monitor better still).
2) Most ISP's block ports, throttle ports and impose monthly download caps. Downloading 720p video all day on a rainy Saturday can really add up quick.
-Jox
darkstorm977
March 11, 2010 at 4:53am
so your all telling me you'd save up 2 years for a consol then get onlive and pay 15 buck's? -.- tell u what quit your World of Warcraft faggotry and play onlive.
aviaggio
March 10, 2010 at 10:29pm
I think this pricing model is going to be (no pun intended) a game-breaker for many people. I don't understand why I have to pay for the service and then also have to pay for the individual games. I won't own the games; I won't even have the game files on my computer. So what the hell am I paying for when I "buy" the game? And then what happens to my "bought" game if I no longer subscribe to the service? Well I'll tell ya, it's gone. Your money is lost.
Now if I were able to buy a retail copy of a game and then register it with OnLive so I can play it thru their service, then maybe it would be worth it. This way I can play the latest games without having to upgrade my hardware, but I still own a full copy of the game that I own.
But their model doesn't make much sense. I still have to buy the games but I will never own them. And that $15 a month is $360 every 2 years, which you'd be better off spending on new hardware instead.
I was really excited about this service, but yet again it seems like they're getting it all ass backwards. It should be all about more flexibility and less money, not the other way around. Otherwise what's the point?
I Jedi
March 10, 2010 at 9:49pm
So, basically, for everyone out there who wants the sweet, short story here it is. OnLive is going to charge you $15 dollars a month just to connect to their network; however, you will still have to pay to rent/buy video games off of their network. In other words, it would be far cheaper to get your lazy ass up, walk/drive to the gaming store, and pickup the video game for a week for $4.
Doing the math here...
1 week = $4... so, Pi times 3.534246744543 to the exponet of 10... Ah, yes, here we go... It would cost you $16 dollars a month, plus $3 dollars for gas, assuming you waste only a gallon to drive five min. back and forth to the store. That total comes to $19 dollars a month.
Yep, pay $15 dollars to connect to the OnLive service, pay $4 dollars to rent a game, another $4 the next week, and so on and so forth till we get to a month... Ah yes, total comes to $31 dollars. Ouch...
I know where I'm shopping.
Mike Hawk
March 10, 2010 at 10:10pm
OR look at this in another way:
1. pay $647 to build decent gaming rig (article here) with a good internet connection
2. pay 250-400 on a xbox/ps3 with a good internet connection
3 onlive's $15 and game rentals with a good internet connection
Eadh have their drawbacks and pluses. I wouldn't mind paying 30 dollars or so a month to play current games on my computer or living room tv without buying a console or upgrading my pc. I want to play on their modern powerful servers just as long as Onlive CAN PLAY CRYSIS!
133794m3r
March 12, 2010 at 12:13am
You forgot one thing there guy. You're also paying for the console and the controller plus your internet and also ontop of it the monthly sub AND paying for the games. They already said you'd have to pay for their console.
So let's say it's "priced competively" and they sell it for $250. So then let's figure that one buys 2 games a month (normally i don't buy more than 1 a month but still it's a fair figure i believe).
Starting off you're paying $250+120+15 per month ontop of you having to have an incredibly fast internet connection that DOES NOT limit your bandwith. So that's another 60$ or more for US residents. And also rembmer that this will only work where you can have that fast of an internet connection i'm lucky if i get 1.5Mb/s for 24hrs straight so i won't be using this thing.
So you're let's say only renting once more. Let's take this as a yearly thing. 4$ a week as the other person said if they allow it for that cheap i HIGHLY doubt it as most modern games are $5 for 3 days but they can probably do ~ that for a week since you're not physically renting it.
So then as he said that's $31 a month for renting the game. Now then $31*12 =372 usd plus the 250$ for the console puts you at 622$ AND this is ENTIRELY on the premise that you have an unlimitted fast internet connection with a ping time of under 40ms to their server.
What if their system goes under? You don't own your games, you can do nothing about it. It's entirely dependent on you having the most kickass internet connection around. And as others have said even IF you have that kind of connection streaming HD video all weekday long can really add up and make people very supsicious of what you're doing. So you're talking about spending $622 a year for a game system that you can never really own, and never really get to play the games and ALSO requires a fast internet connection is better? I doubt it.
Also PC and console? You don't neeed a fast internet connection to rent games, and play them. Hell i played live with 512k and i was fragging people perfectly fine. So don't say that you NEED a fast internet connection for the other two. The other two you can just have it, also yoru gaming rig. Guess what it's going to be there 2 years in the future and you'll be able to still have it and use it for other things and it's not going to just go away if you don't have the net connection to keep it up.
This is one thing i don't understand about people around the world who think OnLive or anything else similar is nothing more than a pipe dream. Until everyone can have unlimited internet connection of 10Mb/s guaranteed 24/7 things like this are impossible EVEN IF they don't charge a sub.
nekollx
March 11, 2010 at 10:30am
gotta agree here, onlive isn't target to us with our 2k rigns their targeted to Avatar Fan 392 with his pentium 4.
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Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
DBsantos77
March 10, 2010 at 11:14pm
And their servers probaby can with the new GulfTown CPU's haha
-Santos
Gigabyte 785GX Micro Atx
AMD Phenom II 720 (Quad @ 3.6 Ghz 1.47v.)
6 GB DDR3 1333
Corsair 500w
Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro Rev.2
HIS HD 5850 @ 940/1175/1175v
500 GB
