OnLive

I was accepted as a founding member for OnLive. This past holiday weekend I planned on trying out my new floorboards on my motorcycle. The rain put a stop to that plan. So with staying in this weekend I played OnLive quite abit. I didn't purchase any games, just played the 30 minute demo time limit.

First, 30 minutes isn't enough for some games, especially ones like Assassins Creed with long opening cut scenes. However, at least you get to play the full game. I tried out severals games I have been wanting to play but never have. In Splinter Cell I got almost all the way to the first boss in 30 minutes.

One of the cool features of OnLive is you can view anyone's game. When you are in the marketplace along the bottom of the screen will be 6 random people playing the game. You click on one and it goes full screen. I wish you could join someone you see from this screen. Though this feature is also kinda creepy when playing a game. When I was trying out Assassins Creed I saw two pop ups of people watching me. I could not find a way to see how many people were watching me and who, or when they leave. So if you want to play a "private" match with some friends nad gof off it is still public. Keep that in mind.

The user interface for the service is cool and straight forward. I've added a couple people form 2o2p as friends but right now I don't think friends are very useful. Most games don;t take advantage of the friends or have their own friends list.

The big questions about the service is how well is game play? How are the controls? How is the video quality? Let's start with game play and control repsonse. As I mentioned you get to play the full game using a 30 minute demo mode. Most of the time the control response is quick enough for most games. However, I don't see fighting games working on this. I tried MLB 2k10. Timing is crucial with hitting. You timing determines how well you hit the ball. I've played the demo on the 360 many times and can hit home runs fairly easy. Though OnLive I was having a tough time getting the timing down. For the most part the control lag is so minimal you don't notice it unless ther are time critical game play elements like that.

Now, I am using a Macbook with OnLive and that produced part of a contorl problem. Splinter Cell would accept my wireless mouse for input in the menus, but only the trackpad for game input. I had to use a wired mouse for Splinter Cell to work without the trackpad. Also OnLive didn't recognize my 360 controller until I uninstalled the Mac 360 controller driver. So right now I can't use my 360 controller for MAME, only OnLive. I had to use the controller for MLB because they game doesn't explain how to control it with a keyboard and mouse.

Video quality leaves something to be desired. I wonder if they throttle the video quality based on connection speed. While I have a decent connection to the internet but it isn't a stable connection. I am suppose to get 12meg down but many times speed tests will show 5meg or lower. The video is highly compressed. There are some digital artifacts (the blocks effect) and the video is a little fuzzy. Most games are set on medium settings so the textures aren't that great and the effects aren't there. You can get better looking PC games with your budget PCs. See my last blog, it doesn't cost much to make a minimal gaming PC.

So overall I think the service is neat. However, the pricing sucks. For most games you will be paying retail prices yet you won't own the game. There's not cost saving advantages to using this service versus buying a console. For founding memebers there will be since we get one year free and the second year at $5 per month. But to every one else by the time you add up the service costs for several of years you could have bought a console for the same amount of money.

If they make it cost effective then I would get the service. But at those prices with the quality of video and slight control lag for time sensitive games I just don't see the advantages of the system.