OnLive’s US pricing revealed

Looking forward to Digital Foundry’s take on this.

Digital Foundry here we come.

Also, http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-3ds-gpu-revealed-blog-post

Well that is it in a nut shell.

The problem with Onlive isn’t the performance of the service itself. I played several games, They all worked. They ran fast and smooth and looked great. I tested it on two pcs. One higher end and one older/lower. Games looked great on either.

The really problem is with the price points. Their biz model is complete fail. A large yearly script, follwed by options to “rent” the games or “buy” the games. But really your never buying them.

Each of the games have a experation date. Most of them are gaurenteed to be avalible untill 2013. But thats two years, and what happens after that? Gone?

Very poor set up.

There are several neat things Onlive does.

I can jump straight to a friends games, and either watch or join. The match making system is very strong in the “Arena”.

Each game has usb/game pad suport. I used my wired xb360 pad and never had to configure or adjust any settings for it to work.

OMG, the lag!!!

There is none. Lest when I played there was no ingame lag. The menues started once in awhile during prime time. But to be fair the menues in question where live feeds of gamers playing games and it was windowed so I could scan each player/game.

To be honest I thought that the lag would be horrible. Was amazed it wasn’t.

Toss in the normal features you would expect from a online gaming service like chat, matchmaking, stats, etc and you have a good idea whats offered.

But when they want 50-60usd a year. And upto 50usd a game(that expires in 24 months), I just don’t see the market for this. Even though the line up of games is seemingly strong, if it stays that way or not remains to be seen.

When a cloud based service launches with a reasonable monthly fee, and a roatating selection of games cloud will be huge. Think modern day Sega Channel, but with new big name games. When that happens I will be all over it. Untill then no thanks. Onlive? I’ll pass, steam is cheaper and I can keep my games.

Surely they’re not asking essentially the same price as a boxed product for 3 years or less access/rental to/of a game?

I haven’ t tried this yet but i am really interested. Cool that you can use your contoller. The on live controller looks pretty good though. Would love to chk that thing out. Also i like the design of the box and the menues also look slick. But the pricing seems strange indeed. No problem in paying 60 dollars or even euro a year. Also i dont really have a problem when games expire after 2 years because i rareley play games again after 2 years. BUT if they expire they should cost half as much as a disc game…then it would be the perfect service for me. I could rent a game and chk it out and buy the full game if i like it.

It really is amazingly packed with lol. Pay 60 dollars to rent our games for a few years, coupled with a subscription fee and the knowledge that if the firm goes tits up, so do all your purchases and it’s just mental that anybody would even consider this.

So we only have to pay for the games? There’s no OnLive monthly supscribtion fee?

And a monthly fee i think, a monthly fee which if you stop paying loses you all access to payed for games. Hit the Eurogamer link innit

fail

@mington – Then they should charge full price for the games, since you never actually own them.

Yeah I don’t see this going very far. The pricing model is nothing but fail.

@4 +1.

I did the beta on my laptop. The games I did play were Crysis Warhead and Frontlines. Both games ran fine with seemingly no lag. I Also just plugged in my friend’s 360 controller and it worked just fine. I am uncertain of the games expiration, but would imagine that paying for a subscription plus the full retail price of a game that you essentially do not own, would not be a good idea. Steam would be the better option for cloud gaming.

I’ll stick to my nice fresh blu-ray disc games. Don’t need some dick head telling me when I can play my games and how long.

MEGA FAIL!

It is my feeling that something like this could be a huge boon for whatever game company puts a service like it on their home console.

If MS or Sony offered a Sega Channel style service, using cloud, and then charged say 10 or 15 usd/month. With NO additional fees…that would change the direction of the games industry. In much the same way Netflix has impacted both the home video market but also ppv/cable TV with its instant view.

However because of the current biz models of the home console market, from retail stores to dlc to game royalties to liscencing fees, I don’t expect anyone to be egear for change. Except me.

I am ready, willing, and waiting for a way to game that doesn’t cost so much. 60usd for the game, another 20/30 for the dlc = too much. Launch hardware prices of 600usd that fall to 300usd four years later is too much.

I am ready for cloud to work.

But Onlive is not a viable solution as it is in its current state.

Someone asked about monthly fees?

Yes, Onlive has a subscription that can be paid for yearly or in monthly incriments.

Full price for the games?

Some of them. They are priced all over the place. But for Dirt2(for example) the game was 30usd. I can buy the same game for less on both PS3 and XB360. The same can be said for Unreal III. And i think that will be a nagging thorn in any type of digital distibution service.

The reality is that be it Ebay, Game/Gamestop, or your next door neighbor, your going to be able to find a cheaper copy of most said games. Look at Games on Demand for xbox360. Each one seems over priced. Why buy a 30usd game copy when you could snag one for 15usd?

Onlive is going to have that problem.

Factor in the lack of long term guarenteed access for each game…and it feels like you would be wasting your money.

Steam kills Onlive. Period. Unless, maybe, you don’t have a high end enough PC to run new games. My old PC is craptastic, and the games ran just as nice as my new PC. So there is that angle. But I don’t feel like it is a strong enough point.

After all if a lower end PC and lack of upgrade cash is hold you back…buy a xb360 or a PS3. Your going to be able to play most of the games w/o the cost of maintence for for game rig. And then instead of a yearly/monthly fee spent w/Onlive … use that cash and buy a PSN+ or Live Gold.

But ya very long story short – fail.

I’ve never understood why people were so keen on cloud gaming. This is basically the price model (give or take a bit) that is needed to support such a service – and for consumers, it sucks big time.

I mean, did people really believe it would be subscription free? Did they think publishers would “sell” their games cheaper on cloud services than elsewhere? Did they really think that they would be able to continue to play the games they “bought” on it after they stopped subscribing? Did they really think that games would be available forever regardless of demand?

I was thinking it would have been like the Sega Channel.

At the end of the 16bit days, you could subscribe to a cable TV channel and play games. It was the Sega Channel. It hooked upto the Genesis, offered you around 50 different games each month, changed the games offered each month, and charged you a flat monthly fee.

Think of it this way. What if Sony offered their back libary of games PS, PS2, and PS3 via cloud on the PS4? Would it work? It might. Sony would own the liscencing and could run the service.

But most likly Sony would rather charge you for each download of each game, like they do now.

Also as far as not owning the game after two or three years, I have been thinking about that. What happens to my purchased games and DLC once say, XB360 stops being suported? I already can not get to the content that I “Purchased” on my xbox one.

I imagine a generation or two of hardware down the road, will present us with this same problem. Maybe cloud will get around that type of trouble. Maybe not.

Onlive is not the only Cloud based gameing service coming out. David Perry is also about to launch his vision of cloud gaming.

Will he be able to get it right? Time will tell.