[citation][nom]caedenv[/nom]it is one thing to pay $8 a month for movie streaming where you can get through bulk content very quickly (and without commercials on most sites), or music streaming services which get you CD or better quality where you can listen to much more music than you could possibly purchase. Even online media purchases (not rentals) like Amazon.com are great because you get your content DRM free for a decent price, so even if (God forbid) Amazon were to fold up and go home, I would still have access to my music purchased, though the online cloud player and other perks would disappear.I keep away from services like OnLive for 3 reasons:1) if the company were to fold, I would have no recourse (thankfully this folding is being well done, but there is no guarentee that the next one will), and I would have to purchase and start over on the games I was playing2) while the lag is bareable where I live, it is still lag and does not compair to a local expierence. Amazing tech... but seariously not ready for prime time yet, and they need to better distribute their servers.3) while the price is not bad, I dobut I would get through enough games in order to make such a service worth it to me. I tend to get a game, sit down and play it for 2-3 days, then life happens and I can't sit and enjoy the game again for another 2-3 weeks, typically taking 3-4 months to beat a normal game, and a year+ to beat something like skyrim. Perhaps I would feel differently if I had a POS computer, but as I already have my hardware costs sorted, it is much cheaper for me to wait till a game is 6mo to a year old, and then pick up a GOTY edition on sale, or wait for Steam to have a good sale.Besides... once you buy minecraft you really don't need any other games[/citation]
onlive would have worked better as a part retail part service, if they partnered with steam, and any game sold on onlive could be played locally, or god forbid, you cant play it locally so you need to play through onlive.
or at least in the event of closure, any game you own you get a redeamable key for steam, just so you dont lose out.
[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]Their problem is twofold:1) they started this in the US where there are silly things like download caps and people not having an Internet connection 100% of the time. This kind of thing would work better in Seoul, Tokyo and places like that.2) they started this in a world where games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Cityville pass for interactive entertainment.I'm not really obsessed with "owning" games, it's just a game and if one company goes down, you can move to another, no big deal (hopefully you can transfer your saves). Imagine a game coming out that requires a $600 GPU, a $150 PSU and a $200 CPU to play well, but you can instead play it on a Celeron through a service like OnLive for like $0.5 a day. That would be a good deal, right?[/citation]
problem is that in Asian countries, most pc games they care about can be ran off of a intergrated intel. and the ones that cant, they would never accept the lag because of it, compound that with computer cafes where they have higher end rigs to play those games on being a normal thing.
but lets also take your argument.
say
but lets go at this from this angle. i have a 100$ psu that is a 700 watt 80+silver from crousar (sp) that will power damn near anything even most dual gpu setups. and a decent psu is the bare minimum you should have in your computer. now on the cpu side, currently there are no games that require a i7 to play well if decently programmed, and by that i mean cant pull at least 30fps on a decent gpu.
for the cpu, you have the phenom II line, which even the higher end ones are around 100$ i like having 4 cores apposed to 2 cores and 2 theads, a p4 with threads kind of made me never want to rely on threads ever again. and a mother board would be around 100$ for it too. than come in with a 5770 quality gpu, and wow, you got something that can play almost every game you throw at it with close to maxed settings, minus maxed shadows, and dx11 features. in every game i played though, the difference between max and what i set it to isnt noticeable during game play, i have to go out of my way to look for the seams. so i basicly just built a whole gaming computer on your gpu budget alone. lets also not forget that if you are willing to spend the money, a 7970 can be found for 350$ often enough, only reason i didnt pick that up was i really want to hold off till the next gen consoles specs are set in stone.
[citation][nom]atikkur[/nom]you can gaming decently with $300 GPU , $70 PSU, $200 CPU. with cloud gaming you need super high quality internet connection with no caps data plan.. in my country it costs $90/month (2mbps/DSL/no caps).. in 7 months cloud gaming,, you already spent 1 decent upgrade cost gaming machine.[/citation]
drop that gpu to about 150$, very few games push a mid range card, and even when they do, reduced detail to get them over 30fps (in to 60 if you really want) wont be noticeable most of the time in gameplay.
[citation][nom]olaf[/nom]damn it ... cloud gamming needs to die, period, i want my own pc, i don't want lag, and if i chose to play something in single player i don't want it to be internet dependent ...[/citation]
it has its place, its just the place isnt replacing the computer, but offering rentals or full game demos (not a slice of the game, but 1 hour to screw around in a game as much as you want from the begining).
[citation][nom]alxianthelast[/nom]It is an argument that makes an internet connection the back bone of your home entertainment system. If you don't mind connecting to a service that isn't quite on the level of consoles.. or if it exceeds the quality of a home computer (allowing you to run games your PC or laptop can't).. then it is worth it and will eventually spell the demise of dedicated disk reader based consoles. There's another argument that streaming the game to a console/set-top-box or PC that runs a client so that you can have a power CPU and GPU, gobs of ram and the OS of your choice, so that the online service is mainly for DRM, content distribution and customer service, community contact.. then lag, resolution.. mods etc are less of an issue for the average gamer. It is sad that OnLive didn't go that route and ensure that the game could gracefully deal with disconnections, and still function while offline for long periods... but what can you do (if you're EA you could keep upgrading Origin to work that way...)[/citation]
it was higher quality than consoles, but there are artifacts in gameplay... its kind of a wash really.