I was going to ask the PC Warrior if he is always a jerk or just today, but I figured it out by browsing his post history. I'm not a shill, I'm just not a technological idiot.
As for my experience with OnLive, no, latency isn't the problem. But there are problems. If you know a lot about game engine development and technology, you would have known that latency wasn't going to be the problem for their target audience.
Though when I say no problem with latency, I mean comparable to how a game would play locally with a wireless mouse and a slow LCD monitor. I gamed for awhile like that, back when LCD monitors were cutting edge. I know that's not acceptable to you guys, but to many people, it'd be fine.
But there are plenty problems that are keeping this platform back. Just not latency. It's pure old bandwidth. 8 PM tonight, I tried playing and my screen kept on going blurry. I speedtested my connection and it was fine. My controls weren't becoming laggy, they just didn't have the bandwidth to keep pumping out the high quality screens on their server farm. 8 PM is probably the highest traffic time. They have to be able to handle the highest traffic.
Also, the frame rate is rather low. So when I tried to change the mouse sensitivity, I started to become motion sick because of all the skipping due to the low frame rate. It seems they optimized the smoothness of the game to the default sensitivity. I guess if you are using a controller, it would be fine, but with a mouse I like to jack things up.
Bottom line, if they are going to charge retail prices, they have to provide a comparable experience. Right now, it is not. So I won't be buying any games from them.
What I will do is use my free year to use the system as a demo system. That way I don't have to worry about some demo rootkit.
Will I pay $5/month for a demo platform? Well, some people pay that for Fileplanet access. I'm not sure I would. We'll have to see. Knowing me, I'll probably just say screw it and go back to console gaming. We'll see in a year.
But publishers would be stupid not to get their games on this system. Great exposure, and no loss of control of their IP. Plus, they get to charge full price. Maybe they won't see extra sales on this platform, but I'm going to be buying some games only because I demo'd them on OnLive. I wouldn't have demo'd them otherwise. And I haven't bought a PC game in I don't know how long. They have nothing to lose.
As for total cost, that PC Warrior was referring to, if it were a comparable alternative to a console or PC (right now it's not) then $5/month would of course make sense compared to spending $300 on a console or video card. Though maybe he's math challenged. Unfortunately, OnLive needs to invest more in their server farms and increase their capacity to handle the high level mark.s{
This comment was edited on Jun 22, 2010, 04:14.