OnLive to launch in June, $15 / month. | Hacker News Reader

OnLive to launch in June, $15 / month.

develop-online.net

12 pointspclark9 comments

I'm definitely going to try this out. It could easily let me keep my old laptop instead of upgrading to a desktop + ipad. Ohh, and touch based games with killer graphics on the ipad are going to be awesome.

This is all assuming OnLive works as advertised. It could easily be much worse in practice.

At first I was under the impression that the subscription would cover the cost of the games, much like netflix does for movies. It sounds like this is not the case so forking over 15/month doesn't sound like such a good deal.

Sounds like a pretty good deal to me (assuming the technology works).

Why?

If you have to buy the console and the games, and they're priced similary to other offers, the monthly $15 would buy you, I guess, the same as Xbox Live, the online experience/friends/matches (which people do pay, afterall).

Now if the OnLive "console" (receiver?) is cheaper, it's a different story...

Millions do it for XBox live. I do.

With Xbox Live you're getting something for your money that you otherwise would not have - social networking capabilities, multiplayer matchmaking, etc.

With this... all you're getting for your $15 is the privilege of playing games that would otherwise not cost extra to play on other platforms.

It's a little bit like the Steam argument - Steam DRM is "worth it" because it confers features you wouldn't have otherwise (no more disc juggling, serial numbers to remember, etc), whereas normal DRM is just pointless.

Yes they do, that is true however I was assuming the value proposition for onlive involved greater/cheaper access to games and not simply the low hardware requirements.

xbox live is also much cheaper and isn't required for single player games. An xbox arcade is 170.00 dollars new - the same price as 11 month of the onlive service and you don't have to maintain a subscription to keep access to the games you have bought, yet you have the same advantages as onlive in terms of not having to upgrade your hardware every year to play the latest game.

Still find it hard to see how this won't have horrendous lag on the input?

Smart datacenter placement and video encryption algorithms tuned to their problem mitigate this somewhat, but it's going to be an uphill battle for them.

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