Onlive launched last week in the UK and in a promotion deal with BT (one of the major broadband/phone providers) who I’m with I decided to give it a go. It’s an interesting idea, rather than downloading games to your PC you log into a client and play the games online, that is you run the game on the Onlive server and the only connection between your computer and it is your internet (so it doesn’t matter what the specs of the game are, you can play them because the server is running them rather than your computer, so hardware isn’t a limiting factor).
The ups: there’s a great library of games, specifically within the bundle I get access to as part of the promotion there’s something ridiculous like 100+ games which I can essentially play for free within the first three months. Even when the promotion expires the Onlive service is only £6.99 a month, hardly expensive. There are also stand alone games that you can play and you can do a 30 minute trial which is awesome - I wanted to try Space Marine and seconds later I was playing the game, woot! After your trial you can buy the game, either in full (where you own a licence but still need Onlive to play) or you can buy a pass for a day, week or month if you don’t think you want it for that long. Interesting business model.
The downs: OH. MY. GOD. For a service that depends on you being able to connect to it through the net reliably the system is incredibly unstable. I’m constantly experiencing massive slowdowns and being booted off the service because it says my network has become unstable, and I don’t know if that’s my broadband, the service itself or just too many people playing at one time. It’s reached the point where I’ve given up the notion of playing any game that doesn’t have very regular save points/ability because I can’t bank on having extended play, it could just collapse at any minute. Not good. Furthermore even if it doesn’t break down entirely if you get some bad connection the fidelity of the game degrades and you’re playing through a blurry view which isn’t fun.
So on the whole I think it’s worth a go, if you get a better and more reliable service than me you might not have the same issues as me, but I don’t know. I’m dissatisfied enough with the service to not want to buy it when the promotion expires, and to be honest I think I’ll give up logging in to play games as I just can’t get a reliable gaming experience. I would probably use it to give games a try before buying, but then get them in a more conventional way through Steam or something.
Anyone else tried it? I think it’s a great concept and maybe even the way forward for games, but as it works now not viable.