Yikes, people are awfully hostile. I like the idea of the service for 2 reasons 1) it helps those without a strong computer and 2) the ability to 'rent' games for a few days for cheap appeals to me. For many games, 3-5 days is plenty of time to complete them. Many of these games I would normally not buy, so I save my money for things that will last awhile, or are absolutely top-notch games. However, games like the Kane and Lynch or Splinter Cell: Conviction, which I wouldn't pay to own, are suddenly attractive options for just 6 or 9 bucks. To me, that opens up gaming experiences I normally wouldn't have.

Now, I'll stop short of defending the site completely, since if I'm going own a game, I wouldn't feel comfortable getting it from OnLive, especially given its uncertain future at this moment. I don't really worry about something like Steam going bankrupt, but for now OnLive seems a little risky to invest in a full purchase.

What's On-Live ????

; )

Wait, what?

Only a matter of time. But hopefully it means more people will use it.

It's not really any worse, but the service is much less reliable and the company much less likely to be around for long. I don't like Steam because of the "you never own anything only a service" crap either, but at least I know Valve is going to be around a long time and since I own a box for the game I can crack it when Steam goes down and have some legal protection.

Don't give a crap. I want to buy my games, not rent them and play it on someone else's machine.

i'll try it i guess free makes me curious unless i gotta give them my birth certificate address and social security number just to log in then they can kiss my ass

Even if you just have a download, you can still crack it and play it without any service. But with Onlive, you can't even do that. So I do hope that this service goes straight to hell.

OnLive doesn't even make sense from the technical side of things, since not many potential users meet the requirements for it. So you've already introduced a service that only a fraction of potential users can actually use. And everyone knows that, so you're also asking people to trust that you will somehow survive long enough for their money not to be wasted. Good luck with that.

Naive. Ignorant. Sarcasm?

OnLive needs to suffocate.

This is an interesting development. I'd still like to see OnLive die, of course, but at least this way their business model has a chance (however slim that may be). I do wonder if this was their plan all along and they just wanted to see if players would be stupid enough to fall for it (much like how Games for Windows Live originally required a paid Gold account for multiplayer and other online features, just like the Xbox, and only became free once Microsoft realised PC gamers wouldn't accept this). Removing subscriptions has also gained them some free media attention and makes the service sound like slightly less of a rip-off.

Even with this change they are still dangerously close to becoming irrelevant compared to more traditional services, however, especially when you consider that many can't run the client at all due to their computer and/or internet connection not being fast enough for its greedy demands (which leads to awkward situations such as being able to run things like The Sims 2 or World of Goo locally just fine but being refused access to the OnLive versions of the very same games).

Even once their fabled "microconsole" box does become available that just means it will be competing with three very successful, well-established consoles, and while its initial price is lower the identically-priced games, total absence of exclusives (aside from, er, Crysis?) and greedy internet usage will mean the typical customer won't even consider it.

Hmmm You can't imagine that the world without some kind of businesses could be better? Weapons or cheap annoying ringtones... should never ever go out of business too?

Actually I will not use onlive for the next years, but if anybody wants to, be free. Only monthly subscription fee surely don't work unless its a flat fee for playing whatever you want.

Wait, let me get this straight: you had to not only buy the games but ALSO pay for a subscription on top? Why? So what were you paying the subscription for? And it wasn't even finished when they were charging this subscription? Cash grab.

for a service for online to work for an average person I think it would take at least another 10-20 years. I might be wrong but so far it seems that it will not be worth playing old games in bad youtube quality, when you can just buy a good pc and have no problems