I'm skeptical that the microconsole would somehow stream at a higher resolution than the PC version. That's suggesting that the bottleneck is the computer.

Still, as of late, the streaming is much higher quality than it looked in the beta, where it was a bit blurry and noticeable darker.

It's the Netflix thing. When HD first premiered on Netflix, they kept it on consoles before they brought it to the PC version, because they knew the console people would have HDTVs.

I'm not disagreeing it offers "near HD" quality, I am saying that equating that to "at least as good as a high-end gaming PC" is insane.

Yes, but this isn't targeted at people who have a high-end gaming PC.

Also, the cost of a high-end gaming rig is way higher than the cost of the microconsole + subscription.

That's true. But he was replying to a post claiming that On Live was "at least equivalent to playing the game on a high-end PC".

Can On Live graphics even compare to those generated by a 9400 GT?

No, I don't think so, but just the graphics card starts from around $42. To that you need to add a processor, a motherboard, some RAM, a screen, HDDs, etc.

Yet again, those who will get this most likely won't be the people with dedicated gaming rigs; they'll be people like me who do most of their work on a laptop which can't play new releases without issues, console gamers who want to play some PC games without the cost associated with getting a (new) machine to play those games and so on.
US only for now. Theoretically you can play even from outside the US but it detects that the connection latency is too high and won't allow you to do so.

And most of those people have the $200 for a gaming console, which is more or less the same thing without the internet requirement, compression, lag and lack of ownership.

I'm not saying there isn't a market for it, don't get me wrong. There are definitely people out there without an HD console or a gaming PC who will be intrigued by this idea, I'm just saying the market is likely very small. That's why I think Gakai's idea of focusing on rentals and demos is more logical.

I never understood why they didn't do that from the beginning, a renting service where you have to "buy" your games and pay a subscription was beyond stupid.

That said every single atoms of my body still hate this service with a passion and I am still convinced that similar services will harm/destroy what remains of PC gaming in a not so distant future...

This would be interesting if GameTap didn't already exist doing the same sort of thing but with a selection at least 50 times bigger. That's on top of the obvious advantages of GameTap running games natively, supporting modding, offering classic console and arcade games, being available in several countries (as either GameTap or Metaboli), and working on any internet connection; I've used GameTap in New Zealand, which isn't even on a supported continent (let alone near a data centre), and the experience was flawless.

Note that the subscription is only available to owners of the $100 "microconsole". Additionally, most of their library isn't available through the subscription which means you're stuck with either having a lousy selection or paying for some games separately for the highest rental period. The "Full PlayPass" costs as much as a retail copy but expires after three years, and of course you can't buy used or trade in games like with any real console.

Regardless of how you get into OnLive it's only cheaper for the initial outlay; over the life of the system it's much more expensive, and the three-year cut-off combined with the intangibility of everything means you're left with nothing at the end of it. Many gamers still fondly treasure their NES or Genesis and pull it out occasionally to relive the good times, and this will happen one day with the current-gen consoles; with OnLive all you'll be left with is a worthless box that does nothing and an ugly, uncomfortable controller that doesn't work with anything else.

You are assuming that they will never extend the subscription service to PCs, that they will not be expanding it to include a lot more games and that there aren't more gamers already comfortable with "the cloud" than those that aren't.

This is only the initial beta test of the subscription service, it stands to reason that they are not testing the marketability of the product (though I'm sure that's part of it), they are focusing on the technical aspects. Once those are ironed out, they are just as likely to offer it to the larger OnLive membership as they are to leave only on the "console". The entire OnLive game library is not all that large to begin with, but they already have agreements with almost all the big publishers, so you know that library will be expanding. As for the collectors, I know far more gamers who buy a game, play it for a week or two, then trade it in toward credit on another game than those who lovingly treasure their old games. Even with whatever credit they might have gotten from a returned game, it is still waaaaay more expensive to keep buying and trading in that it would be to pay OnLive $10 a month to play whatever they want on the service.

The three-year cut-off isn't them saying they'll absolutely, positively cut off access to those games after that time period. That was most likely written to save them from litigation if they happen to go out of business. And the great thing about OnLive is that because it will be here to stay, you won't have to buy console after console after console; you'll just have that one box that continues to update server-side with the latest and greatest graphics. As for "ugly, uncomfortable controller," have you actually used it? It's far from uncomfortable; it feels like an excellent cross between a 360 and PS3 controller. And even if you don't like the controller, you can plug in a 360 controller and use that instead. Hell, you can even plug your mouse and keyboard into the box!

As for "used games", we won't have those soon anyway. At the rate the market is moving, pretty soon all of our games will be permanently tied to our account or system, and you can say goodbye to trading or selling games.

The selection will grow bigger, and they have some of the biggest publishers on their side. Gametap is a dying breed, because their service is shit, and they've been dropped by plenty of publishers after Time Warner gave up on them.

Weird. I tried it, got the message about too high connection latency, but was allowed to connect and play demos anyway.

Yes, they can generate it, the problem though isn't generating it, the problem is that in much of America the net connections suck. At it's best the detail is pretty similar to what I'm getting with my 9400 GT. The problem though is that my ISP is run by incompetent jack wagons that don't provide much stability. Latency is a serious problem with Qwest and often times the bandwidth I get seems to be mysteriously less than what I'm paying for.

But, when the stars aline and it's as good as the connection can handle it's definitely competitive with that particular card. Just slightly fuzzier due to the compression codec being used.

The bigger issue is the latency and unfortunately for some of us the ISP introduces 32ms of latency for error correction. As far as I can tell none of the other ISPs are any better.

I'm getting the mini console thing, should be here on Monday. They made me an offer I couldn't refuse. $9.99 for shipping without any strings attached.
That's my biggest problem with the service. I'd probably look at the ISP. Mine adds 32ms to the first hop for error correction and Comcast seems to end up with similar problems. Fortunately, I'm living very close to a major backbone and so I'm still able to use the service, but there are days when it's basically unplayable because of my crappy ISP.

Um, detail has nothing to do with "net connection." A 720p video of Crysis on Low and a 720p video of Crysis on Very High with 32xAA will have the same amount of bandwidth.