That's terrible!
Until now, I thought that it was a "pay the monthly fee to rent streamed, unlimited games" sort of deal. This seems like a horrible scam now.

Yeah, it is pretty dumb: pay a monthly fee just to access the service, then on top of that either buy the games at near full price or purchase a 3 or 5 day rental of the game ($4.99 and $6.99 respectively), otherwise all you get is a time-limited demo of the game.

Good thing it had a trial. Now makes me wonder if gakai has the same scheme.

I really tried to give Onlive a chance, I tried it out for the 1 dollar game deal. I could rent a game for 3 years, but would never pay more then 2 dollars to rent ever. So I decide I didn't want them to have my card info and the only way to remove it is close my account. To close your account you have to send support "ask a question" wow I can add a credit card anytime via the website but remove you got to jump through hoops to do it. Reminds me of Xbox, playing little games to remove a payment option but to add one it works flawlessly. These company's don't realize that when they play these little games with peoples Credit cards to make it more difficult to remove it that I hold a grudge and will never use their service again.

I know eventually even steam games will get outdated and I am ok with that. I have some win 95 pc games I cant play anymore. I was going to use Onlive if they had some good deals but I guess for me having to have a credit card on file or close my account pushed me toward my decision of not using them at all. in a few years when my 360 dies, I do not plan on replacing it so I am in the market for a new console down the road. Looks like PS3 for me.

That's a very silly comment, it doesn't matter if he paid 1$ or 1000$ in the end he was still a customer, if they considered that 1$ wasn't enough to provide basic customer service they shouldn't have made this offer in the first place.

No that doesn't guarantee anything, if the service die or if they lock your account you still lose everything, three years or not. At the very least with Steam you can always use cracks, something you don't have the leisure to do with OnLive games.

good old On-Leash ...

It's not silly in the slightest bit. If he's that off put by that one detail it's pretty clear that they wouldn't have made any money off his business regardless of how good the service was. The whole notion that the customer is always right really doesn't apply in all situations. Many stores don't provide the ability to remove ones credit card details at all.

Ultimately, this isn't basic customer service at this time.
I've covered that in the past, doing that is a felony in the US, you might as well just pirate the copy. I realize that there's plenty of trolls out there, but at the end of the day, it's a much stronger guarantee than what you'll find anywhere else.

Including cracks is really not a point in Steam's favor, you might as well just download the entire game illicitly if you're going to stoop to that level. No guarantees that the game will even run at that point though, it's hardly unheard of for Steam games to not run on new hardware.

It's a service, I take it that you don't need it, but the play pass is a hell of a good deal. I personally don't buy games from them, but all this paranoia being applied unevenly is just pathetic. Steam has abused it's position in the past and you're whining about specific limitations in the technology which are ultimately somewhat less evil than the competition. Or the possibility that onLive will abuse its agreement in the future. I'm not aware of them doing so up until now, and I'll reevaluate if that comes to pass in the future.

The service does have limitations, but let's get real. You save a bunch of money by not having to buy a new console for a few AA games, ultimately if they do go tits up at 3 years you've still saved enough money to buy the games again at a heavy discount. I'm sure for people that buy all of the current releases it's not a good deal, but those people were never the target audience in the first place.

The only situation where I can see it being as bad as you seem to think it is would be if the service goes out of service a few months after you buy a game, in which case you would be legitimately screwed.
lol, you mean the same PS3 from the same Sony that couldn't even secure its own network? The same one that all that credit card information for no particular reason?

http://www.dailytech.com/Sony+to+PS3+PSP+Owners+Your+Credit+Card+Info+May+Have+Been+Stolen+Good+Luck/article21475.htm

I believe that they have since remedied the situation, but Sony itself isn't somebody that I personally would trust with that sort of information.

I really don't see any paranoia in what I said. All that i said is you can only keep a game you buy for 3 years ( or its guaranteed) so to me that's like renting a game for a while. I personally don't like company's to have MY credit card on file unless they earn my trust. All i was saying is how I felt about the experience of having to choose leaving MY credit card info with them or closing my account. So they are saying I have to or I lose access to something I paid for, i think that's not right.

It was my understanding he'd already paid, so yes they did make money off him.

They keep giving away free "consoles" at gaming events if you sign up for a trial (where console means receiver + controller) so I think quite a few people who are otherwise hardcore have it.

They keep touting a free library (like Netflix's streaming) but it sounds like it really sucks and has few games on it.

It should work like steam imo.

Buy a game, you own it (well, like on steam), you can download it, backup it, offline mode it. or if your computer could not handle it you can use onlive method with monthly subscription of 10 bucks. or maybe you can buy hours like 10 hours for 1.49?

only then in my personal opinion the system can work. You can't expect people to hand out 50 bucks then subscription on top and they won't be able to play their games in 2 years time. Especially that with time, people have to upgrade their computers which then will handle the rig-killers of today.

I think "cloud gaming" is still trying find its place and pricing scheme. Especially if there is more competition and more customers to the system, maybe they'll change to the Spotify pricing model, ie. "pay monthly fee to access the whole database".

But still, I think the whole service is a bit contradictory. On the other hand, they say it is great for casual gamers who'd buy only very few games, hence wouldn't want to use money to buy new gaming hardware (console or PC).

First of all, I have hard time believing such super casual gamer would want to open a monthly subscription either, even if it feels affordable. It is a bit similar argument as if a person (like me) who buys new music very seldom would want to open a Spotify Premium subscription in order to listen to only certain few pieces, or I wanted to get a cable movie channel just to watch a movie once in a blue moon (even if it meant I wouldn't have to buy a Blueray player and "save" money on hardware that way).

But maybe more importantly, is there really a big market for games for non-gamers to begin with? Ok, there was The Sims which apparently attracted many non-gamers (like girls), but in general I feel it takes some dedication to be a gamer, so in general either you buy (and play) quite a few games, or non at all. Gaming is not quite a similar non-activity like watching a movie or buying a new album because there was a Pink Floyd re-release, even if many games are nowadays simple movielike QTE games for the masses.

Wouldn't such casual gamers rather just play some odd free Facebook game, or Minesweeper, to quench their occasional and faint gaming needs? On the other hand those who are heavier in gaming probably are more ok with spending at least a few hundred $ on a new console.

Time will tell...

And considering you can't use bargain bins or "daily deals" from various distribution sites.it will cost you more than the hardware in the long run. A new PS3 is nowadays only $ 250, which boils down to 5 new releases.

I'm guessing On live goes belly up within the next two years.