TOP 5 REASONS WHY ONLIVE MIGHT FAIL

The OnLive service was revealed last week at GDC 2009 (Game Developers Conference). This service looks very promising. It will allow you to play games using a simple web browser on your computer or using their MicroConsole on your TV. And no, despite the fact that they named their service OnLive, similar to Microsoft's Xbox Live service and they named their console MicroConsole, similar to Microsoft, this company has nothing to do with Microsoft. I am not into the whole lawyer stuff (pretty much hate it in fact) but I can smell the lawsuit coming...

The way I see it, this service has 1 great advantage over our current gaming setups. You would need to upgrade your expensive high end PC every month to be able to play to the latest games with decent graphic settings. While I don't think it it likely to happen, if consoles were to be supported, you would not have to buy an Xbox 360, a PS3, and a Wii to be able to play to all the exclusive games: a simple OnLive account would be enough.

Sadly this is the only advantage I can see. On the other hand, I can find many negative consequences that are, in my opinion, deal breakers. So here are my top 5 reasons why OnLive might fail.

5. Stability of the Service
I don't really like to rely totally on an external service. If you have a problem with your internet connection, OnLive will not be available. If OnLive is down for maintenance or technical reasons, you will not be able to play to any games. OnLive will probably require a complex infrastructure to run (you need high processing power to run all these games and do real time HD video encoding as well as major bandwidth to send all this data) and it is likely to go down a few times. If you look at major multiplayer games like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, you will remember that at launch, so many players wanted to play that the servers of Microsoft and Sony were slow (Microsoft and Sony are not small companies with crappy servers...). And these servers only handled the game connections, they didn't run the entire games and stream 5 mbps video to every player...

4. Video Quality
Everybody likes high video quality (except Wii players...). The current consoles (Xbox 360 and PS3) and PC can deliver awesome HD graphics. They deliver it directly and uncompressed to your monitor or TV. OnLive cannot do that. It has to compress the video (5 mbps rate for HD) and it has to do it in real-time so the quality cannot be as good. Furthermore it seems that HD will be limited to 720p so no support for 1080i or 1080p. If you were lucky enough to compare HD cable or satellite video quality to Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, you noticed that while both are HD, the quality is far from being the same: cable and satellite are not as good.

3. Limited Games
Don't get me wrong, the list of games available for a new service such as this one is really impressive. Major developers support OnLive and the list includes games such as Burnout Paradise, Tomb Raider Underworld, Hawx, Fear 2, GRID, Crysis Warhead, Lego Batman, Unreal Tournament 3, Mirror's Edge, Bioshock... Unfortunately, that is still a very small list if you compare it to every game available on PC. If your game is not supported, you are pretty much stuck and will have to forget about it. Otherwise you would also need a gaming PC on top of the OnLive service, which pretty much defeats the whole purpose of having an OnLive account...

You are also likely to get a limited experience with those games. Many games support user software content (mods) and hardware add-ons such as my D-BOX Motion Platform or Philips amBX. I highly doubt you will be able to install those cool Unreal Tournament 3 mods or use you D-BOX motion system in GRID or Crysis Warhead if you use the OnLive version of these games.

2. High End Internet Connection
OnLive allows you not to need a high end PC but it replaces that requirement for a high end internet connection. You will need a very good internet connection (not something that every gamer has or even has access to) to be able to use the service. For HD gaming you will need a connection that can receive 5 mbps continuously. You also need an internet provider that doesn't impose crazy download limits since OnLive swallows 2.5 gig of download for each hour of play.

1. Unresponsive Controls
Controls are a major element of any game and responsive controls are very important to appreciate the game. On the other hand unresponsive controls can really frustrate gamers. How annoying would it be in a FPS to shoot an enemy but to be killed because of the delayed controls? You probably already experienced a similar effect in a multiplayer game if your connection was bad... and you likely left the game. This issue is even more obvious with games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band. These types of game would definitely not be possible on a remote service like OnLive. I don't care what algorithm you use to try to diminish the effects of lag: you will experience delays, even using a good internet connection. You cannot tell me that the control response on a system that will be a few miles away from me can be as good as the response on my PC or console that are a few feet away from me... You also need to add to that equation the fact that the service needs to encode video before streaming it. This will add another delay because of the processing time required to encode it.

Conclusion
In the end, will the OnLive service be worth it? Only time will tell. If it works perfectly (which I don't believe is possible with the current hardware and connectivity) and gets support from game developers, it could be awesome for PC players that have great internet connections.

But on the other end, if you simply want to play without having to spend a fortune upgrading your PC every month you can simply buy a console. It costs between $200 (Xbox 360) to $500 (160 gig PS3) and is supposed to last 5 to 10 years... No need to dedicate your internet connection to it, no need to worry about availability of games, no need to worry about unresponsive controls...