I can see developers and publishers praying for this tech to work, understandably. It will change the way games are played (and purchased) forever if it does methinks.

But one problem...we don't have internet connections that fast at a minimal. This generation of gaming has spoiled me. My games have to be in HD at all times. The other thing is that I don't like playing every game on my PC. Will there be some type of set top box for basic TV connections, or will this feature be intergrated within some TV sets. Like I said sounds cool, but some logistics need to be worked out. Also, it would be cool if one of the major game companies, MS, Sony, would pick up on this feature.

This will get picked up by every major developer and publisher as it will abolish game piracy, costly hardware upgrades and second hand retail all of which damage a games potential mark up, i think its a great idea and if it isn't too expensive it could save the consumer a small fortune too!! Just think no more graphics card upgrades every few months and you can still play the latest titles. Lets just hope us UK punters will have decent internet connections by then.

So how is your target audience, males 18-30, going to play their games when they are sent to an area with lacking or no internet at all? Plus in the United States we don't have the bandwidth speeds everywhere yet and Comcast has given us a cap to work under.

Oh wow this is awsome!! hope it turns out great!! cant wait for it to come out! and yea i like playing in HD too.

This sounds like a wonjderful idea, but it has massive issues.

Firstly, the only regon that has this level of broadband connectivity as standard is the far east - Koria and Japan, as we will be needing 20mb+ bandwidth SUSTAINABLE, rather than 20mb peek, which is what Virgin delivers (hell, they all deliver peek rather than continous), meaning that frequently on my connection of 8mb I get a 2mb speed. At peek time. When this service would be most used. Ooops.

Secondly is the issue of latency. Even with a latency of 30ms you can notice the lag on a remote desktop connection, and since the standard ping to google.co.uk from both manchester and Portsmouth is around 120ms, we are talking serious issues.

Then we have the issues surounding the OS that the software is going to run on - if they are going to run it on Windows, then the costs are extortionate. If they are going to run it through Linux, then they need to port all of the games to that platform (not going to happen for standard users - EA still refutes that there are gamers running Linux).

Then we come on to the issue of the massive ammounts of server hardware that this will need. The numbers are HUGE, especialy when compaired to the standard costs of say, hoasting a web server - A standard server in co-location costs £200 a month with next to no bandwidth (which this will chew through) and only a 2U space, with the cost of a small grade server costing in the reagon of £600 from Dell. The way this balences out to give a decent cost for the user is that they take the server and place virtual machines ontop of the server hardwear, with software such as ESX or VMware, breaking the one server's power up into 10 or 12 servers for a high level webserver, or anything upto 50 for people who want a blog or two. This service will require HUNDEREDS of servers, with an even higher co-location cost, meaning this will cost the user an extortionate amount. The kind of cost that would buy you a damn good gaming rig in a year and a half (considering that you can build a decent rig for somewhere in the reagon of £400).

The other issue is the ownership of the games that you are playing. Do you buy a licence? What if the company goes down? What if your acount gets deleated by your child by mistake (thease things happen)? What if you get a new computer? Is the username for the service useable on more than one machine? If the games are pay-per-play, isn't that going to cost the user a small fortune? Or are the games going to work on a lease-hire format, where you pay untill you have paid 115% of the game's licence cost or so?

It's not that I don't want this serice to work - I do. I just don't want it to become another massive sink of money that curls up and dies, along with my money and my games licences...

Yes, there will be an adapter that hooks up to the TV that they already announced (it even has HDMI output). It's called the MicroConsole. But I agree... if my games don't put out in 1080p, I feel they are inadequate... and where I live my internet has CONSTANT issues, so I'd be afraid that the resolution would drop down to SD way too often.

They seem to have all these bases covered for all of the issues. It seems like a crazy idea but they have invested in servers etc so we'll see what happens when this launches.

Maybe some giant conglomo will come in and buy the service to become an instant videogame platform holder i.e Google, Yahoo, Dell, Cisco who knows. It all looks very interesting especially if it will allow me to play the latest titles on my Mac which as we know lack games.

Isn't StreamMygame.com already doing this for a while now. I've seen demos of Crysis streamed to an EeePC

I don't think that this is about the high-end (even though they showed off Crysis). It's about the audience that plays on the Wii, the Iphone, the web.

So hardcore gamers (a declining percentage of all gamers) can still spend mony on their kickass rigs.

The rest of us will have a service much more similar to TV (whether free like Quake Live or subscription like OnLive) to play.

Which will open up our hobby to a much wider audience, and (if this isn't vapourware, and I have some doubts) would only be a good thing.

Like most people I think the concept is a nice idea and do think that that is where games are headed.

Unfortunatly I am concerned about this and hope it does not pass in the near future. Like most new concepts it usually starts on shaky ground with crappy start up. We have something amazing with this HD video game system we currently have and have had only one round of systems to test that market. They should continue pushing the HD/computer type video game consoles for one or two more systems then we can see where this onlive will go. Again It just seriously concerns me that, like most start ups, it just won't be "good enough" for what our current system is giving us. I hope it is still at least 5 years in the making

Its sounds good for developers but not for the industry in general. Games are not only about sitting near some small monitor and play some SD game. Considering what current HD consoles are offering, games are more than just that.

If the consoles are gone, the downloadable space like PSN, XBL arcade, and Wiiware will be gone. It will make it harder for smaller indie devs to get the exposure they would get otherwise. Also, the connection speeds are still not there yet. Maybe the U.S will be ready in 5 years time, but what about the rest of the world?

The OnLive demo was impressive, but raised far more questions than it answered. The main one is how it scales; its all very well talking about "the cloud", but that's still a bunch of servers somewhere, and as gaming is highly lag dependent, its critical to understand where those servers are. I could see this being a huge opportunity for the telcos to put this inside their networks for instance.

The other concern I have is competition; there's already evidence in the download space that the expected price transformation through cutting out retail hasn't happened (have you SEEN the prices on Steam for instance?) and I believe this is largely due to a lack of competitive offerings. If OnLive became some kind of monolithic delivery platform, consumer choice could suffer.

Definitely interesting, but lots of "buts".

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