I'm excited. My PC isn't really something I'd play games on. Hopefully OnLive will pull off just what I want in a reasonable time. They say the lag is a millisecond. That's .0001 seconds, which they say isn't at all noticeable to the human eye. We will see.

Cloud computing is the future regardless if onlive succeeds

They did say that they had come up with some type of new compression method as some of you mentioned. Also, I believe the only place in the US that doesn't get service is northern Montana, but obviously everywhere else in the world is out of luck for now (or are they?). Plus, when are they actually going to get this thing off the ground. The site says winter 2009, and they haven't even updated it to say, "Whoops, we messed up. Not winter 09" They just leave it out there to gawk at me. In any case, I guess they could pull it out in the next 3 days, or else they are practically lying.

Signed up for the beta. It is super ambitious and kinda glad to see it come back after not hearing about it for awhile, and it would be interesting to see it in a real life setting. Maybe they have some awesome zero lag technology or maybe it will totally suck. Either way I'm more excited about the idea of OnLive than OnLive the service.

I would never go OnLive. I love my physical format too much to simply go for something completely virtual.

"

 I just have a problem with not actually owning a game.

You never own games. Software only belongs to the person or company that created it - Even if they make copies and you purchase one, all you legally "own" is a license to use it. "

" I just have a problem with not actually owning a game.  If you buy these games and the company goes under or there is licensing agreement problems then your game is gone.  I own over a 100 games and they are mine.  I have no problem paying $5-10 for an arcade game on Live or PSN but I figure if I get 1 or 2 times through the game I got my money's worth but I am not spending more than $20 for ANY game unless I own the physical media to it .  I still occasionally pull out my SNES to play Zelda or an early FInal Fantasy and I assume in 10-15 years I will still occasionally pull out Uncharted or Borderlands or whatever else game I still own.  "

i think OnLive is a neat idea, but I hate the idea of it possibly replacing physical media. I love actually owning my games physically.
 
Also what happens if you purchase a game, and then want to go back and replay it 15 years from now? You can't because its gone from their servers. That sucks =/ Also you can no longer trade or borrow games with friends,which will really suck!

I am skeptical about a few things concerning OnLive.
 
First off are the beforementioned latency and image compression concerns.
 
My next big concern is how the subscription service works, and how OnLive will upgrade their hardware. 15 bucks a month or something sounds pretty appealing for someone who doesn't have a good computer, but anyone who plays PC games knows that PC hardware gets outdated fast. I really doubt that OnLive has the resources (especially at such an early stage) to be able to keep their computers up to date. I don't think it's unreasonable to guess that there might be some sort of premium fee to play on better computers when more demanding games come out, which would make the standard subscription "low settings/performance mode". Given the amount of time it is taking for OnLive to actually get off the ground, their computers are going to be outdated on day one.

" If it delivers, people will buy it. Haven't you learned to not believe the internet's initial reaction to any merchandise? *Cough* MW2 and L4D2 *Cough* "

At this point it is either going to work or not there is no in between bullshit, lag free or it will die.

Even if it theoretically works without the lag, that wouldn't matter to anyone who's stuck with an ISP that throttles bandwidth/imposes stupid caps on monthly usage. Seems to me that there's a lot more standing in the way of OnLive (or any other service like it) than just American broadband speed and availability limitations.

  we know how fast that video can be compressed, we know the quality of quickly compressed video

 I just have a problem with not actually owning a game.

" i really think any conjecture on something this new and untested before it comes out is asinine. No one has any reference to quantify what this thing is going to be like. There are only a handful of people that could even offer up an educated guess howse opinion I trust on this, and it would be shaky at best. The technology that they are talking about could be all hype, or it could be something completely innovative, but that brings us back to my first point of my post really: It's all conjecture. "

i really think any conjecture on something this new and untested before it comes out is asinine. No one has any reference to quantify what this thing is going to be like. There are only a handful of people that could even offer up an educated guess howse opinion I trust on this, and it would be shaky at best. The technology that they are talking about could be all hype, or it could be something completely innovative, but that brings us back to my first point of my post really: It's all conjecture.

yeah I'll be sorry that this magic box won't do shit

i really think any conjecture on something this new and untested before it comes out is asinine. No one has any reference to quantify what this thing is going to be like. There are only a handful of people that could even offer up an educated guess howse opinion I trust on this, and it would be shaky at best. The technology that they are talking about could be all hype, or it could be something completely innovative, but that brings us back to my first point of my post really: It's all conjecture.

Well people who are thinking of maxing out the settings on crappy PC's... you can forget about it.. bcoz the PC still needs to lot of processing to uncompressed etc which crappy PC's cant do fast enough.. It may be nice for the PC with a good processor but unfortunately got stuck with Intel Integrated solution...

The only important thing about onlive, is going to be how far your Internet Service Provider is going to be from The Onlive Server.
 
What they are promising is like cold fusion, anti gravity and transporter beams. Plus bandwidth is going to get more expensive... 
Next gen consoles will probably be 1080p, which translates to really enormous bit rates. While  Onlive will have 720p (as "HD" at best) due to bandwidth restraints.
 
It will work within a smallish radius,  and even then it will still lag behind 40-200ms to the realtime rendered stuff on your home pc/console, and it will be in lower resolution. And subscriptions suck.  
And they can only cover some areas, so there will be always people who feel left out.
 
Odds couldn't be worse for onlive. However you need to know that electrical signals travel close to the speed of light to understand the general skepticism (and the lag problem) in the first place.

To be perfectly honest, the reason I'm not that enthusiastic about Onlive is because I fear change.  Though, I don't think I've ever actually hated on it.  I understand why it's cool and how my fear is silly and that in X years we'll probably all be playing games like this anyways, but it doesn't change the fact that I like things the way they are now.  I like buying consoles and having my game disks sitting on a shelf and having my memory cards and hard drives next to me so I can selfishly guard my save files etc.  
 
I expect that that is why a lot of people hate on it, though, I understand some are just (probably justifiably so) skeptical of it.

Unless you live in Japan or certain parts of Europe, the infrastructure needed for OnLive to work is at least 5 years off. You wanna kid yourself, by all means.

I think it'll be awesome.  I still wonder if the lag will be noticeable though, because even a slight lag means you can't really play competitive games.  It would be pretty awesome to play any game, be it 360, PS3, or PC, at any time and on any system, as long as you're hooked up to the net.

I am very excited for Onlive.

Well since I cant see it rolling out across the world in anywhere like the numbers a console can I doubt its lineup of exclusives is going to be thrilling.  
Exactly how many countries is it planned on being distributed to? How are they planning on taking the US market with its pretty low averages in high speed internet Penetration?  
 
The potential market is small but viable. However I doubt we will be seeing a worldwide distribution. OnLive is likely to be a small market service for those who can afford it and live close enough to the right areas.

" I just have a problem with not actually owning a game.  If you buy these games and the company goes under or there is licensing agreement problems then your game is gone.  I own over a 100 games and they are mine.  I have no problem paying $5-10 for an arcade game on Live or PSN but I figure if I get 1 or 2 times through the game I got my money's worth but I am not spending more than $20 for ANY game unless I own the physical media to it .  I still occasionally pull out my SNES to play Zelda or an early FInal Fantasy and I assume in 10-15 years I will still occasionally pull out Uncharted or Borderlands or whatever else game I still own.  "

Ha, you'll be more sorry if it does work (see other thread).

I just have a problem with not actually owning a game.  If you buy these games and the company goes under or there is licensing agreement problems then your game is gone.  I own over a 100 games and they are mine.  I have no problem paying $5-10 for an arcade game on Live or PSN but I figure if I get 1 or 2 times through the game I got my money's worth but I am not spending more than $20 for ANY game unless I own the physical media to it .  I still occasionally pull out my SNES to play Zelda or an early FInal Fantasy and I assume in 10-15 years I will still occasionally pull out Uncharted or Borderlands or whatever else game I still own. 

The whole concept seems like it will never work properly in some way but if it does it will be pretty cool, especially for people with crappy computers like me.

It will be laggy. It will be slow.

I really, really do hope OnLive works out, because I'd be interested in it. Being able to run damn near anything on maxed settings with this chug-a-lug laptop sounds like a godsend. I just want to see how pretty Dragon Age really is!

 OnLive is a very interesting concept, but the reason I think a lot of people are pessimistic is that it sounds to good to be true. I am excited to see if it manages to pull it off or not, although to be honest I am not getting my hopes up to much. Bandwidth problems aside, there are still other other factors like if they have the resources to support the amount of users on the servers, and how much it would actually cost to run it all, and what if a server would crash or if the power would go out, etc.
 
Let's just say I like the idea and if it works it will offer a great new way to play videogames as well as distribute videogames for a much larger audience. I'm just saying that it might be safe to be a bit pessimistic.

I won't be sorry is OnLive is good... I'll be happy.

Didnt they say something about having to be near there big server farms for it to work properly? Im pretty sure they dont have a server farm in Europe

If it delivers, people will buy it. Haven't you learned to not believe the internet's initial reaction to any merchandise? *Cough* MW2 and L4D2 *Cough*

  I think that if they say they've managed to pull it off with no lag, we should give them a chance.

Yea there's some hate, but there's even more legitimate extreme skepticism.  It's foolish to blindly trust the marketing terms thrown around by PR, and some of the stuff they've claimed is legitimately impossible.  Most of the more relevant things thrown around by the OnLive people have raised extra questions into the economics of such a system (to the user, OnLive itself, and others).
 
There's a lot of people that aren't technologically informed that are just going to sit and hope the tech works right, but there's a lot of real physical barriers involved.  Compression quality vs. image quality.  The way they claim to do their compression is factually impossible (but it may be possible in a more expensive or less efficient way).  Latency is a factual issue when you consider that's latency being added ON TOP of current latency we already have in games (even in their best case scenario claim of 80ms, that's 80ms being added on top of traditional render times and display lag).
 
Basically the critics have it right, there are some real factors to be considered.  OnLive may still come out and be a decent product for what it is, and maybe it will meet with large success.  It won't be the holy grail for everyone, that's for sure.

It could work. I already done the speed tests and just waiting if I can get into the "beta."

People are skeptical because it sounds crazy futuristic.. That being said, the internets are not always the most reliable things in the world. I'd hate to not be able to play a game super well because my brother is on youtube on another computer.  I think it'll catch on but it will be very slow. They've said as much right? Cause they have to build all these big server farms to make them run.

It'll probably be fine, the lag isn't my issue with OnLive. But why would I be sorry even if I WAS skeptical?

This is just kind of a response to all the hate I have seen OnLive get over the past while on the Internet. I seems at least 5/6 of everyone who comments on something OnLive related has something to say on how "Oh, the connection is going to be laggy" or "It's going to be really slow" or even "Even though the OnLive people have told us a thousand times that it isn't going to be slow and laggy, and that you only need a 1.5 mbps connection to run it, which isn't absurdly high by any standards, I still think i'm smarter than them. It's not like they've been working on it for the past few years or anything."  
 
Can we just have some faith? I think that if they say they've managed to pull it off with no lag, we should give them a chance. What gives us the ability to say beyond a doubt that they haven't actually done something revolutionary?  
 
Ok, i'm done venting, but let it be known now. I say OnLive is going to turn out really well, and anyone who wants to come here and bitch about internet connections can do it until they are blue in the face.