Can Onlive Possibly Succeed

( 0 Votes ) So this years GDC has come and gone and the big talk of the show this year? Well it was Onlive. For those that are unaware Onlive is a service in which you will pay to have a game streamed to you from a server farm allowing you to play games your computer could otherwise not handle. Some people out there are singing the praises of Onlive despite the fact that the service has yet to prove itself in any way and still more are heralding it as the beginning of the one console future. I however feel that Onlive as a service is doomed from the start and that it will not be the service that brings about the one console future.

Onlive has many obstacles to overcome and I just don’t see the tech currently in the US will allow Onlive to be successful. Lets break it down. At it’s core Onlive is a service that will have the game installed on a server farm that you controller will basically control and the game will be streamed to your computer as a video. Now in theory this sounds great until you considering the fact that the average speed of broad band in the US is not remotely fast enough to support flawless streaming of 720p video as the service claims it will do. To those unaware the US is home to some of the slowest broad band internet speeds in the world and because of that Onlive is going to be very handicapped.

Now assuming Onlive could overcome that MASSIVE hurdle they run into yet another. The few people who have gotten their hands on the service say that it works flawlessly with no lag. However no one is using the service at this point in time so it would make sense that it would work well. Similarly to when a game with a multiplayer component is reviewed and is praised for it’s steady online only to discover upon release when the game is put under the stress of millions the game fails. Onlive will face a similar issue and the fact that the people behind Onlive have not revealed the exact specs on the hardware they are working with is also worrisome.

Then we have the final issue working against Onlive. Similar to the argument against digital distribution users of Onlive will not actually own the physical copy of the game. In fact they may not own the game at all as it seems the service may use a monthly fee although this has yet to be decided. The issue here is that a large potion of gamers have been vocal in stating that they like to own the disc and have a hard copy. The reasons for this vary from liking to have a physical object to place in a collection to being able to sell the game back once they are done. Indeed gamers may be very hesitant to sign up for a service that may have countless technical problems in addition to the fact that the gamer themselves will not actually own anything they are playing.

Should Onlive over come these issues I still think that it will ultimately fail to bring about the fabled one console future. It will most likely end up as a niche service that a few die hard gamers will use. However this leads to another question. Can Onlive afford to be a niche service to a small amount of players? More then that could it be possible that Onlive will be the next Phantom suffering from countless delays until it slowly disappears from the minds of gamers everywhere? Only time will tell.

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