Variety Friday: Why (Nearly) Everyone Should be Using OnLive

As the title suggests, this post is going to be about the service Onlive, and why nearly everyone should use it, or atleast have it download.  For those who don't know Onlive is a form of digital distribution for games.  Assumingly the first thing that will come to mind is Steam Copy, in a way that is true, but in a much large way it is not.

OnLive uses the principal of Cloud Game, what this is, is essentially the games aren't actually run on your computer but run in the cloud.  The easier way to describe this would be a YouTube for Gaming.  What this essentially allows you to do, is to run games on computers that can't run much more than TF2 on minimum settings.  So with this service even a netbook can be running Homefront.

Another thing Onlive does which Steam doesn't is allows you to rent games.  Almost all games except some newer titles (such as Homefront) you can rent for 3 or 5 days.  So instead of waiting the grueling ~7 days to send back and get a new title from Gamefly, or for those of you lucky enough, instead of driving to a redbox, you can rent games instantly from OnLive.  The pricing is competitive with other services, most games are $6 for 3-Days and $9 for 5.  

The other main feature of OnLive is their "Play Pack".  For $10 a month (First month for free) you get access to a large selection of games featuring many AAA titles like Just Cause 2 and Fear 2, Older games like Just Cause and Frontline: Fuels of War, and even indie titles like AaaaAaAAaa: A Wreckless Disregard for Gravity and World of Goo.  Recently the Play Pack has reached the 50 Games mark and is increasing every month with more games.

Yet another great thing about OnLive is their competitive pricing, not only do they have great Friday deals, such as this week's being Mafia 2 for $5.  But they also have great promotions, like just today they had a promo code which lasted for only an hour but gave you 75% off any game you want.  Steam was doing the same thing, Metro 2033 was $10, but with that code it was only $5 on Onlive and I'm guaranteed to be able to run it!

There is only a small audience that I wouldn't reccomend OnLive for, those with Beastly Computers that will last for years and/or those with crappy internet connections.  Because OnLive streams the game if you don't have a fast or have a High Latency connection there will be frame rate drops and a noticeable delay with input, so in that case games will be almost unplayable so you may want to stay away.

Then there are those of you who are like "Pfft, I don't care!  I'm a console gamer for life, I like my big TV, Surround Sound System, and my controller".  Well OnLive deals with this in two ways.  First, almost all, if not all games have support for a gamepad.  Two, they also have a box available for $100 which is pretty much an OnLive console compatible with any wired game controllers or Keyboard and Mouse.  Also, the OnLive console has a large chance to outlive current consoles, because there isn't hardware that needs to be updated.

-Recap-

-Key OnLive Features-

• Computed in the cloud, play instantly on your computer and doesn't require expensive hardware, a netbook will suffice.
• $10 per/ month "Play Pack"
• Compatible with PC & Mac
• OnLive console alternative 
• Competative Pricing
• Renting

I highly recommend that everyone (besides those who I spoke of above) atleast download OnLive and try the Trial for one of the games.  Especially if you have a fast connection yet a bad PC.  OnLive could, quite possibly be the future of gaming, and with them adding more and more games to their catalog, it's just more and more of a reason to download it.  I think Onlive is doing what a lot of other people will be doing first, a form of digital distribution which doesn't require discs or downloads, renting games digitally, and offering a large pack of games on a Monthly Fee, all across 3 different platforms.

*Note, I wasn't offered anything from OnLive or any of that, this is just my opinions