| I played through Arkham Asylum on the PC and Arkham City on the OnLive console, and found it ... adequate. I tried the beta and it didn't even work, but went back when AA was 99 cents and was impressed that they were even able to make a reality. I pre-ordered AC because it came with the console for free, and it was pretty slick. However, I subscribed to their "channel" and have been pretty disappointed, the games are mostly old or random indie titles that don't always fit the model, and a good number require a mouse/keyboard which you can make work with the console, but is much clunkier than the slick wireless controller (which is _very_ well done). There are 2 problems:
1) Anything even smelling like a dropped connection boots you entirely out of the game, and can take a few minutes to get back in. This includes just pausing and walking away for 5-10 minutes. 2) The batman games worked because they have a slower, more deliberate input system, and auto-save constantly. Otherwise it just won't be able to keep up. So, barring licensing, I just don't see it being able to play something that needs a good twitch response time, multi-player, or something that is hard to recover after an immediate drop. So, no diablo, CoD, real-time strategies, or MMOPRGs. Without those titles, it won't be able to get a lot of traction. Still, a really awesome technical achievement. The PC executeable is a couple of _megs_ and can then just stream anything, but a lot of gaming needs either fast response time (which you lose with the server round-trip), or the ability to just stop for a few minutes without losing everything you've got. |