Ditto, 1976.

And I still have never had a cell phone. :D

I should point out the time I spent yesterday trying to fix the Microsoft Solitaire games doohickey on Mom's computer. Stupid thing wanted to log in to XBox Games for some reason - I guess because it's important to be connected to the outside world when playing a game that's um, decidedly NOT a game played with others - and it took forever to figure out that the problem was that the XBox.com terms of service changed and that she needed to agree to them to continue playing. Forever, because the game wouldn't tell me that Microsoft was having problems talking to itself.

So change my vote to 'no'. I have seen the future of the cloud, and it's cloudy.

It doesn't have to be either/or, it might be both options co-exist.

Having said that, why did Onlive fail? Does its failure tell us something? Was Onlive simply incompetent, or is there something inherently wrong in trying to make streaming gaming financially possible?

I played some free (limited time) games on Onlive, and yeah it was kinda nifty how you could run them on a machine which couldn't possibly run them locally. But:

- You need a fast and reliable internet connection.
- The graphics were poorer than running them locally, due to compression artifacts on the picture.
- There was certainly some input lag there, because I was not running the games locally.
- Some games you are playing might be removed from the system without a notice, without you having anything to say about it.

I can see such streaming model working for some people, but so much depends on pricing, and it appeared to me Onlive had hard time coming up with competitive pricing and still make profit, at least with its userbase. Buying PC games is lucrative at the moment because you can really buy them dirt cheap, Onlive couldn't really offer the same games cheaper, pretty much the opposite (as they had to provide also computing power which costs them money too).

What you said about not having fast enough PC to play the newest games (and not wanting to buy one either?), most people solve that problem by buying a gaming console instead. They also might be the reason why Onlive didn't fly.

This is even worse than Steam. For me, at least.
Maybe you like it, but hey, you asked for my opinion!
Or buy PC games on a five year lag. :)
https://xkcd.com/606/

I see a big difference between gaming and watching movies/TV-series (or listening to music) in that gaming takes more time and dedication, per game.

When I watch a movie or an episode of a TV series, it takes 1-2 hours of my time. Playing one game can take dozens of hours, and it is also much more involving usually. Depends on the game of course. Hence, movies/TV series/music is more suitable than games for streaming model, in my opinion.

I think that also explains why renting movies has been a much bigger success than renting games, even if the latter has existed too. Buying movies never was as big a thing as renting them.

Anyway as I said, the problem for streaming gaming seems to be to find a pricing model that is lucrative enough for the gamers, and still make profit. Onlive apparently failed in finding that sweet spot. Games can be bought so dirt cheap nowadays, and then there are even the free-to-play games...

I might consider using the cloud to store my save files. but that's it. Beyond that i don't see any purpose in the cloud.

People will continue to download and install games on their local machines of course.

Nobody in their right mind will accept such humongous input lag.
All the history of PC gaming hardware is about reducing lag/time between delivering data from HDD to CPU/GPU to process it, send data to monitor. And you suggest to increase this time by x1000 times.
Even people who don't care about DRM and don't care about price, will not accept it, it's not about the money, it's about performance.

This will not work.

I think Onlive were trying to bite off more than they could chew at that time. But Nvidia gave it a new shot with Grid (Geforce Now). They can handle games at 1080p60fps with very low latency. You can check it out on youtube. Currently the service is exclusive for their Shield Android devices but I think this cries to be implemented on PC. Yea, you need a solid connection, but nothing exceptional for nowadays standards. 10 MBit is minimum, 50 Mbit for highest quality. Sure this is still a problem in some areas but maybe not for long.

There is a big time investment difference compared to movies, but TV series provide a lot of extra content vs movies; enough that I feel a lot more satisfied with investing in them. I would say the time it takes to consume content between TV and movies is greater than TV and games, but TV still enjoys the same consumption pathways. Given that, I'm not confident in saying that is the major reason it works for TV and moves but not gaming. I think it has more to do those types of entertainment having broader appeal, and there being such a massive value difference between service consumption and purchasing.

In my opinion movies and TV cost way the hell too much. It's hard to be able to really afford building a sizable collection, yet I was able to Netflix all of Dr. Who for about one months subscription. If I had to buy all of those episodes, whew, couldn't do it. I almost never buy movies just because it's chronically too hard to justify the price tag. With gaming it's different. They may start off being expensive, but it was way too easy to build up a gaming backlog. Lots of us have sizable gaming backlogs, but I don't personally know anyone that has a movie/TV backlog of a hundred titles or even 20. So on that point you may be spot on, games may have just priced themselves out of the service model.

Theirs GPU clusters will need a lot of electricity, will need engineers to service it. This has to be billed.
When you have your own system - you are an engineer yourself, and you pay only your own consumed electricity. It will be cheaper.
I still don't understand why people will choose this model. I'm not even talking about multiplayer-only gamers, who play Counter-Strike where having low ping is crucial for your gaming.

oy

@vsr: Server clusters are more energy-efficient than local machines, better cooling systems, easy to maintain with just a few engineers, games are already installed, saves you time and nerves. You just play (well 1st you must pay :P). It pretty much makes your gaming PC obsolete, saves you money (unless you already bought one :P).

Screw engineers! What about CEO of this company? I have no doubt he has plans to get rich fast (Ferrari, villa, a small island in an ocean and a yacht)!
And not everyone likes subscription system. Without subscription this service will die. It is cheaper to get a PC with a decent GPU (like GTX 950) and enjoy life without shackles.

@vsr: If you prefer a gaming PC, that's fine. I don't want a noisy machine that eats more energy in one month than a subscription could possibly cost me.

The Big Surprise in Home Energy Consumption: Gaming PCs. The typical gaming computer consumes as much power each year as approximately three refrigerators, according to a study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory... In all, the power bill for these gaming PCs comes to $10 billion a year.

I dont understand why people want cloud gaming. Purpose of all that cloud bs in first place was for people to be able to access their files etc on a third party service from multiple locations. What benefit does cloud giving to gamers?. Speed will be an issue. People still have to pay for internet as well...