To say I've been skeptical about OnLive would be saying the ocean is kind of damp in places. "Cloud Gaming," which amounts to playing PC games on the service's server while the video and your controller inputs fly back and forth over the internet, just seems wildly unrealistic at first. Then again, unless they were straight-up lying about their setup at E3, it works great, without anything in the way of image breakup or controller lag while streaming a game playing on a server back in San Francisco.
We'll know soon enough. Less from a month from now you'll be able to find out for yourself, even if you're broke. Anyone who signs up for OnLive before July 15th gets their first year of service for free. No strings. Got a PC or a Mac? Even a sucky one? With a 5 megabit connection you could be playing Mass Effect 2 or anything else out of the mighty crap-ton of games available on the service. On the down side, the service requires a wired connection, and you probably won't want anything else using that connection while you play.
The service itself will be free for the next year, which includes demos of about a good portion of the games in the OnLive catalog without the need to monkey around with downloads. The games themselves still cost a bit, from between $9.99 and $49.99 to buy a game outright, or 3 and 5 day rentals that cost around five bucks. If the service works for you this is a great way to give it a tryout, even if you're leery about buying games without holding a disc in your hands. Even better, a lot of these games aren't even available for Mac, and I know I wouldn't be able to play most of them on my own P.O.S. laptop.
I don't think I've talked to anyone about this thing and gotten a reaction other than "that'll never work," but hey, maybe it will. There's nothing to be lost by giving it a shot. Check out what's available and sign up for the thing at onlive.com, but get in there before July 15th.
