I still like the idea very much, Maybe this time they failed, but maybe the next try will be successfull. Maybe someone with more experience and professionalism. (Steam, EA, Ubisoft, ... you pick one).

Ouya will suffer the same fate.

Well, not surprised. Streaming doesn't feel like owning stuff, the Steam "rental" has a better feeling, at least you download something. People are not ready, but I think they will be ready someday.

Personally, I don't care about stuff with permanent connection required. My internet is a pain, sometimes it doesn't work for several minutes, I like single player games and I don't want to be slave of my internet provider, Telecom Italia is son of an evil devil. :P

Ah shit, their next move is going to be to lobby to make their service a public good, isn't it? That way OnLive can either a) be a monopoly on game streaming so customers have no choice but to pay their price if they want to play games (but people could still avoid it by just not playing) or b) become subsidized so people have no choice but to pay their costs with taxes or c) impose a stranded cost recovery fee onto future competitors. :)

I'm joking but some people on this board might actually think that is a good idea (excuse me while I go puke in the toilet). I'm just comparing OnLive to electric power generation.

In the '60s-'80s here in the U.S., there were huge investments into nuclear energy generation because of some crystal-ball predictions of a huge increase in consumption in the future (I wasn't alive then but well-informed books tell me these things). Instead there was a modest, steady rise in consumption so electric power companies were stuck with these huge costs, made especially huge after the cost overruns. There was poor incentive to make good decisions in the first place because no one felt like they were risking their own money. The utilities, the regulators, the government, and the shareholders weren't going to pay the bills and employees weren't going to take a cut in pay, so it naturally was passed on to the customers.

And what could the customers do? It's a monopoly, they can't get power from somewhere else, unless they decide to start installing their own generators (and power companies and large power generators lobby very hard to make that a difficult task). So customers started getting stuck with huge bills but then started to complain loudly. Power companies had to stop jacking up the customers bills so high and the power companies are now still saddled with what they call stranded costs. (It's not just because of the nuclear energy fiasco but also because of many other bone-headed decisions made because of poor incentives. Indeed, when given a fixed rate of return in a monopoly environment with rate of return regulation, the higher the cost overruns, the higher the profit for the utilities. They make more money when they make these bone-headed decisions! Profit or non-profit. Non-profits just increase their salaries or buy new trucks or create new positions or buy more inventory to "stock up" or maybe finally put some into upgrading the infrastructure.) This would be similar to having many times more server power than OnLive needs.

To me, this just reinforces my belief that it is folly to be completely dependent on large, centralized systems. I'm for decentralization and competition. Sure, huge server farms can be helpful but we shouldn't need to be dependent on them for things we buy. They can be a supplement. I would much rather have a robust P2P type system than a centralized streaming client with a single point of failure. I would like a P2P type system in electric generation for the same reason, efficiency and because investors take the risk instead of forcing cost overruns on customers. It's not like video game companies wouldn't make any money if they embraced P2P. Gersen has helped point out to me that streaming will take away what makes games worthwhile for me, the interactivity. Streaming might work okay for movies but I can still buy movies. I don't like the thought of video games going to a streaming model, especially if there is no option to buy. I've turned anti-streaming for video games.

So I got off-topic somewhat but what I'm trying to say is that OnLive's server power cost overruns are similar to an electric power generation cost overruns. At least people still have alternatives with video games compared to electricity (some places are getting a little better with electricity though). If OnLive has to charge more for their service to cover their costs, they should and need to do that, but if people decide the price isn't worth it, OnLive should crash and burn for their bad decisions with cost overruns. Something better will come up out of the ashes and if something doesn't, good riddance to centralized video game streaming. The worst case scenario though is a full-force effort to impose streaming in the video game industry fully backed by government force in the name of stamping out piracy.....or second-hand sales :( But hey, if that does happen, eventually people will get used to it and they will forget that there was and can still be something better and they will just shrug and sing "That's just the way it is. Things will never be the same. That's just the way it is, aaw yeah."

Your internet might get better in the future. :)

I like your positive attitude but I think you never had to deal with Telecom Italia, you would be less positive. :P