Onlive the future ???

Well two weeks in from launch and is it the future of onlive I mean Online gaming yet? well not quite but you can see what all the fuss is about.

I downloaded the onlive app to my PC a day or so after launch, and to be honest the first time I tried it, it was shit. However, I downloaded an update the other day and it seems to be running quite smoothly, I guess they had some teething problems that needed to be resolved.

ANY GOOD?

Anyhow, how is onlive doing overall... well I'm not sure on stats, but playing the new S.T.A.L.K.E.R game on trial, seems to be playable and looks good. Of course the games do not look as good as one you would play on your xbox 360 or PS3 but they are playable and for anyone without a console or a flash PC, this would be a good thing to try.

THE FUTURE?

Now without trying to contradict myself to much do I think this is the future? well yes and no. I can see this being the future to some extent but do I want this to be? The thing that bugs me about onlive and cloud gaming are some points that are stuck in my mind and won't go away.

• You don't own a hard copy of the game
• 100% reliant on Internet connection means no option to play offline
• Hardware fans will not get much chance to tweak or fully control any hardware aspect
• Games that you would normally resell or trade in will not be an option

Sub points against "the cloud in general"

• Software is in the hands of somone ellse
• Security will rely on "the cloud"
• Hardware, hardware, hardware... wheres the hardware.
• Maybe limits on what software you will be able to obtain through the cloud

Without getting to carried away, I can see cloud gaming and cloud whatever to be popular. However I do not want to loose the traditional and current computing formats.