If you missed out on #1, TSA Talks is a new regular feature for the site, presenting our writing team (and of course, our community)Â with a platform to sound off on some of the week’s top news stories.
You can catch the last edition here in which we discussed the future of the Nintendo 3DS as well as the impressive PlayStation Vita showing at last week’s Tokyo Game Show, also with a side column dedicated to the recently-announced Monster Hunter 4.
With the Eurogamer Expo still in full swing, we were a few men down this week, but there is still plenty of opinion to sink your teeth into.
It’s been well over a year since cloud-based gaming platform, OnLive, launched in the States. This week, the console made its debut here in the UK but will it catch on? Is this the evolution of gaming, or will the name OnLive be forgotten in another year’s time?
Kris: I’d happily pick up OnLive if I thought my internet connection could cope with it (at 4 meg it may struggle) and if they overcome the capacity issues that have struck it at launch. If it’s unprofitable or impractical to scale up then, frankly, they simply can’t succeed. Why would anyone buy it if they know they’ll have issues accessing it? They need to be at least as stable as an MMO like WoW, if they can’t achieve that then they’ll haemorrhage subscribers.
Aran:Â I’ll be at Eurogamer Expo this weekend so I’ll look to pick up an OnLive console from there to give it a go. I still believe it to be a glorified rental system and quite an expensive one at that. I’ll have access to all these games but I’ll never own them outright through OnLive, which worries me. What if a game’s servers are too full? Will I be denied access to that game until the service isn’t full? Should OnLive go out of business, I lose access to all those games I paid for. OnLive is one way of approaching the gaming business model but don’t ever expect it to outdo the likes of Steam, Xbox LIVE, PSN etc.
Dan: I’m really impressed with OnLive. Running at a muscular 2mb broadband speed I was expecting not to be able to use the service at all, but it actually works! There have been a couple of launch day hiccups, such as the now famous “OnLive is full” message, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for the moment. In terms of visual quality, it seems to vary from title to title, so whilst Borderlands looks fantastic, the Tomb Raider games look a bit grainy. Saying this, I have yet to be disappointed with the graphics. In terms of input lag, I’ve played games in the FPS, platform and racing genre and have nothing of note to report. The evolution of gaming? You know what… it just might be.
Radiitz
@Kris
4 meg is fine. I run Onlive at around 2 meg with minimal lag! I’ve never seen anything like this OnLive before. I joined a few days ago. Its incredible. The future of gaming to me for definite.
amiga_dude
OnLive
Sometimes it works well, then it can become a issue at times. It early days, with shareholds like BT behind them there no good reasion to think shouldn’t be business in 2/3 years time.
Just one thing about Deux EX for £1, you should get
Deus Ex: Human Revolution Augmented Edition.
As it comes with:-
Deus Ex: Human Revolution Standard Edition
Deus Ex: Human Revolution Downloadable Bonus Content
Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition
All for £1.
amiga_dude
DLC Content is
Making-of Video
520.1 MB – MPEG 4 Video
Motion Comic Book
48.2 MB – QuickTime Video
Art Book
46.6 MB – PDF Document
Game Soundtrack
271.1 MB – ZIP Archive
E3 Trailer
663.1 MB – QuickTime Video
Animated Storyboard
411.0 MB – QuickTime Video
Just for £1, not bad really. But make shore it the “Augmented Edition”
hazelam
onlive could be good with the flat rate, access what you want subscription, but who is going to buy full price games knowing they will never actually own them?
i certainly wouldn’t.
when a game becomes unpopular, they’ll remove it, even if you were still playing every day.
will they give refunds for when games you’ve bought are removed from the service?
the hell they will.
for MMOs though, it could be great.
being able to play the latest MMO with the graphics options all turned up to max, that would be fantastic.
and latency wouldn’t be as much of an issue as it is with more action oriented games.
on the whole though i really don’t like the whole cloud thing.
it’s just the industry trying to do away with the concept of ownership as it applies to us, the paying customers.
ownership should not be something reserved exclusively for the publishers.
if we’re not going to own what we pay for, then why should we pay for it?
for some that means piracy, for me it means those games might as well not exist.
and on to DCU online.
i think the move to a free to play model is a great idea.
mostly because it means i can play again. \(^_^)/
but also because i think it will get people playing who wouldn’t have with the sub model.
no matter what SOE say, numbers were dropping off drastically with this title.
MMOs that are successful don’t have server merges, that have new server lanuches.
the game was loads of fun, but the difficulty spiked and there was just too much grind in the endgame for a game where i’m paying a sub to play.
with the sub there was always the feeling that i should be doing more because i’m paying for my time in the game, i can’t just play for fun i need to make my sub worth something.
but the pressure’s off with a F2P model.
i could see me buying stuff in game too, i’ve bought stuff in home, i would definitely buy some items in this.
Missquito will fly again. ^_^
lastly the season pass.
they can be a good idea, if you were planning to buy dlc for the game.
there are two main pitfalls with this though that i can see.
firstly, if they don’t make the dlc worthwhile, buying dlc individually may cost more, but you can pick and choose what you want and what you can do without, and the chances are leaving out dlc that doesn’t interest you would mean spending less anyway.
secondly, and this is the thing that annoys me about these passes so far, they launch dlc while the pass is still running, sometimes as soon as a few weeks after the pass launches.
they promote these things with “get a year of dlc”.
except they don’t mention all the other dlc they’ll be selling separately as well.
they defend it by saying the season pass doesn’t say you get all the dlc for a year.
they’re still cheating those who bought the season passes in my opinion, despite the crap they put in the small print.