You make it sound like the physical baggage is a positive thing. It's not. It's not a good thing to have to drive to the store or download for five hours before you can play a game. It's not a good thing to maintain a computer that's vastly more powerful than what you usually need, just to play the occasional game. The ideal situation is to want to play a game, and then to simply do it. No downloads, upgrades, hassle of any kind. That's what OnLive is trying to do.



Ok, let's talk value. What I was trying to convey to Zalis is that this isn't a new or exorbitantly expensive business model. It's very similar to what MMOs have been doing for years, and millions upon millions of players have happily forked over their cash. A game like World of Warcraft makes you pay full price for the game (obviously this is no longer the case with it being so old, but that's how it started), and then requires you to pay every month for the privilege of playing. You own nothing. You can't use the game whatsoever without the company's permission.

Lots of people are fine with that. The only difference we really have here is what the monthly fee is being used for. Rather than content updates as you'd get in an MMO, you're getting the ability to play your game library anywhere, on any machine. You also get a social system sort of like Xbox live, except (they claim) better. You can spectate any game, record clips to send to your friends, etc. I'm not sure how desirable those features are, but they add a bit of value.

Anyway, I talk too much, so let me wrap up. You may not think this service will offer anything you want; that's fine. I'm not trying to say it's for everyone, I'm just trying to say that it offers some genuinely desirable features for a price that is far from excessive. For fifteen bucks a month, you never have to worry about hardware or installation again.