Game System of the Future?: First Impressions of the OnLive MicroConsole

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On-demand gaming. Remote gaming. Cloud gaming. All those terms refer to an idea that been gaining steam over the last few years. The obsession deals with taking discs and console hardware out of the equation and streaming a real-time video game experience over the internet.

Up until now, cloud computing has been used for decentralized productivity or entertainment applications with low levels of interactivity. With something like, say, Google Docs, there’s a high level of interactivity in terms of the user input (constant typing, for example) but the size of data being place-shifted is so small that the lag is minimal. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s media streaming services like Netflix or Hulu, where the size of the data is big (since it’s video) but the level of interactivity is low. The challenge with gaming, then, is that both interactivity and data size are high. Video games allow for user input that radically changes how the world reacts, and that flexibility demands pretty robust computing power, especially when developers are constantly trying to push the envelope in terms of graphics, simulated physics and artificial intelligence.

The OnLive service, which launched its beta earlier this year, attempts to deliver a gaming experience commensurate with that of a PS3 or Xbox 360 without any additional hardware. The beta was primarily concerned with spreading the service out over Macs and PCs, but the true holy grail has been getting onto the HDTV. With the debut of the MicroConsole, that goal’s in sight. I’ve had a unit for more than a week; read on to see what I think.

(More on TIME.com: Can OnLive Compete in the Video Game Console Wars?)

Price of entry:
99 bucks gets you an OnLive’s MicroConsole Game system bundle, which comes with a gamepad, the MicroConsole itself and an assortment of cables, including the all-important HDMI. (Don’t laugh; we all know some systems gouge you for those cables.) You’ll also get credit for a free game as part of that buy-in. It’s currently cheaper than any other video game system and doesn’t require a monthly subscription fee, either.

Feel:
The MicroConsole hardware itself is slick and compact, housed in a shiny plastic shell with two USB ports up front for charging and connections. The unit is small and unobtrusive. It’s almost as if they want it to disappear. The controller comes with feels solid and well-built. The analog stick aren’t offset as on a Xbox 360 controller but the triggers feel especially springy. There are playback controls for capturing and viewing video on the front of the gamepad, too.

The user interface for the OnLive service tends to feel a little flashy and gimmicky, like the company’s showing off what it can do. The menu pages all have some kind of video streaming and the screen’s chock-a-block with options when you’re not playing a game. Not of that is bad; it just feels a little like they’re trying too hard.

(More on TIME.com: Strong Kinect-ion?: First Impressions of Microsoft’s New Motion-Control Camera)

Responsiveness:
Latency is OnLive’s big challenge. It’s hard to muster up the same kind of patience that you’d have for a slow web browsing experience when you’re trying to play video games.  My experience was a mixed bag.

When I could connect, the experience was actually good. There seemed to be an almost imperceptible amount of actual lag. The best way to put it is that it’s barely enough to notice visually, but not enough to affect real-time performance. And your brain eventually acclimates to this in a weird way. At its worst, there was a bit of pop-up but no hitching or freezing.

But I couldn’t always connect.

The mininum broadband requirements on the OnLive  website state: “…3 Mbps required, 5+ Mbps recommended for best performance. As a general rule, we recommend 5 Mbps for TVs 40 inches and larger, 4 Mbps for 30-40 inch TVs, and 3 Mbps for smaller.” My speedtests for my home network consistently fell in the 6.00 to 6.85 Mbps range (on a 40-inch HDTV) yet I couldn’t reliably connect to the service. The error message reads, “Unable To Proceed. We have detected intermittent drop-outs in your connection to the internet that will degrade performance.” Your only option is to disconnect and try again. There’s no sign of any kind of dynamic load-balancing on the front end of the experience. You know how certain online experiences will give you status updates on the strength of your connection? There’s none of that with OnLive. Most frustratingly, you’re not even given the option to connect anyway. Even if I wanted to risk going online with hiccups–to maybe get at other elements of the service–you’re not given the chance. Also, no resource exists on the website to let you know if the service is down or not. If you can’t connect, you’re left to the abilities of customer service to help you.

Graphics:
The games on the service look just as they would on a console. I played through some of Red Faction: Guerilla, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Batman: Arkham Asylum. No degree of detail was lost but, again, you could occasionally see texture pop in. Joystick commands and button presses felt like they were being responded to in real-time. One assumes that the same video compression tools get applied to all the content on OnLive but, oddly, certain games looked shinier than others. Perhaps the streaming process highlights visual differences specific to the games themselves. Whatever the reason, the games looked as good as they were supposed but not quite uniform.

Set-Up and Calibration:
Everything about connecting the MicroConsole to my home set-up was simple. It’s pretty much plug-and-play. There’s an optical out for you audiophiles out there and a mini-AV port as an alternate to the HDMI.

However, if the OnLive TV adapter has one big caveat, it’s the WiFi Problem. The MicroConsole doesn’t natively support wireless connections. You either have to be hard-wired to a router or using a wifi bridge to connect. It goes without saying that this will be a big challenge for many, especially where the TV isn’t close to a router. We’re used to consoles that connect wirelessly now and if OnLive wants to compete with the likes of Sony and Nintendo, then the WiFi Problem needs to get figured out. Soon.

(More on TIME.com: Will It Move You?: First Impressions of the PS3’s New Motion Controller)

Games:
Since OnLive’s an a la carte service, it’s not worth running down their entire ever-expanding catalogue. (You can find it here.) OnLive’s licensing these from various publishers, from the indie side and from big-name corporate entities like Ubisoft, THQ or 2K. Almost every title has a free trial, consisting of an early level or two. But, the most important thing with how games are being offered is the pricing structure. Users can purchase tiered PlayPasses for either three or five days at $6 or $9, respectively. That’s essentially the rental option. If you want to “own” a game the full PlayPass costs $29.99, which is just about half of what you’d pay for a new console version of the games on the service. OnLive just announced a PlayPack option, too, which is an all-you-can-eat deal that lets you play any game on the service for a monthly fee of $9.99. The PlayPack beta just launched and will be free to only available to owners of the MicroConsole game system.

All of that pricing is great, but doesn’t overcome the reality that the catalog is slight at this moment. It’s mostly recent backcatalog titles, like Assassin’s Creed II, Borderlands or Splinter Cell Conviction. There’ve been a few significant day-and-date releases–like Mafia II or NBA 2K11, where users can start playing the title same day. But, right now, it seems like you’re going to have to wait for publishers and developers to believe in the platform to queue up more simultaneous releases.

Wrap-up:
OnLive’s most attractive when looked at from a financial perspective. The price of the hardware and the price of the games undercut anything else out there for a TV-based hi-def gaming experience.

However, there’s a bit of conceptual gap with the strategy behind the MicroConsole. On one hand, the inviting design and the attractive pricing of the hardware and service are meant to appeal to middle-of-the-road gamers, folks just entering the market and who just want to play games regardless of which platform they’re on. But, then, it presents the kind of challenges that require a deeper investment to solve. How do you deal with the WiFi Problem? Why exactly can’t I connect to the service?  That last one could be the ultimate proving ground for the system.

(More on TIME.com: Top 10 Failed Gaming Consoles)

With little front-end computing power, it’s a crippled offering when you can’t connect to the service. At least when Xbox Live is down, you can still put a disc in there and play a game offline. When your system’s core experience is streaming, connectivity issue hobble it in a serious way. That said, the only way I can really recommend the OnLive MicroConsole Game System is as an additional option. Even then, you’d need really robust connectivity at home or sufficient mastery of your network set-up to guarantee a high percentage of uptime. It’s a consequence of being on the frontlines of all-or-nothing digital distribution.

When it works, it’s great. The catalog needs to grow rapidly and you’ll probably never see exclusive first-party franchises like Halo or Mario games on it. Still, for multiplatform releases, it’s a panacea to the console loyalist fighting that has Xbox COD players making fun of their PS3 counterparts. Still, OnLive’s entering the arena when a lot of their proposed audience already have two consoles (maybe even two hi-def consoles). Asking them to commit to a third–no matter how wallet-friendly its hardware and content pricing is–is still a big gamble.

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