[QUOTE="Bligmerk, post: 6279592]While Onlive is similar as far as being a streaming game service, there are many, many differences between Onlive and PS Now.
The "cloud" is actually giant server farms in specific locations. The locations and number of server farms determine how much latency results as a function of distance. Pretty simple, more server farms in more locations = less latency. Also, the power of the server farm determines performance. Onlive only had 5 locations:Santa Clara, California, Virginia, Dallas, Texas, Illinois, and Georgia. Onlive is almost bankrupt. This is the status of Onlive:
"On 17 August 2012 the company laid off all of its employees"
"It was revealed in October 2012 that OnLive was sold for only $4.8 million."
"On 12 March 2012, Microsoft told OnLive that its OnLive Desktop service was a violation of the Windows 7 license agreement, and threatened legal action, contending that the license agreement did not permit the use of Windows 7 as a hosted client, nor for Office to be provided as a service on Windows 7 since this would be only allowed using Windows Server and Terminal Services.[50] On the 7 April 2012 it was discovered that the OnLive Desktop Service had changed and had now begun to use Windows Server 2008, presumably to settle this dispute."
Sony has a lot more server farms in more locations running much higher end systems. These streaming game services also require GPU banks to do the near-realtime rendering. Sony is much better equipped in this area. Also, if you notice, PS Now does not mention running on Windows platforms, reason given above.
Yes, Onlive is similar to PS Now in the same way a Fiat 500 is similar to a Bughatti Veyron. They are both cars, they both go places, just one goes places in style and the other one gets there -- eventually.[/QUOTE]
These are definetly valid points, that said, the 'potential' issue of latency issues doesn't go away, it simply improves, living in Houston, TX suburb and Dallas, TX servers being a 20-30ms ping rate (pretty damn good for that distance) I still had latency issues w/ OnLive.
I had questioned OnLive's ability to provide a good quality image and low enough latency for peoples satisfaction, and OnLive did nothing but prove me correct. I'm sure this has improved, but it's more akin to a Fiat 500 vs a Mini-Cooper driving on everything from a dirt road to a highway with questionable road quality, while playing a real console you're in a Corvette on a race prepared surface. Even if you have a Corvette for a server, you're still have a questionable driving surface and you can't make full use of the power.