So I was about to try out OnLive this last weekend thanks to a friend giving me his founding fathers key. I was surprised to learn how well it worked! I thought there would be some lag or something – but no, it worked perfectly aside from about one second where there was some freezing during the opening movie of Red Faction: Guerrilla. It was interesting because you could alt+tab out or switch to full screen instantly because the game was not running locally, and my cpu was not being hit hard at all. If you want you can see other people play games live through the OnLive console, which I though was pretty cool – although I doubt I would sit there and watch somebody else play a game when I could be playing one instead

Right now they have about 10 games you can play, and each of these you can play a “demo” – which is the full game but with a 30 minute time limit. At the end of the time limit you have to buy credits in order to play the game. Now here’s where I think they went wrong. The “credit” to play the game, is basically the full retail price of the game. The OnLive service is normally $5/month. So basically you are buying the game like you normally would, and then you have to pay $5/month in place of having your own gaming rig. Another catch – you can only play the game while OnLive is hosting it. Normally this seems to be about 3 years or more, so it’s probably good enough for most games – but then again you just paid full retail price for it. I don’t know about you but if I pay full retail price for a game I want to actually have the game so that I can A) sell it when I’m done with it so I can get another game or B) be able to play the game for the rest of my life if I want to.

Now, I can understand why they want you to pay full price – from what I figure each person that plays the game needs to have a license to play the game legally (just like when you buy a game form the store). So basically OnLive takes your money, and they buy a real license of the game for you. The difference here though is that the games run though the server, so I wonder about the legality of needed a license for every single player, or whether they would be fine with just a license for every single player that is currently playing. For instance: let’s say you have 40 people that want to play Assassins Creed 2. Out of those 40 people, 20 play during the day time and 20 play at night. Instead of charging full price for 40 game licenses, you would really only need to charge for 20 – meaning that the amount each person pays could be halved.

Now obviously you can’t pre-determine how many people will want to play the game and their playing schedule and therefore how many licenses to order and how much people should pay. That being said, this type of approach may not work very well – so let me propose another. You charge more for the service – perhaps $10 or $15/month. Then you charge $20 for new releases of games for the first month or so. Many hard core gamers would gladly pay $20 (instead of the normal $50+) to be able to play the game the day it comes out. After the first month, the game becomes free. What this would allow is any normal user wanting the play a game that has been out for at least a month can play any of the games currently hosted. Now if you only have to pay $10 – $15 a month to be able to play any PC game you want – on basically any device you want – I’d say that would be worth it. I think with a pricing strategy like that, you would be having users flock to you in droves. It would be a service that is better than Steam – since not only would you get a game at discount, but you could play it anywhere after just downloading a few MB client.

Now, my pricing idea might be a little off, and should be examined by an actual legal team and pricing strategist – but at this point I don’t see OnLive taking off without a change such as this. Who will pay $5/month and full retail price for games for a service like that. For that money I would much rather go out and buy a $90 video card and be able to keep the games and/or sell them when I was done with them to be able to re-cooperate some of the cost. If they did implement something like my pricing strategy above though – I could see thousands of people flocking to them. Even me, a guy who is extremely proud of his ‘gaming rig’, would have to consider throwing it out in alternative for a service like that.

I suppose only time will tell how it goes. In any case, I think the OnLive service is an incredible idea, and perhaps even paves the way for the future of gaming, but at this point I think it needs some fine tuning in the finance department before it because the end all be all solution for PC games.

TrackMania is a game where you control a single Indy style race car through numerous “levels” (tracks) in an attempt to grab the fastest time and earn gold medals. Earning medals, be them bronze, silver, or gold, will update you score ranking, which is displayed on many screens throughout the game. You will see what your rank is within your state, your nation, and even throughout the entire world. This really creates some addition as every medal you get early on seems to put you hundreds or even thousands ahead of other players in ranking. It is an incredibly simple game to play – you can literally play the game only by learning six keys on your keyboard.

You can also easily play online as well, playing on custom tracks that other have built. Online games net you license points depending on your ranking at the end of the track, these license points are used as your ranking for online games (instead of medals). Personally I find the solo game much more fun, but the online game can be fun when you are racing against 30 other cars as well.

There is a track editor built into the game so that you can easily make track as well. I was able to belt out a fairly simple track within 5 minutes – they made it really user friendly. Certain tracks in the solo game are locked and you need to either do things like “build on custom track in the the track editor” or “get 1000 license points online” in order to unlock them.

The music for the game is, in my opinion, very good and sounds great when you are flying 200 mph down a track. It does get a little repetitive though, since there are only three songs that get played. Luckily you can easily add or even remove the original songs by going to the folder “Steam\steamapps\common\trackmania nations forever\GameData\Skins\Stadium\Music\Race” where you installed steam. The files are ogg (Ogg Vorbis), so just add/remove/replace those files and the game will play the different songs you put in instead.

The graphics for this game are also pretty top notch, especially for a free game. The game might use the Steam Engine – I dunno – but whatever the case, the graphics are just as good as some of the newer games out there right now.

Anyways, this is most likely one of the best free games I’ve ever come across – and I’ve played a bunch of them. If you like a simple game that is quick to play but also very fun, I’d definitely recommend it. Actually, since it’s free – I see no reason why you wouldn’t just make it a game you have on every computer. I mean, sure, you might not play solitaire or minesweeper but once a year – but you still keep it on your computer for those rainy days right (not to mention this game is like a million times better anyways)?

So what are you waiting for? Go try it