Sid: Which brings up a good point: just how fast does my internet need to be in order to get an enjoyable experience out of OnLive? For 720p HD video, OnLive requires a high-speed broadband connection rated at 5Mbps; standard-def video can swing as low as 1.5 Mbps. And though our experience was smooth, it was a controlled experience provided by the manufacturer. The real question is whether OnLive will hold up in the field, right? Like, will it run smooth and stable on my brother's dorm room network?

Darren: Seriously. How many people really hit that magic data speed connection? Will it work wirelessly? At the local Starbucks? Yeah, I think I already know that answer, but that doesn't take away the fact that whether you buy the microbox, or just play through your PC / Mac, you're still getting a solid gaming experience usually reserved for high-end game rigs. (And at one point about two years ago -- and I ain't stretching the truth here -- I tried running Crysis at 1080p-equivalent resolution and barely cracked a 20 frame-per-second slide show. And that was on gaming computer that cost more than $5000 [two years ago].

So the fact that I'm seeing 720p Crysis running on an HD set is fairly impressive.

Sid: Yeah, and see, that's exactly where OnLive can do some big damage. I bailed out of the hardcore PC gaming scene back '05, largely because I was sick digging around in my PC's guts to install new motherboards and video cards. The promise of something like OnLive is that you'd never need to upgrade your PC again to play the latest games. As long as your broadband connection is fast enough, OnLive's backend servers render all the graphics for you. And in time, those graphics will just get better as OnLive upgrades its server hardware. Smooth, playable Direct X 11 gaming on a $500 netbook? That's impressive any way you look at it.

The Question of Prices and Games