im not sure i understand the business case for online console gaming. you immediatly limit your market potential, those that dont care about owning a game can already rent and you have a large datacenter to fund.
if you want to rent it you most of the time have to get the physical disk in your hand, aka going out and getting it.
if you rent it online you have to download it
how OnLive works is you click what you want to play, rent or buy it, and off you go, nothing more
and in todays market that is something I guess is more and more wanted, atleast when I worked in a store there was an huge increase in how many people used to order online in just 2 years.
when I started there there was so few orders online that the products ordered could be taken out of the store shelf, and sent from the store directly. and this was a sports store which was half size of what a total Walmart is.
just as I left summer 09 there was an own storage facility that handled and sent out online ordered things and it was even surpassing the budget of some of the physical stores in sales. more and more post offices keep poping up around too so that people can get what they order as close to their home aswell without havig to pay "to the door fees"
For me something like OnLive if it actually would work would be awesomely sweet.
I can't afford an Xbox 360 or PS3 etc, yet I want an console quite badly, and if I am going out of town or anywhere else I can take it with me, not to mention it takes alot less space.
however the negative side may be that it could kill consoles as they say, but i see it also able to cripple the computer market on private basis.
if an old heap of junk can run it, the top games out there, why would people bother to get new uppgraded computers if most of what they wanted was already there just by hooking up this small box
of course you got MMO's but the computer world and hardware market can't live only on that when it comes to keeping alive by only using the MMO games as aim, they will most likley focus alot less on "gamer" products and push alot more into Design, editing and moviemaking etc
I dunno, OnLive was supposed to be live in winter 2009, Have only read 1 article about it in the papers and that was released 31'st dec and nothing stood about a release
will be interesting to see what actually happens