Sony questions OnLive's promises

SCEA director of corporate communications Patrick Seybold isn't optimistic about the upcoming OnLive service. When he spoke to Edge Online recently, he criticized the overall setup of the game-streaming service, questioning the difficulty of its implementation and the final cost to consumers. Seybold wonders if Rearden Studios can actually maintain the amount of resources that will be needed to support OnLive, such as a vast network of powerful (and most likely expensive) servers, and actually have them functional in a "real world environment."

How much of the initial risk is going to come over as final cost to consumers? Rearden has yet to announce a subscription fee. Adding on to that, cost doesn't necessarily just mean money; there are questions over bandwidth caps and hardware specs that still need attention. Of course, there are always these sorts of doubts with fresh ideas like OnLive. Its founder, Steve Perlman, told us in an interview that he expected this sort of skepticism with the product. With Rearden beta testing OnLive this summer, putting its five nationwide servers to the test, we'll soon get a taste of what OnLive is actually capable of.