As complete an analysis of the difference in latency between OnLive and a local game as I can be bothered making is: - player input to server: ping/2 - game e

As complete an analysis of the difference in latency between OnLive and a local game as I can be bothered making is: - player input to server: ping/2 - game engine + rendering: same as local - video compression: worst possible is 1/framerate - first video bit back to player: ping/2 - whole frame back to player: worst possible 1/framerate - decompression + display: worst possible is 1/framerate So assuming video compression, decompression and transmission are all as slow as they can be thats a total of ping + 3/framerate. So they can rightly claim a perfectly smooth 30 frames a second performance, but the latency could be ping + 100ms worse than a local game. The best case latency approaches the ping. I doubt the compression and decompression is much faster than 60 frames a second, although the transfer time could be quite low in the case of a connection good enough to do HD sending SD. So a more realistic estimate might be ping + 2/60 or ping + 33ms, where a good ping is ~20ms(?) to your ISP or well peered server location. So assuming things work quite well you're looking at >50ms latency. I think that'd be a fairly unsatisfactory experience.