Digital Home Thoughts: All You Can Eat Gaming With OnLive

"OnLive has officially launched their “PlayPack” plan that allows users to play as many games as they want for a monthly flat rate. One of the most requested features for the on-demand, instant-play video game service is finally here. OnLive members can subscribe to this PlayPack plan for $9.99 a month to have instant access to a whole library of games that they can play for, as long as they want, without any additional costs."

Netflix's streaming service has been an incredible boon to those who have data allowances for their Internet connection. No late fees, no returning discs, no hassle. Just a regular monthly fee for all the movies you want. OnLive has finally decided to start offering a similar service, but instead of movies, it is games. While the selection is not large at the moment, and the service still faces constant criticism about how good of a gaming experience one can expect, I believe that this is the right model to go with. I wonder if the price is sustainable, but subscription based services seems to be a growing trend. Netflix offers movies while Pandora and its like offer music. Instead of the occasional spike in expenses, I think that it is quite possible that in the future, we will have to just allocate a part of our monthly budget for subscriptions to everything we want.