Hey Raven, I found the spreadsheet, wrote it up into a two page PDF. It's a very simple analysis, but I think it does give us a couple of key insights into the price scheduling of Onlive. I did not include the free year of subscription offer, subtract $60 from the five year cost if you want to account for that.
Here's the conclusion:
Dollar for dollar, Onlive is offering a gaming experience which is comparable in cost to a next-generation (though it's been 5 years!) console system, while promising to deliver graphics more comparable to a high end or better custom PC. Stardock Forumites have raised issues about input lag, and more generally the concept of having repurchase games for use on the system.
In my opinion, I think that Onlive has marketed to the wrong gaming community: high end PC Gamers, and instead should be marketing towards consoles and low-end PC gamers who want to see the latest and greatest in graphics and processor crushing games.
Well done, my friend 
. Thanks for breaking that down for us. I do think how-ever the numbers on your Plat PC and High PC are a little low on the PC cost scale, but they are "pretty close" . When you say "Plat PC" what does "Plat" stand for? Platinum or Platform?
Well many could build a machine for 500-750 most years that would easily play games and play them pretty well for a couple of years (I do this all the time).
I'd honestly like to see that one my dear. Even your bottom of the barrel low end Wal-Mart PC is going to cost the average consumer between $600 and $800 and those PC's are Not capable of running...lets say, Crysis, or even Fallout 3 on Ultra Settings. Even at "wholesale" prices it would be hard to do with only $500 to $750.
To give an example, when I built my system (now going on 2 years old) I spent a little over $2,100. For that money AT Wholesale prices here's what I got (rounded off for easy adding) :
Motherboard: $350
Proc: $700.00 <---- That was only a few months after the i7 Quad Core came out. Some places were still selling the i7 920 for $900 + .
Video Card: $350 <----- when the GTX 280 first hit the stores most places were still charging $499.00 for it.
Blu-Ray/DvD/CD Burner: $200 <----- Blu Ray burners were still expensive.
I could go on listing the new parts I got but as we can see we're already way past the $500-$750 mark. With the exception of maybe some High End Laptops, I don't see any $700 PC running High End (Crysis type) games. That's even With Re-Using a lot of parts, Hard Drives, DvD drives, hell lets even assume your old Memory will fit the New motherboard.
I'm not saying it's Impossible to do at the prices you quote. I could buy a a "Base System" at the prices of $500-$750, but I would still need to go out and buy a decent graphics card before it could even think about running High End games. Note, when I say "decent graphics card" I Do Not mean the $99 EVGA special. The $99 special might run your High End games for a year, maybe even a little less, before the new games coming out would need a better card then what you have installed. That's why when I build a new gaming rig every 3-5 years depending on my income, I save up and get the best I can possibly afford at the time. That way I Won't have to go buy a new Graphics card every couple years to keep playing my High End games. I'd rather spend $500 on a graphics card and not have to buy another one for 3-4 years instead of spending $150 a year just on graphics cards.
As one of the people who has a intel SSD that cost more than my graphics card (its just a 285 for now) and is a core part of the computers spec for me and one of the biggest things I hate about console ports is the way the mouse input is usually smoothed as if it was thumbstick input... OnLive would not be acceptable for me to play anything on it. Id rather get a console.
Yeah I don't understand their focus, there doesn't seem to be such a gap in the market.
More or less completely agreed.
