Mobile App Gives Your iPad the Power of a Gaming PC

OnLive has been around for a little while now, but it's no less improbable than it was when it was announced (at which time some gaming blogs called it a technically impossible scam): a service that streams full games, from major publishers, right to your TV or computer, no console necessary. This week, the company will release mobile apps for smartphones and tablets. Let me say that again, in case you don't realize how bonkers this is: You can now play Batman: Arkham Asylum, a demanding and graphically intense game, on your iPad. And it works.
WHAT'S NEW
OnLive's new mobile app is available for iPad, Honeycomb tablets (like the Motorola Xoom), the Kindle Fire, and Android smartphones. You get access to the full OnLive catalogue (more on what that means below), and some games are specially redesigned to take advantage of the new capabilities afforded by tablets and smartphones, namely touch. It'll all be released sometime on December 8th.
WHAT'S GOOD
This is insane, you guys. When it works, it works just the way it's supposed to. You really can play full console and PC games on an iPad (my test device). When you have a fast enough internet connection, video quality ranges from adequate to excellent. The fact that you're streaming means there's never any downloading at all--you press "play," and boom, you're playing the game. Games also start up super quickly, with hardly any loading or waiting times at all. Saving works nicely--games are saved properly, without you having to really worry about whether it'll be saved. And you can pick up and continue your game from whatever device you want.
The controller is also great--nicely weighted, not slippery or cheap-feeling at all, and it automatically connects to whatever gadget you're using, usually by Bluetooth. It costs $50, which is pretty reasonable and, I would say, an essential purchase if you plan on using mobile OnLive.
The "What's Bad" section is going to be longer than this section, because it does have problems, but also because what's good about it is so simple that there's not really a ton to say about it. You can play PS3 games on your iPad. It's crazy.
WHAT'S BAD
There are times when it doesn't work. My home internet connection, which ranges from around 10 to 12 Mbps, was mostly up to the task, but if your connection dips below 5 Mbps, games almost become unplayable. There's some kind of dynamic resolution shift, like Netflix uses, to lower the quality of the video as your bandwidth drops to maintain smoothness. But the thing is, it doesn't selectively change the resolution, so stuff like text and menus, even OnLive's own menus, can quickly become unreadable. I also noticed a lag when I was using a slower connection, which is basically unacceptable for gamers. And even on my decent-to-pretty-good home connection, sometimes OnLive would have trouble maintaining a high resolution, for no reason I could tell.
Video quality relies on both your internet speed and your latency, or the distance you are from one of OnLive's three major server centers. From my apartment in Brooklyn, the closest server is in the D.C. area--not too far away. There's also one in Dallas and one in the Bay Area, so folks in not-so-weird places like South Florida, Wisconsin, and Minnesota may have a much harder time than I did.