I was skeptical about OnLive as a game platform, and have been since I first read about it way back when. I imagined getting angry with games as the servers lagged and my inputs were ignored. I imagined paying more than the general price for the PC versions of games that I was interested in. I imagined the service dying just a few months after launch, taking my games and saves with it.

What I didn’t imagine, is that it would be remotely close to being any good.

Putting aside the fact that I am now officially an overly-skeptical person, the simple fact is that OnLive is almost…ALMOST…a really decent proposition. So, after a fair bit of play-testing, here is my list of 6 things that OnLive needs to do or change, in order to really push the product over the top of the trench in a blaze of brilliance…

1. Gimme a Power Button that Works

OnLive features a wireless controller. That’s great. What isn’t great, is that I appear to have to plug the controller in if I want to switch the OnLive console on. Every. Single. Time. That’s nothing short of madness I tell you, madness!

2. Gimme Wireless

Also somewhat-to-incredibly annoying, is that the console comes with the world’s most unrealistically short LAN cable. I either have to a) buy a longer LAN cable or b) move my router so that it’s close enough to the OnLive console for the cable to reach. Why do I have to plug it in at all? I’m no radio engineer, but I’m relatively sure that an 802.11n router would provide enough bandwidth for OnLive. I realise that relaying the video and audio to the console involves and awful lot of data being shifted about, but I would have thought that would only be a problem when it comes to the connection from my router to my ISP, not from my router to my OnLive box.

Having no wireless options (other than to use a bridge) smacks of a cost-saving measure.

3. Gimme Pretty

You want to make an extra buck or two? Well, I wouldn’t mind shelling out £5 a month or so in order to get my games running at a resolution close to 1080p, rather than the maximum 720p that is currently on offer. You could even provide a network tester in the OnLive dashboard that tells me if my connection is decent enough to support it. You make money, I drool at the shiny. Win/win.

4. Gimme (or them) Decent Clips

I can take a “Brag Clip” that lasts for 10 seconds and can be viewed by anyone using OnLive. But, I can also share that Brag Clip to Facebook, which means that 90% of the people that could see it will be turned off by the fact that they have to download the OnLive App in order to watch it. Make the clips viewable by all, and people will start to talk about your service. Then, they’ll probably install it without being coerced, since they’ll see how much fun I’m having at crashing into walls on DiRT 3.

5. Gimme a Working Interface

The OnLive interface is slick. Its easy to use and it allows me to nip between menus without too much hassle. However, a large percentage of things that I want to do, end up with me being told that I have to visit the OnLive site. If I want to change my profile motto, or edit my profile video, I have to do it from a PC, Mac or smartphone. But what happens if I don’t have a PC, Mac or smartphone? You’ll essentially have sold me a console for £69.99 that I can’t even buy games for – because I initially have to enter my credit card details via my web browser! Some folks have commented that the interface is essentially a large-scale beta, but I’ve got a t-shirt with “OnLive UK Launch: September 24th 2011” that disagrees with the sentiment. If you haven’t finished writing the software, don’t release the software.

Add that to the fact that I can’t make any changes to the way in which OnLive connects to my router – because there just isn’t an option to do that – and you have an interface which is doing nothing other than providing a 50p solution to a £1 problem.

6. Gimme More Games

I’m not greedy, honest. The PlayPack (£6.99 a month) features 100+ games – including some really decent retail releases – that I have full access to from the get-go. That truly is awesome value for money, says I. The problem, however, is that outside of that PlayPack – that I’ll only ever truly be interested in playing about 15% of – the only thing listed as coming out for OnLive anytime soon is Saints Row: The Third. I can preorder that right away and have a game to look forward to, but what then? I’ve read that Codemasters’ F1 2011 is also due to launch on the system at some point. Again, I have to ask, what then? There will be dozens of games released between now and Christmas for PC systems, and you’re telling me that I can only rely on your service to provide me two of them – one of which I already own because its been out for all formats for a fortnight at the time of writing. That’s just not going to get the job done.

Even with these points borne in mind, OnLive is a good bit of fun. I got my OnLive console for free at the Eurogamer Expo, and I’ve used it a fair bit. Whether I’d be as happy with it if I’d paid £69.99 for it is another story entirely. I have to say that I don’t think I would be.