Another thought popped into my head about the handhelds. Why buy a handheld when with could gaming you can play the same game that’s on my computer and TV you will be able to play on your phone or ipad type device. I don’t know this cloud gaming thing, feels like there’s going to be a big shift on how we play games soon.
I'm not denying that it's going to become more and more common to stream games, but there are 2 big issues going against services like Onlive right now:
1) You need pretty damn good up/down speeds to stream new games. There's a ton of data that has to go back and forth between your device and the cloud/server. Everyone here obviously has internet, but I doubt that everyone here has good enough internet speeds to stream a game like Mass Effect 3. Hell, there are a ton of people who have a 360/PS3 and don't use Live or PSN because their internet sucks/they don't have internet at all.
2) Pricing. Most people are not willing to pay the same price for a digital copy of a game vs a hard copy. I'm not paying $60 for something that I don't actually own. I think a lot of people probably feel the same way.
Now with Onlive I believe you pay a monthly fee, not sure, but it's going to have to be pretty cheap to entice the masses. Think about it, if you're paying $30 per month for it (assumption) and nothing comes out for 2 months that you want to play, you've blown $60 on nothing. As it stands now, you go out and buy what you want to play when you want it. It just makes more sense for the majority of people to just pay for what they want.