OnLive

www.onlive.com

Okay, I just learned about this today and I think it’s a fantastic idea, but at the same time, I don’t think it’s going to work out as great as people might think. If it is games on demand, is it only playable at your house kinda like how the DVR needs a satellite connection (or something like that) to view the things you recorded? If that’s the case, then I don’t really thing the general population of gamers will like that idea. Say you want to go to your friend’s house, but they only have a PS2 and no OnLive. You won’t be able to simply bring this little console over and expect to play it, right?

Or maybe it just requires an internet connection. I know some who don’t have the best in the world (where it lags on the simplest of games) and because these games are streaming (even the single player ones), does that mean there’s a possibility of getting lag there? I think so. Personally, I like having my games on either discs or hard drives. Don’t have to worry about the whole lag thing and you can bring your console to your friend’s house if they don’t have your system and enjoy.

What do you guys think about this?

Won’t work.

They’ve wasted their time and money.

Won’t work.

They’ve wasted their time and money.

nice intro vid though…

I was thinking the same thing. If anything, it might just be like digital cable where you want to play a video game and you can rent it for a certain amount of money for a certain amount of time. This way, you don’t have to worry about it being rented out and saves you the gas of going to a movie/video game rental place.

Won’t work.

They’ve wasted their time and money.
That’s like saying HDTV Cable/Satellite won’t work. Truth is the technology for steady information exchange already exists. This OnLive thing is pretty much you playing a videogame on a console far away, while the image is sent to your TV. In reality all this technology is, is a very long RGA cable. What intrigues me is how they plan on accounting for the bandwidth needed for the input. If this doesn’t go as well as anticipated they’ll fail fast.

I was thinking the same thing. If anything, it might just be like digital cable where you want to play a video game and you can rent it for a certain amount of money for a certain amount of time. This way, you don’t have to worry about it being rented out and saves you the gas of going to a movie/video game rental place.

I can see that. But I’m not sure how the gaming community will like noy having games to play at their leisure.

Kindle and other e-book readers were supposed to revolutionize the "book" word I guess. Magazines too. They probably are a bargain, if you read a lot of books, magazines, etc. but people like having the physical object I guess (even if the "physical object" is just an actual install on their PC). I’m sure it’ll be a good buy for some people, but I doubt it’ll become the new standard.

No modding or anything like that either, afaik. That’s kinda minor for some games.

From GDS 09, http://www.gamespot.com/shows/on-the-spot/?series=on-the-spot&event=on_the_spot20090324

Personally, I’m highly skeptical. Well, fuck I’m always skeptical. This is something possible in the future as technology keeps going forward, I assume. Other than that in the end it’s all about LAG. No, playing multiplayer games with this on a constant level, this will not work. Even 0.10 seconds of delay is too much.

I can see that. But I’m not sure how the gaming community will like noy having games to play at their leisure.
That’s why I think that if it was like a netflix kinda thing, it might just be that and it might end up being a hit. But then again, assuming this OnLive console is expensive, I don’t think the gaming community would want to spend that money for something they can rent games with and it would be a big fail.

From GDS 09, http://www.gamespot.com/shows/on-the-spot/?series=on-the-spot&event=on_the_spot20090324

Personally, I’m highly skeptical. Well, fuck I’m always skeptical. This is something possible in the future as technology keeps going forward, I assume. Other than that in the end it’s all about LAG. No, playing multiplayer games with this on a constant level, this will not work. Even 0.10 seconds of delay is too much.
I agree, but I think there’s a high possibility of lag for the single player games as well. And that’s a big turn off for me.

This OnLive thing, I dunno. I can’t tell if it’ll be a success or a big flop. There’s too many things that can go wrong with the idea.

I don’t see why everyone thinks already they’ll be lag. I’d be more scared at the quality of the image rather than lag. It’s high speed image compression, and data transfer. In reality it can be very much possible. This OnLive is essentially you playing your video games in another city while the image gets sent to your room. If their equipment is as grand as they say, the high speed encryption should work. And since it’s compression of the image and not data it should not lag. But this company is going to have to have some deep pockets. It’s very possible for this to work w/o lag. If they have the means.
But seeing how everyone’s afraid it’ll lag, it’ll probably fail due to skepticism.

I don’t see why everyone thinks already they’ll be lag.
Because… there will be? The time it takes for your input to go to their database, go through all the hubbaloo it needs to there and then be sent back to your computer is going to be lag and there’s no way to avoid it.

Here read this:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gdc-why-onlive-cant-possibly-work-article

Watch this (LCD lag, only a few ms):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi2OE6hSh00&feature=player_embedded

Gaming industry has at least 10-30% of potential to grow. Maybe even more, because people grew up playing games amongst other things so the possibility for some of them keep playing exist. I think that the most potential customers for the onLive will be people, who lets say play for couple of hours in a week. Do these persons want to bother with installing things, patching software’s/games and/or upgrading their PC’s? I’m doubting that. And here is where OnLive comes, you never need to bother about that, TV will do.

All that said, yes there is a market and demand for this kind of service. No, this service will never provide gaming at the speed of the light. There will always be latency (LAG). From European continent to North and South America, 120 – 200 milliseconds(ms). From European Continent to Japan, 300 ms or so. Forget about latency, how about delay in controls? Or demand on constant and steady high upstream of 10 to 24 megabytes?

Guys from Giant Bomb tried it out at GDC a couple days ago. This is the info I got from their podcast which also had the developers from Harmonix and Tigon who tried it out. These were their thoughts on the OnLive system.

They were quite sceptical trying it out on the expo floor. The server was apparently 60 miles from the convention.

They decided to try out Burnout Paradise to see if they could break the service and it didn’t seem to do so well with such a fast paced game that really requires a stable 60fps to be able to play it smoothly.

They then started Ryan off on Crysis Wars where at most you’re usually walking/running through an environment quite a bit slower than driving through a city at 200km/h and it was apparently more than playable.

OnLive guys are saying that 80ms is the minimum/ideal latency needed to be able to stream this video to you and that a 2Mbit connection should be adequate for SD or 720p, also that if you expect to play around 60 hours a month that your bandwidth usage would be around the 60-80GB.

Their conclusion is that it’s not to be aimed at the hardcore gamer. Of course any hardcore gamer is going to have the hardware to play the games that they want. This is something to be aimed at the casual gamer and I agree with them. If I can sign up to this service and take my 10" netbook to work and be able to play games on it then that’s great. I wouldn’t expect to be able to play ALL games but the ability to play some games would be great. When my other only option in that scenario would be to play… NOTHING.

Other problems that are there are that apparently you need to be within 1000 miles of one of their servers, meaning unless they build a server locally, then that option wouldn’t be available to people and of course you could also run into issues of overloading systems if too many people are signed up to the service.

Again, I think it’s a great idea. I just don’t know whether or not they can pull it off with current tech.

God, no. I will not stomach the MMO method across my entire library.

Onlive still requires you to buy both the game and subscription even though they keep everything on their side. So in reality, I’ve bought a game and pay a sustained premium just to have access to it.

no thanks.