OnLive

i just read the IGN article word for word like they asked me too (ha!).

Onlive sounds absolutely fucking amazing. Very very interesting idea, brilliant even.
 
It will be riddled with every kind of DRM you can think of.

Once publishers have control over distribution, like this machine, they will be able to charge whatever they want - expect $60 DLC games.

This kind of thing is only being promoted, partially, to kill piracy, and largely to kill the used game market.
 
My mind has asploded.

What the heck? The future is already here? I'll be adequately impressed if this works.
 
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Why only 4 responses?This is huge.Like many of you I have my doubts but if this successful it could change the entire industry as we know it.What makes this exciting is that it will,hopefully,instant.You log on,you click on the game you want to play,BAM youre playing it.That gentleman is amazing.Let see how it goes.
 
I was going to go to sleep - but I thought I'd check out "this stupid onlive thing" first. And it has kept me up...

The guy is so nonchalant about it... almost like he is hiding something.

I really like the friends list that is constantly showing footage of what your friends are doing. I'm definitely going to try the beta and see if this is possible. This is pretty out of know-where.
 
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This doesn't surprise me. Strangely enough I was just thinking about this idea today. The only problem is the fee would be unbelievable. Think about it, they have extreme upload fees, computer maintenance and upgrade costs, cooling the computers and servers etc.

This does seem possible for laptop using hardcore gamers though. However, I see it either being too expensive and no one buys it or that their selection of games dwindle do to the idea that you don't buy from the developers (Unless you have to buy the game AND rent the service)
 
[quote name='Hydro2Oxide']This doesn't surprise me. Strangely enough I was just thinking about this idea today. The only problem is the fee would be unbelievable. Think about it, they have extreme upload fees, computer maintenance and upgrade costs, cooling the computers and servers etc.

This does seem possible for laptop using hardcore gamers though. However, I see it either being too expensive and no one buys it or that their selection of games dwindle do to the idea that you don't buy from the developers (Unless you have to buy the game AND rent the service)[/QUOTE]
Youll be able to rent games.:hot:The service fee would be on par with Xbox Live.:hot:
 
I'm mostly interested in this for PC games that I would not be able to run on my machine normally (or at least not on the highest settings) but yeah, lets see how much this is going to cost before we get too excited. And lets hope this doesn't end up like the Phantom...
 
[quote name='aihuman']Youll be able to rent games.:hot:The service fee would be on par with Xbox Live.:hot:[/QUOTE]

I'm willing to put it all on the line. I call BS. That's not in any way shape or form possible unless that's a base fee, then there's renting/purchasing games, if renting you only get XYZ number of game choices a month.
 
Well in the video he mentions an "access fee", which might be priced on par with Xbox Live, but then they will also charge for the games to buy or to rent on top of that. Anyway, publishers should love this since you can't pirate games this way, it will also increase sales since more people can play them that usually can't (like Crysis for example)
 
This is fucking ridiculously stupid. It's not going to work. The video quality will be shit. There will be considerable lag. There will be issues due to the monthly bandwidth limits that most ISPs have in place. There will be situations where all of their render machines are filled up, and users will have to wait in line to be able to play a game. This company will be out of business within three years.

An hour of 720p video is typically going to occupy several gigabytes. Comcast, for instance, has a 250 gig per month cap (up and down). You'll be dedicating most of your monthly bandwidth to this service, if you do any large amount of gaming.

There will be lag. No, there is no way to send inputs, render a frame of graphics, encode it into a 720p video stream, and send it back to a user's screen, without noticeable lag. There is no magical technology they could possibly invent to compensate for this.

And while I'm not an expert on the subject, and can only make amateur speculation, I do not think that the business plan is feasible. Unless the service is exorbitantly expensive, then I just don't see how they will be able to pay for thousands of gameplay rendering boxes (all of which will require maintenance and periodic upgrades to keep up with the latest games), and all the bandwidth, and the expensive special licenses for the games. This makes no sense to me.

Three years, tops. This is an idea so stupid, that I'm willing to rate it as on par with the Phantom on the "All-Time Most Idiotic Videogame Service Start-up Plans." We will look back and laugh about this, as yet another failed alternative-delivery-method videogame startup.

And I won't even start on the insidious underbelly of this, which is obviously yet another ploy to increase the power of the publishers over everything.
 
Also, another reason this idea sucks: Kiss mods and custom content goodbye!

[quote name='Hydro2Oxide']Coffee, IMO the idea isn't stupid but I agree that it will be executed pretty weakly. To each his own though.[/QUOTE]

On a conceptual level, fine, maybe it would work for some people, somehow. But here in the real world, no, this will not work on a massive scale. This idea really isn't viable at all on a large-scale until there is a full blown worldwide internet infrastructure overhaul.

One way or another, I can guarantee that despite the hype in the initial dick-sucking gaming headlines (and the company's own press releases), no, this is not the future of gaming, and most certainly, will not be replacing most (or anything more than a tiny fraction of one percent) gamer's PCs, or their consoles.

Again, this is not the "The Death of Console and PC Gaming" that IGN is already insanely hyping it up as. It's just another failed experiment in the making.
 
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I don't think I like this idea at all. I'm 100% positive the "service fee" will be for the privilege of paying for full games at $60 and rentals at $10 for 5 days or something. I like owning games and being able to sell them on eBay or trade them in so this whole thing sounds like it will suck ass. I'll believe it when I see it.
 
WAY too soon for cloud-computing gaming, especially with this "Xbox LIVE Subscription-equivalent" financial model they will be using. They will burn through whatever VC/seed money they've received very fast. ISPs castrating bandwidth doesn't help either.

I'll give these guys credit though. They managed to get retarded sites to declare the death of consoles and PC already, when similar techs like OTOY struggled to even get blogs to write about them, let alone write off consoles and PCs. They must have a deceptively-good marketing department.
 
pieinthesky.jpg
 
It's a cool idea on the one had, but I see a lot of issues as others have brought up already.

Performance--lag will be an issue at times.

Bandwith--ISPs having caps is a huge issue for any kind of on demand media delivery

Price- I pay next to nothing for games as I use Goozex etc. I don't like gaming enough any more to really spend money on it so with no resell options etc. I'm very unlikely to ever buy into something like this.
 
So I guess if this is the future of gaming (which, of course, remains to be seen), then GameStop is pretty much SOL because of it's reliance on the used game market.

Onlive is interesting on paper (hell, I'll probably buy one myself, I'm a sucker for new and shiny), but it's ahead of its time and probably won't catch on.
 
If the issues presented are addressed and the service/unit pricing is just right, the service could be big... Really big.
 
I didn't know Coffee worked at OnLive. That's crazy.

It's an awesome idea and the execution looks nice, if they can pull it off it will be amazing.
 
Coffee has it all right. As amazing as this would be IF it worked, what they have to go through is... impossible. There's no way to send all the information both ways without some noticable lag.
 
This could have been done years ago so...don't know why the whole internet is stunned. Anyway I hate the idea of having to be connected to internet, since I don't have good internet at all. Also hate the idea of not having a copy of the game...finding good deals would be much harder I'm sure if the only way to play a game was through their system.

Right now though, I definitely wouldn't be planning on opening up a gaming store or anything :lol: AND btw, IGN already said the games had slowdown or less fps or something
 
makes me think of that thing they were gonna do with sega and i believe they did with nintendo of a game channel. i always wondered how those turned out. like some of you i prefer to own my games if gaming does go the way of all downloadable im done but by then there will probably only be one console and all restaurant will be taco bell so it wont much matter.
 
This will never happen. Between the fact that only about 50% of America even has broadband (yes, I know there's more out there than America, but it's what I'm familiar with), the fact that many ISPs these days have low bandwidth caps, and what is probably going to be high fees, this won't take off. It's an interesting idea, but an utterly stupid one in my opinion. I much prefer having physical items (with the sole exception of things in Steam, and that's simply because I like the sales and the ability to download from anywhere). The market that this OnLive will be shooting for are the more "hardcore" gamers, and those people would much prefer using their own hardware then some streaming thing. This is just another Phantom, and is going to burn up and die.
 
[quote name='DarkNessBear']I didn't know Coffee worked at OnLive. That's crazy.[/quote]
Yes, I would definitely be this virulently opposed to this stupid bullshit if I worked there. I would love to talk myself out of a job.

It's an awesome idea and the execution looks nice, if they can pull it off it will be amazing.
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"Awesome idea" or not, it's not technically or economically viable. They won't pull off jack shit.

[quote name='I_Am_ProZac']Coffee has it all right. As amazing as this would be IF it worked, what they have to go through is... impossible. There's no way to send all the information both ways without some noticable lag.[/QUOTE]

Thank you, for being wise enough to see through the marketing hype of this BS.

[quote name='BlueSwim']If the issues presented are addressed[/QUOTE]

They can't be. Current-day internet infrastructure is an obstacle that there is simply nothing they can do about.
 
[quote name='YodaEXE']This will never happen. Between the fact that only about 50% of America even has broadband[/quote]
While I agree with you that this won't work, I want to point out that there are only 12 million people in the US, still using dial-up.


This is just another Phantom, and is going to burn up and die.
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Indeed. The insane hype that we're already seeing about how this will "turn the world of gaming upside down" and "threaten the 360/PS3/Wii" and blah blah will be looked back and laughed at, for anyone who was so gullible to fall for it.
 
I like the idea but it would never work for what I have now considering I'm capped already and can't even watch Hulu videos regularly lol. I think it's a neat way to look at a gaming service though.
 
The Phantom lives again! Wake when they've gone under. Has anyone done the research on who started this company? I wonder if the same guy who created the Phantom is somewhere behind the curtain laughing at all the buzz this thing is getting.
 
[quote name='Redeema']The Phantom lives again! Wake when they've gone under. Has anyone done the research on who started this company? I wonder if the same guy who created the Phantom is somewhere behind the curtain laughing at all the buzz this thing is getting.[/quote]
Steve Perlman, the guy who brought us WebTV... yeah.

And according to Wikipedia: Perlman co-founded Catapult Entertainment and was its CTO. Catapult developed proprietary modems for Sega and Nintendo video game systems that online-enabled existing multi-player games.
 
This shit will not work. Not a chance in hell. Coffee said what needs to be said already.

You can't even video-conference without fucking lag. But with this you can see all your friends, their games, your games, and shit online? sure buddy.


5 Megabit/sec:

= 625 KiloBytes/sec
= 37500 KiloBytes/min
= 36.6 MegaBytes/min
= 2.2 GigaBytes/hour

So for someone with a 50 Gig cap per month you get 23 hours of gaming (and no porn downloads)...
= ain't gonna happen
 
By the way, how long until Microsoft sues? I can't be the only one that associated this with Microsoft at first... even the font and colors on the logo are Xbox like.
 
[quote name='yukine']By the way, how long until Microsoft sues?[/QUOTE]

I don't see anything in here that MS could sue for. Not in terms of like, their logos of interface designs or anything.

[quote name='yukine']Steve Perlman, the guy who brought us WebTV... yeah.

And according to Wikipedia: Perlman co-founded Catapult Entertainment and was its CTO. Catapult developed proprietary modems for Sega and Nintendo video game systems that online-enabled existing multi-player games.[/QUOTE]

Oh god, how did I not put two and two together and realize that it was that dude? I thought he looked familiar (very, very, VERY vaguely; I've only seen him once or twice before in tech magazines, so I'm not claiming to be really familiar with this person) in the GameTrailers interview.

I lol'd.
 
Got on the site after the countdown.....immediately got a 503 error. I was able to reload, but I thought the initial go was simply too funny. Trying to sign up for the beta now, but I keep timing out.

EDIT: scratch that...I keep getting the 503 on the beta page......I guess the Web server isn't set up to handle the workload.....which is a scary thought considering the product.
 
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