OnLive

Some people don't have a bandwidth connection or have a bandwidth cap, some people like to buy and trade their games, getting games on sale and waiting for good deals, not pay 59.99 never to get anything back in return. The big problem is the internet requirements...it would never work with my friends and I. That itunes download, email argument is irrelevant...you can do that with dial up or some crappy connection no problem. (And btw, who the heck uses a typewriter? Some homeless guy or something or has no other option)
Don't really care though...if it would actually end console gaming I'd just find a new hobby and play smash bros and the old classics when I felt like gaming :D.
 
Don't really want to read 5 pages so I don't know if this as all been said already but:

1) Doesn't this sound like the Phantom that never came out

2) The price is going to be out the ass for this. I'm geting 250-300 for the unit and 50-100 bucks a year for service then the normal cost for a game for the games

3) If you paid for the game what happens if they then want to delete it from the server. Are you going to get your money back or just be JWF. I don't want to pay 50 bucks for the game then want to play it a year or so later and find it is no longer on the server.

4) If I want to play a new game what is the chance that I will log on to play it and be told the server is full for the game I want to play.

I do have to say I like the idea of not having all the discs sitting around and have to look for what I want to play on a shelf. I see this thing getting a lot of news till they say the price. After that chances are no one will want to buy it. If it is at a price people would pay then I see it selling well at first then people finding out it is crap and has nothing but lag. Or atleast more lag then what OnLive says it will have.
 
[quote name='Pck21']I'm also seeing the same argument about not being able to own a physical copy of game. I don't think that's a wrong argument, but it seems to be the only thing that people don't like, which irritates me a little bit. It's proving the fact that gamers really aren't on the cutting edge as much as I thought. With new technology brings new ways and means of distributing a product. Instead of letters, we use phones; instead of actual mail, we use e-mail; instead of going to the store and buying a CD, we download a song or album from iTunes. Everyone seems to act as if the gaming world is going to collapse if we go to all digital media or mostly digital media. That's insane. Digital media is not breaking new ground. If anything, it's almost as outdated as re-packaging DVDs and CDs for mass production. Digital media has been around for about 10 years now and there's no reason not to trust it. Have there been issues with it? Sure. Will there be issues with this service? Of course. There are problems with every new piece of technology. However, instead of shying away from it, I suggest we try it out before bad mouthing it. Whether we like it or not, this is where games and gaming are going. If you don't like it or don't agree, I suggest you get out of the gaming industry and move on to something more your pace, like Monopoly.

Do you know people who still use a typewriter instead of a computer? I do. What's their reason for doing so? Because they "want to type on the hard copy instead of losing their digital copy on a computer if it crashes." Please tell me gamers have a more progressive mindset than the 70+ year old secretary who works at my school.[/quote]
There's a big difference between wanting to own a product one pays for and being unsupportive of some new service/technology that may not be an improvement for gaming at all. A computer is clearly superior to the typewriter; a digital copy of a game(which OnLive does not provide, btw) is merely more convenient than a disc for many people. Sometimes it's cheaper, too.

Don't get me wrong, I'm growing to like digital media more and more, but there is nothing wrong with people who simply prefer hard copies. You suggest people who don't like digital distribution(or OnLive?) should get out of gaming?! Rofl... How narrow-minded.

Being on the cutting edge of tech is not necessarily an improvement over existing services; not every new idea or service is even worthwhile. OnLive would apparently keep entire games on their own servers, so the user doesn't even have the game on their console/pc. Say there's an issue with your home network, ISP, you reached your monthly bandwidth cap or whatever and you can't get online, even for a minute. If you were in the middle of a game, that's completely interrupted and you can't play until your service is back up. There's no offline mode here. That's a big flaw.

At least Steam and other digital services allow users to download a game on their computer and play it at any time, with or without constant internet connections. OnLive wouldn't do any of these things, so it's not unreasonable to think OnLive is inferior in many ways to how we game today. Maybe it'll turn out alright with a small base of customers, but this is not the "future of gaming" as some people and even gaming sites have been fooled into posting.

But hey, if you think OnLive is gonna be the greatest thing ever, more power to you. I'd just like to let you know I have a monorail you may be interested in.
 
Kind of interested in the no exclusivity aspect. Seriously, this might be the only platform where we get see sony's, ms', and nintendo's games available in the future. But I don't see how the service is plausible. With millions of gamers to go along with the thousands of games, I expect to see some type of expensive pricing to cover their costs. And lets not forget the speed and badwidth issues customers have to deal with. I'll give it another 5 years until it's reasonable.
 
Nintendo creates software around the hardware and controllers. They will never agree to such a thing. They have to have complete control over the hardware making process.
 
[quote name='Pck21']I am so confused by your "logic" and pure assumptions. Why would you assume that PC gamers would be upset if more RPGs and platformers began to make their way onto PCs? How in the hell did you get from there because of the OnLive service? The OnLive service isn't just for computers, you do understand that right? All you need is a broadband connection and that's it, so PC gamers would still get the same games they have always had. Plus, the OnLive service is a choice...why does everyone keep making it out to be some sort of manditory service? Honestly, I don't follow anything you said in your first paragraph. :wall:

I'm also seeing the same argument about not being able to own a physical copy of game. I don't think that's a wrong argument, but it seems to be the only thing that people don't like, which irritates me a little bit. It's proving the fact that gamers really aren't on the cutting edge as much as I thought. With new technology brings new ways and means of distributing a product. Instead of letters, we use phones; instead of actual mail, we use e-mail; instead of going to the store and buying a CD, we download a song or album from iTunes. Everyone seems to act as if the gaming world is going to collapse if we go to all digital media or mostly digital media. That's insane. Digital media is not breaking new ground. If anything, it's almost as outdated as re-packaging DVDs and CDs for mass production. Digital media has been around for about 10 years now and there's no reason not to trust it. Have there been issues with it? Sure. Will there be issues with this service? Of course. There are problems with every new piece of technology. However, instead of shying away from it, I suggest we try it out before bad mouthing it. Whether we like it or not, this is where games and gaming are going. If you don't like it or don't agree, I suggest you get out of the gaming industry and move on to something more your pace, like Monopoly.

Do you know people who still use a typewriter instead of a computer? I do. What's their reason for doing so? Because they "want to type on the hard copy instead of losing their digital copy on a computer if it crashes." Please tell me gamers have a more progressive mindset than the 70+ year old secretary who works at my school.[/QUOTE]

I agree my first paragraph was off mark mostly pissed as this was hyped as "the death of consoles" so i was just venting there.

And yeah I still prefer owning a actual game. To me its also a cool experience unwrapping a new game, reminds me of opening a pack of baseball cards in the past.

And yeah paying $60 for a game downloaded via digital distribution sucks, since companies are saving money on packaging and shipping costs, which I suspect is another reason why publishers are pushing this. That's what bugs me about digital distribution, because unlike steam which has some great sales, sales on psn and xbox live games have been sparse and lackluster. This would be more acceptable if they lowered there prices.
 
The question that should also be asked ... how many games could possibly be played off of one server in this fashion. Could you imagine the amount of servers you would need to run 250,000 games (example of course) that are going on. I mean I understand a server is more powerful then our home computers but hardware can only do so much right?
 
[quote name='strikeratt']The question that should also be asked ... how many games could possibly be played off of one server in this fashion. Could you imagine the amount of servers you would need to run 250,000 games (example of course) that are going on. I mean I understand a server is more powerful then our home computers but hardware can only do so much right?[/QUOTE]

Uh, they aren't going to have one single supercomputer that runs all the games. They will have thousands of separate computers that will each render one game.
 
[quote name='CoffeeEdge']Uh, they aren't going to have one single supercomputer that runs all the games. They will have thousands of separate computers that will each render one game.[/quote]


I read/heard/whatever earlier in this thread that some servers will have more than one game running on them if it is a game that doesn't require a lot of the computer ... I think lego batman was mentioned
 
[quote name='CoffeeEdge']Uh, they aren't going to have one single supercomputer that runs all the games. They will have thousands of separate computers that will each render one game.[/quote]

I think you mis-interpreted (wow spelling) on what I was saying. I'm saying what if there are 250,000 people on the service wants to play the highest of high end games. Will they need 250,000 computers to do so? Will there be a wait line? How much can one server handle when it comes to something like that? Is it possible to run multiple high end games on a single sever or would something bottleneck it and it just wouldn't play nicely that way?

What I'm saying is only 1 server / computer can only do so much especially when it comes down to gaming. So let's use our example of 250,000 people want to play the highest of high end games at once. We'll give them the benifit that 3 of these games can be played on a single server (honestly it's the most I could see happening if even that). That means that in order for 250,000 people to play that game there has to be 83,333 of these servers to satisfy 250,000 people.

Now let's break it down even further, let's add waiting times. Let's say out of 250,000 people only 50,000 can play at once. That leaves us with 16,666 servers in use for one game, isn't that still a crazy amount just for one game? That's just to satisfy 1/5th of the amount of people who want to play too. The wait times would be crazy wouldn't they?

Now some people will bring up the fact that servers now maintain and run millions of people at once. Right, but think about it, all of those people are running the games off of their own personal computers / consoles. All the server is doing is sending small amounts of info back and forth most of the time.

Let's go this route now, statistics say that 40% of the people in America play video games via console / PC. That's about 120,000,000 people in the US. That's alot of people right? We'll go back to the servers again now. What if each server on average could run about 20 games at once? Pretty impressive right? Hell yea it would be, but that's still 6,000,000 servers needed to please everyone. Obviously this is a little extreme on my part, or is it? What about the millions upon millions of other gamers in the world? Yea okay this point is very extreme but I think you understand where I'm going with it.

I may not have much knowledge on networking and servers, I went the programming route in school, but I do know a bit about computers I would say. So if my points are way off please inform me. I'm just looking at this and trying to think of a way that this is even possibly feasible, hell I didn't even get into a network discussion because it's already been explained several times when it came to the flaws in that
 
[quote name='strikeratt']'m saying what if there are 250,000 people on the service wants to play the highest of high end games. Will they need 250,000 computers to do so? Will there be a wait line?[/quote]
The subject of inevitable wait lines, when their rendering capacity is full, has been mentioned by me many times already.

How much can one server handle when it comes to something like that? Is it possible to run multiple high end games on a single sever or would something bottleneck it and it just wouldn't play nicely that way?
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Okay, before I go any further, the computers that will be rendering the games aren't really "servers." They won't be hosting content to the web directly. That will be handled by other computers. Also, I dunno what makes you think that your average webserver is some kind of supercomputer that can run, for instance, multiple instances of Crysis. They're simply powerful computers with lots of RAM, basically. They are not fundamentally different, or exponentially more powerful for something like high-end gaming, than desktop computers.

Anyways, for games like Crysis, they'll only be able to have a single instance of that running one one machine. They're planning on having lower-end games run in multiple instances, for multiple different players, on a single machine, where possible.

What I'm saying is only 1 server / computer can only do so much especially when it comes down to gaming. So let's use our example of 250,000 people want to play the highest of high end games at once. We'll give them the benifit that 3 of these games can be played on a single server (honestly it's the most I could see happening if even that). That means that in order for 250,000 people to play that game there has to be 83,333 of these servers to satisfy 250,000 people.
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See above. For a lot of games, they're going to need one machine per person.

Now some people will bring up the fact that servers now maintain and run millions of people at once. Right, but think about it, all of those people are running the games off of their own personal computers / consoles. All the server is doing is sending small amounts of info back and forth most of the time.
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Thanks, but I think everyone knows that. ;)

Let's go this route now, statistics say that 40% of the people in America play video games via console / PC. That's about 120,000,000 people in the US. That's alot of people right? We'll go back to the servers again now. What if each server on average could run about 20 games at once? Pretty impressive right? Hell yea it would be, but that's still 6,000,000 servers needed to please everyone. Obviously this is a little extreme on my part, or is it? What about the millions upon millions of other gamers in the world? Yea okay this point is very extreme but I think you understand where I'm going with it.
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Uh...the majority of those 40% of Americans playing games are playing Peggle and Zuma, ya know.

Thank you for your input. :)
 
This is ridiculous. Why would I want to play single player games that are laggy? They'll have to cap resolution and sound quality. No way a huge number of gamers could play at high-resolution settings with the current communications infrastructure. Our current broadband lines couldn't handle this on a huge scale. Verizon has outlayed a ton of money with their fiber optic installations, and it's going to be a while before they recoup that investment. I already see bandwidth deteriorations at heavy-use times, and we all experience lag in current-gen games. This whole concept is crippled by the ability to transfer data, and that only gets tougher as games get more detailed.

This whole scheme revolves around magical compression algorithms to ease the load. But that means the host computer is having to not only run the game but compress everything (sound eats up bandwidth too), and then your client machine has to decompress everything before dislpaying it? Need I type "ROFL"? So this will actually require more work to accomplish the same gaming tasks...you'll be paying for your PC, you just won't own it. Guh.

I guarantee the server for that demo was very near the display, and it was primed and ready to exclusively handle that one task.

I'm in Camp Coffee, I call Phantom shenanigans. Phantamigans!!!
 
Coffee I think your thinking to hard about what I'm saying, most of the questions I asked where retorical, to make other readers realize holy shit when you put it that way. Some of the points I was reiterating in other ways to back up your points because I for one think it is a stupid idea myself, hence why I mentioned wait lines. I already know you mentioned it several times.

As for what a server is and can do, I know what they do I also know that you can slap in some components that make them pretty damn powerful even compared to your average webserver. Webservers yes are loaded with a ton of ram and a good processor but that's because that's all they're set up to do, web enviroment activities, hence not very graphic intensive and such. Now what if you were to slap a couple of quad cores, a ton of ram, and some video cards into it, would it not be possible to run a couple instances of high end games if set up to do so? It just might be I'm sure it's not impossible, esp. if they will already plan on running some of the less intensive games on the same computers. Right now I'm just trying to show people how crazy this plan even is to support a large amount of people while still giving the benifit of the doubt to OnLive. Am I saying that there will be large servers running every game now, no not at all it's all just examples. Would it have been better if I said they would need 250,000 machines to run those high end games? Wouldn't that of just made it look worse? I would sure say so.

As for the 40% of Americans the majority play Peggle and Zuma ... that's why I had said on average each ... we'll just call them computers now :roll: ... could run 20 games. That would be running the gamut of very low end games to very high end.

I agree with you that the idea is just stupid in many ways. I'm only using more examples to show this point.
 
[quote name='sleepy180']OK, say this bullshit vaporware actually succeeds and does everything these hacks say it will do. Say it works flawlessly and its super amazing.

What happens when you decide your done and want to cancel your subscription? All of the games you bought will be unplayable. You will never be able to sell them later, and you can't even play your old games. So you pay $60 for a game and if you cancel subscription you can't even play the games you bought anymore.

This doesn't matter though that it is absolutely impossible to pull this off.[/quote]


Game's wont be $60. Digital distribution is cheaper.

[quote name='crystalklear64']why would you want this to work?


you're essentially removing all the good things that gaming on a pc brings while gaining a ton of bad.[/quote]

This would be cheaper, if it would ever be able to work. Gaming PC's get outdated every 1-2 years, and either require extensive (and expensive) upgrading or a completely new PC.

Also, for the user saying that Xbox would sue, I agree. The colors and the name are the same. Hell, even in the videos, they use the XBOX 360 "B button" in the menus, when the pictures of the controller don't have any such button.

[quote name='vherub']If it delivers on the hype, it takes a sledge hammer to alot of business models, especially on the hardware side[/quote]

I am willing to bet MS and Sony want this to work. Hardware doesn't make companies money, and MS would love to avert future hardware problems with a service like this.
 
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[quote name='Richard Longfellow']This whole scheme revolves around magical compression algorithms to ease the load.[/quote]
Indeed. They're claiming to have these amazing magical video compression algorithms or techniques or whatever, and that that's what's going to make this possible. If they had invented some video codec that is so vastly superior in video quality, compression ratio, and encoding speed to every other video tech that is available today (which it would need to be for this to really work well), then I'm pretty damn sure it wouldn't be a secret. There's no way they could be so far ahead of h264, et cetera, without the rest of the video format community knowing about it.

...you'll be paying for your PC, you just won't own it. Guh.
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Indeed. I mean, for crying out loud, I built my current PC in August '08 for about $400 total, and I can play Crysis smoothly on all high settings.

And furthermore, anyone who already has a PC powerful enough to decode HD video shouldn't be too far from having a PC powerful enough from high-end gaming to begin with.

It just can't be overstated how stupid this is.

I guarantee the server for that demo was very near the display, and it was primed and ready to exclusively handle that one task.
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I believe they claimed that the demo server was 50 miles away. No doubt, though, that the whole demo was primes for "best-case conditions."

I'm in Camp Coffee, I call Phantom shenanigans. Phantamigans!!!
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"Camp Coffee." That has a nice ring to it. I love it! :D

[quote name='strikeratt']As for the 40% of Americans the majority play Peggle and Zuma ... that's why I had said on average each ... we'll just call them computers now :roll: ... could run 20 games. That would be running the gamut of very low end games to very high end.[/quote]

I don't think they'll be using OnLive for any low-end games, because that kinda sorta completely defeats the purpose of the service.
 
[quote name='CoffeeEdge']I don't think they'll be using OnLive for any low-end games, because that kinda sorta completely defeats the purpose of the service.[/quote]

Meh I guess having tons of low end games that you would have to buy on top of monthly subscription fees that you could play several copies on a single computer, make a ton of money at the same time of saving a ton of money, completely defeats the purpose of the service.

Damn money! How dare you build up in my wallet! :bomb:
 
I liked IGN's line, "Onlive seems like it's 15 years too early"

I just don't think America has the internet infrastructure right now to support something like this, as cool as it is.

Heck, I don't think America has the infrastructure to do Movie streaming in HD over the internet, much less a game.

Plus, I am skeptical like you as to how they are going to do this, internet and computer wise....
 
[quote name='strikeratt']Meh I guess having tons of low end games that you would have to buy on top of monthly subscription fees that you could play several copies on a single computer, make a ton of money at the same time of saving a ton of money, completely defeats the purpose of the service.

Damn money! How dare you build up in my wallet! :bomb:[/QUOTE]

What? What I'm saying, is that any computer powerful enough to play a streaming full-resolution video of Peggle, would be able to just straight-up run Peggle.
 
[quote name='H.Cornerstone']I liked IGN's line, "Onlive seems like it's 15 years too early"

I just don't think America has the internet infrastructure right now to support something like this, as cool as it is.

Heck, I don't think America has the infrastructure to do Movie streaming in HD over the internet, much less a game.

Plus, I am skeptical like you as to how they are going to do this, internet and computer wise....[/QUOTE]
Yes, exactly. Even for those of us with the bandwidth available for this, the latency problem is probably too much to overcome right now.

Crysis Warhead already taxes the newest GPUs. This service also needs to encode the video output and send it to you. Even if they have the computing power for this, how is that output going to reach you fast enough to be acceptable for real-time gaming?

They're claiming 1280x720 at 60 frames per second, and I think I read that they're also claiming 1 ms latency. We should all be skeptical.

The idea is not new or bad, however. This could be great when it becomes possible.
 
So I just checked out OnLive with a hands on demo on Thursday (3 kiosks - microconsole, PC client, mac client) - and I have to say I'm pretty impressed. I was a skeptic and I am still a skeptic. Here it goes, sorry for the wall of text.
First off I have to say services like Gamefly and gametap have some serious competition. here's my hands on impression/review (might miss a few things to note - but I can back fill in later. if you have questions /comments that I may have left out, let me know) - I only spent about 30 minutes there... and yes this is all from my perspective of the demo, what I have read up on, and general thoughts on the Service. I’m sure there might be some things you agree as well as disagree on. There may also be things I might be right on and a few things I am clearly mistaken, let me know and I will correct my mistakes (it’s 2 AM and I’m not really editing now).

Keep in mind if you consider yourself a PC gamer this service may not be for you.
- if you buy/build a PC every X years specifically to play games
- if you upgrade your $200 video card with another $200 card to play games every year or so
- if audio/video quality are a big factor for your experience (hence the reason you have a sweet rig with the crazy video card)

Video Quality:
Compression - I noticed a fair amount of video compression (if I were playing on my 52" LCD TV I'd go crazy, the same way watching Netflix stream over my DSL line makes me want to rip my eyes out). Most of my friends wouldn't notice much unless I pointed it out to them. For me I'd rate it a fair. For my friends (aka a regular consumer) I would say they would rate it as acceptable
Color - There seemed to be a fair amount of color saturation in tact even with the compression. Most video compression I see these days everything washes into a grey, so as for color it was more than acceptable.
Resolution - everything there was running 720p, I didn't get a chance to see it running at any other resolution. I was able to read UI fine on all the games I saw. My worst fear was not being able to read text clearly (that can however be very different if they were not running at 720p)
Framerate - It didn't feel as smooth as running a game at a full 60fps, but it was decent enough, I did feel my eyes getting heavy (they may have been blurring some in-between frames to fake 30fps video - anyone else that was there know?)

Control & Feel:
Lag - I specifically waited to try Unreal Tournament 3 - as a twitch gamer I can't stand lag/latency, and yes I did notice a delay. It was definitely not as bad as I thought it would be and passable, but I would still prefer to play on a non GoLive service due to the delay. As far as the other games like burnout you will forgive it. I noticed the cursor delay in the front end of UT3 felt a bit worse than actually playing UT3, weird huh. I can see it being acceptable for large portion of the recent games on the market. It would be absolutely fine for turn based games.
Input - They allowed for a standard USB controller, and USB mouse/keyboard. Which I thought was awesome, they were using a Logitech controller with a the air vents to cool your sweaty hands, and Logitech mice/keyboards. It's great that they are letting you have the option to choose standard equipment. I did not get a chance to find out if can use your PS2/PS3 or your 360 MS USB controllers, I would assume so if you were hooked up to your PC (not too sure if that will be the case for their microconsole). They did have a prototype for their own controller which was behind a plexiglass case, so we couldn't hold it. I would assume it would come with their MicroConsole
General interface - theer was a nifty feature (that i probably woul dtry in the first few days and never again after that - which was a 10 second brag video, wher you press a button and it keeps the last 10 seconds of game footage you played and saves it in a youtube like library to view and share with other users. The flow out and into another game was pretty fluid, all video all of the time

 Tech:
Internet Connection – So they recommended a 6.0 Mbps or better connection for 720p. They didn’t mention what their connection was at the show floor was or where exactly their servers were or if they has some machines assisting the connection between the clients on the show floor and there main servers in Palo Alto (I believe that’s where they were – maybe Santa Clara). I’m betting the connection at the show floor was more than adequate for their needs (guessing a T1 or better).
 Micro Console – as far as I was told – all it did was basically send video to the box to your TV and accept controller (and keyboard/mouse) input. I’m sure there is some sort of authentication for user acct / piracy protection at some point.
 Min Specs – I saw no mention of a minimum Spec – I’m petty sure I can’t use a pre Mac OS X or Pre Windows XP machine. I’d be surprised if you could – I would be really, really surprised.
 Loading bar? - So when you change to a game I noticed there were loading bars, none were longer than a minute it felt. I was told it was basically the console/client pairing up with the servers.
 How many machines does it take for 1 gaming experience? – They really don’t tell you any of this. Energy wise isn’t it more efficient for you to have a machine at home instead of having a series of machines for 1 gaming experience.

Other things I talked to the developers about:
Date – The site mentions winter 2009. no specifics as to what exactly to expect.
 Price – No mention of price or pricing structure, or partners for distribution
 Service – No mention of service structure. I’m wondering if they will go with a structure similar to cable. Pay $X for basic service, pay a bit more for access to some high quality content like HBO/Cinemax (new games). Pay per play possible (ala pay per view) for basic service customers. Again that’s my guess and not what they told me
 Platforms – I didn’t ask if this would roll out on Linux/Ubuntu – I realized it later when I turned on my laptop with Ubuntu and said yeah it would be nice to have some real games to play on this sucker. Laptop would probbaly be too slow anyway.
 Mac - I tried to play UT3 on the Mac client and was told the keyboard/mouse interface was wonky, and was prompted to check it out on a PC station. The developer was taking full responsibility and was quite embarrassed as it was his responsibility. I say kudos to him for mentioning it, instead of giving me some sort of marketing line. He gave me more faith that the mac will be treated right.
 Changing /customization of graphical settings – so I think may of us are under the assumption that they are running PC games and if I were I wasn’t able to find/access a customize graphics section. So we can be playing with a modified PC version or a modified console version of each game - how modified - they didnt say, but I can't wait to see comparisons.

 My observations/ guestimates:
 Target Customers –
- Not the Hardcore gamer - It definitely was not me (at home), but for a whole lotta people I can see them wanting this. Heck I might even subscribe for when I travel (so maybe I am a target customer- hmm). It looks like they might not want the hardcore gamer, and they most likely won’t get them, since we are a picky crowd to please, and we are proud of our rigs.
 - People who do not look at their PC as a dedicated gaming platform that happens to browse the web - It would seem that they are after people who just have computers that are decent enough to go online and not think that they can play games because of the typical dilemma for the average PC owner – “I just bought this PC and I can’t play the game that came out last month, well yes technically it plays, but it runs like crap and doesn’t look like what I saw in the video”.
- Casual players looking for a hardcore experience without the commitment – I don’t have to spend money on a 360 that might break, I don’t have to spend $400 for a PS3, I don’t need to spend $1k + on a PC. I can just pay X dollars a month and not worry about having extra stuff on my shelf.
Good vs bad
- Good things for a gamer - you might not need to spend a few hundy as a cost of entry to play a high end game. You will never be out of date, won't have to worry about your purchase having a price drop.
- Bad things for a gamer - say good by to physical media and trade in credit
- good things for a developer – As a developer you now can say there is a “standard” SKU for the platform, everything now has a defined target. Like how you make a game for the PS3, 360 or Wii, you know what the specs are. When you make a PC game the specs range from low to high. The downside of this is that OnLive is the one who will dictate what the “standard” is. (see above notes on Changing/customizing of graphics)
- Bad things for a developer - so far there has been no indication of an independent developer having a presence as much as someone like the iPhone store or even Steam offers. You'll will most likely have to already be working with a publisher, and I don't think OnLive considers themselves a publisher (if they did it would be a conflict of interest with the other publishers). Sounds like this may be another source for teh publisher and not the developer.
- Good things for a publisher – it’s another source of revenue and heck so far no piracy. There may be a way around it by having multiple users share an acct – or however– people will always find a way.
- Bad things for a publisher - I heard there may be special versions that will have to be made to fall in line to work with the service. Will publishers decide to release at midnight and piss off every retailer??? Risking retailer relations. How do you get paid? and how much did OnLive take away from you from other revenue streams? Do Onlive players have access to paid DLC content as part of their subscription?
thoughts
 Pricing – I would hope it would be under $50/month, I’m guessing $39.95/month for basic game service. I really can't see it being cheaper than that. They hav eto pay the content providers, bandwidth, processing, salries...
 Their cost ?– If OnLive was to offer classic arcade service it would be a loss as it’s core tech is to stream the experience. So even if I’m playing Crysis or Pac man theoretically I will stream the same amount of data (if you take out 720p vs lower resolution, and compression schemes optimized for a few colors vs millions colors out of the equation). The example is extreme and probably unrealistic to compare – but you get my point I hope.
 Their server placement – I read in some articles that OnLive will have to be near key cities to have this service available and functioning correctly. Basically they will have to have hardware all over the US – I’m betting it will not be cheap.
 Will Comcast/Time Warner/ A&T throttle my connection? – if your ISP thinks you are a bandwidth hog or enforces caps you might be in trouble if you stream video/play onlive and download as part of your lifestyle. You are basically adding another way to cap yourself. I was told by a rep that if you were the average player of 60 hrs of gaming a month you should be well within your cap. We have yet to prove this is a real world scenario and have yet to se how far ISPs are going to keep capping bandwidth limits as they have started not to long ago.
 High Speed Connection – a good chunk of US households have access to broadband, which by most definitions is DSL or Cable. Most cable connections meet the 6.0 Mbps, most DSL connections do not. I’m sure new tech will make this easier. Adding Fios connections to markets that already have decent bandwidth options does nothing for people that have only dial up as an option and therefore does nothing for OnLive’s possible customer base (heck those customers would probably too far for the OnlIve servers anyway)
 Why did OnLive choose games, wouldn’t streaming just video be an easier thing to do – I asked one of the reps this and their response was – they wanted to take on an interactive medium. I’m wondering if the streaming video space was too crowded. I don’t see a problem with them making a deal with Netflix or any other streaming service, even interactive TV. Their tech is probably expandable to working with the virtual doctors or deep water explorers. It's basically an Interactable video feed. There are a load of other possible applications, gaming is probably the most profitable / promising avenue, instead of taking on giant TV companies.
 Is there something they are not telling us – There is something they are not telling us. I believe everyone has this sitting in back of their heads. As with any demo even if you see and touch it with your own eyes it is just a demo proving out tech. Basically look at it as if it were a magic trick, I see it but I know its too fantastic and unreal to really be happening. There are real world problems that they will have to solve on the fly. They can very easily have the netflix problem, where some people will rave about how fast they get their movies and when you sign up your DVDs come in 3 days and not the miracle 1 day you expected. Basically one person's experiece is great - someone elses is horrible.
 What won’t happen anytime soon if at all – you will not see Mario, Halo or Killzone on OnLive. Why on earth Sony or Microsoft wants to see a system seller on another platform. They make systems for you to buy so they in turn can make money off of publishers that sell games on their platforms. They themselves may very much want you to pay a subscription for games in the future, but they definitely want their content on their machines only.
Services like Gamefly will be hurting – Have you ever had to wait for a hot in demand game? OnLive should theoretically get rid of this, and services like gamefly can not compete with this unless they plan to modify their business model to focus more on platform exclusive titles for the reasons mentioned earlier.
 Heard on the show floor– On the floor I heard someone say “their tech is basically a bunch of Xboxes stringed together” - I have no clue as to how they were coming to this conclusion or if this was even remotely the case, but heck anything is possible right?

 Conclusion – yes this demo was indeed impressive, but it was a demo. The key word is demo. They put their best foot forward and many people are excited. We have yet to see this in the real world at home where there are variables with our home environments, our actual connections, our ISPs, general internet traffic, their server load, the actual cost of this service, and a slew of other things that may or may not be obvious. In order for this to work right our (US) internet infrastructure will be their biggest challenge since it is somethig that is totally outside of their control. All I have to say is good luck and I hope what I saw turns out to become true and if it does I hope it is affordable to everyone that wants to give it a whirl.

Again sorry for the wall of text - it could have been longer - but I'm tired. I could have blogged it - but I didn't. PM me if I messed up somewhere... and thanks for reading and responding.
 
Thanks carbogo. It could be a lot more efficient for them to run the machines than for every user to have an expensive gaming rig. If everyone buys their own computer, they're not all running them all the time. OnLive can use their machines to serve someone else when you're not using them.
 
[quote name='rickonker']Thanks carbogo. It could be a lot more efficient for them to run the machines than for every user to have an expensive gaming rig.[/QUOTE]


A user's home computer that is powerful enough to smoothly decode streaming HD video at 30 fps (which has to be a decently powerful computer to begin with; HD video is processor-intensive) + another more powerful computer to render the game + server traffic + high volumes of video data being transferred to the user via the internet = not more efficient.
 
[quote name='CoffeeEdge']A user's home computer that is powerful enough to smoothly decode streaming HD video at 30 fps (which has to be a decently powerful computer to begin with; HD video is processor-intensive) + another more powerful computer to render the game + server traffic + high volumes of video data being transferred to the user via the internet = not more efficient.[/QUOTE]
I share your skepticism of the service, but I disagree with you here. I already mentioned one reason. Another is that a lot of cheap computers can decode HD video just fine, because even integrated graphics chipsets now have HD decoders.
 
Even if it did run fine, what happens when your internet gets super laggy? Or if your internet goes down... screwed.

Also, you are not gonna be able to save in the game are you?
 
[quote name='rickonker']Why not?[/quote]

No idea, I'm not really sure how streaming works. Do the save files save to your computer/OnLive box? Or are they connected to your online profile?
 
You know, I'm starting to think that this may not be all that bad.

Don't get me wrong, I have no intention of using it. I can't see it replacing any console, at all. Seems like it offers too few benefits for the cons it has. Definitely seems like the primary market for this are consumers who want to play PC Games but don't want to pay/worry about/learn how to keep a computer top of the line. If it does succeed and get more people into gaming on PC's, that should, in theory, result in more PC Games. With more PC Games, everyone benefits. Of course, this assumes that the games they have aren't custom built for their service.

And if this service fails, so what. I won't have lost anything. I'll still have my PC, which I can update, mod, and do whatever the fark I want to.
 
[quote name='DarkNessBear']No idea, I'm not really sure how streaming works. Do the save files save to your computer/OnLive box? Or are they connected to your online profile?[/QUOTE]

Saves will be tied to your account, and stored on their servers.

Also, users won't have specific Onlive boxes specifically/permanently dedicated to them. Users' save files will no doubt be stored on separate machines dedicated for user data storage, and then served to game rendering machines via virtual drives or something.

This service will be shit, but c'mon, they wouldn't have ignored something as fundamental as savegames. :roll:
 
[quote name='CoffeeEdge']
This service will be shit, but c'mon, they wouldn't have ignored something as fundamental as savegames. :roll:[/quote]

Isn't "working" fundamental as well?
 
I'm sure it can "work" but probably with choppy video and bad lag. One of the selling points is high-end graphics that they upgrade for you, but what's the point if it has to be heavily compressed to get to you?
 
[quote name='DarkNessBear']Isn't "working" fundamental as well?[/QUOTE]

Look at one of my previous posts. I've said that I have little doubt that it will "work." Or perhaps "function" is a better word than "work."

It can/will "function," I'm sure, but that "functioning" will be marred with constant irritating lag, ugly video compression artifacts, inevitable wait times during peak user activity, no mods/custom content, and a whole host of other problems, major and minor.
 
I Singed up for the beta, and I am really curious on how this works out.

I think this is an alternative for gaming right now. It would make expansion packs for games somewhat confusing on how it can be managed, and if a game isn't selling enough, couldn't they just "pull the plug" on it and you wouldn't be able to play it again?
Wouldn't the games be cheaper too? It takes a lot less effort to upload a game than to make a mass of copies throughout, and without retailers, you cut out the middle man, and the money goes directly to the 2 parties.
If Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony were to drop out the consoles, and start solely on game development, they would be able to spend more money on games than consoles, instead of taking years to break a profit (excluding Nintendo), so OnLive seems better financially, although I doubt the console makers would drop out the consoles.
There are a lot of concerns on how this'll work out, or even if it'll downright work. I say give it 3-4 years for this to be the "one console future"

P.S. sorry this is so clustered, I was just saying what I wanted to say,



Farewell.
 
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[quote name='dembesum']It would make expansion packs for games somewhat confusing on how it can be managed,[/quote]
Don't see why. Expansion packs are sold on most of the digital distribution outlets. They work pretty much the way as expansions sold at retail: for expansions that require the original game, you must own the original game from that digital outlet, and for expandalones (stand-alone expansion packs), you can buy them with or without owning the original game.

and if a game isn't selling enough, couldn't they just "pull the plug" on it and you wouldn't be able to play it again?
Click to expand...
I'm not aware of whether or not OnLive plans on rotating games, but D2D, Steam, and most of the other digital outlets keep all games permanently on the service. There is some semi-shovelware junk on Steam that I would honestly be surprised if they sell more than a half-dozen copies a week, and yet they keep them all up.

Wouldn't the games be cheaper too? It takes a lot less effort to upload a game than to make a mass of copies throughout, and without retailers, you cut out the middle man, and the money goes directly to the 2 parties.
Click to expand...
Nope. All of the digital distribution outlets charge the same prices as retail stores. Games launch for $50 on Steam and D2D, just like they do at Best Buy and Gamestop.

Retailers would not tolerate being significantly undercut, at product launch, by digital outlets, and publishers don't want to create that sort of bad blood with them, because retail remains, by enormous margins, their biggest distribution outlets.

If Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony were to drop out the consoles, and start solely on game development, they would be able to spend more money on games than consoles, instead of taking years to break a profit (excluding Nintendo), so OnLive seems better financially, although I doubt the console makers would drop out the consoles.
Click to expand...
I don't think you entirely understand how the console makers make money. Yes, they do lose money on initial hardware sales (excluding Nintendo), and yes, they do make a lot of money on first-party software sales. But you're overlooking a key element of their business model: licensing fees. Every game that third-parties publish for Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo's systems must be licensed by them, and this licensing carries fees (and there may be additional residual royalties; I don't recall). So, that's where they make a lot of their money, and if they became software-only, they'd lose all of that revenue.

So, yeah. OnLive-type services aren't necessarily a compelling argument for console makers to become software-only.

There are a lot of concerns on how this'll work out, or even if it'll downright work. I say give it 3-4 years for this to be the "one console future"
Click to expand...
Nope. In 3-4 years, Onlive will be gone, and we'll all be playing our Wii 2s, Xbox 3s, and PS4s.
 
and if a game isn't selling enough, couldn't they just "pull the plug" on it and you wouldn't be able to play it again?
Click to expand...

This is surely true. However it could also happen with any new console system. It's the risk you take when you buy a new system. I was a 3do buyer so I know :)
 
[quote name='jasonpaul']This is surely true. However it could also happen with any new console system. It's the risk you take when you buy a new system. I was a 3do buyer so I know :)[/QUOTE]

I think you pretty fundamentally misunderstood his post.

If a console dies, you can still play all the games you bought for it, as long as you keep the discs around.
 
Taken from OnLive bloghttp://blog.onlive.com/.Posted May 12,2009.
To the user, OnLive is exceptionally easy to use: The latest high-end titles are available on PC and Mac (via a small browser plug-in) or on TV (via the OnLive MicroConsole). Games startup instantly. There is no physical media, no downloads, no patches, no updates, and no high-end hardware is needed to play the games. Pretty much any XP/Vista PC or Intel-based Mac will work. And, you never need to upgrade your PC, Mac or MicroConsole™: you’ll continue to be able to play increasingly higher performance games on your existing PC, Mac or MicroConsole.

But to achieve this level of simplicity, “behind the scenes” OnLive is an immensely complex computing system. It’s a type of computing system called a “cloud computing” system, because computing occurs in a data center within the Internet (aka “the cloud”). But, OnLive is a cloud computing system that is quite different. In this post, we’ll explore one of those differences: how in a typical OnLive session you use many different computers (called “servers” because they are in data centers), and how you seamlessly transition from one server to another.

When you are using OnLive, while it seems like you are using just one immensely powerful server that is constantly providing a non-stop video experience, nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, from the moment you start up OnLive you are using many servers working together in a myriad of different ways, sometimes with a server dedicated to your use, sometimes sharing a server with other users, sometimes using several servers at once, and sometimes a combination of some or all of the above.

For example, let’s consider a typical user who tried out OnLive at the Game Developer Conference and played for five minutes (say, navigating the user interface, playing a few games, snapping and watching Brag Clips™, and spectating other users playing). Given that range of activities, the user easily used more than a dozen servers at different times. Just to identify a few: some OnLive servers ran (i.e. “hosted”) particular games, other OnLive servers hosted the user interface, and others handled the distribution of spectating video streams and Brag Clips.

As the user transitioned from one experience to another (e.g. clicking in the user interface to start a game), OnLive would “hand off” the user from one server to another, transferring the “user state” (e.g. all the data unique to that user, including the live characteristics of the Internet connection) from the user interface server to the game server, while switching the live compressed HDTV video/audio from the user interface server to the game server. And, all of this occurred on a video frame boundary. So, from the point of view of the user, it seemed like the video was just continuing onward from the user interface video to the game video as if it was running on the same server. In actuality, it was seamlessly handed-off from one server to the next.

And, when using OnLive, you are using even more servers than just the ones you transition to. For example, massive spectating (when you watch lots of thumbnail video windows of live games being played) is tapping into “IP Broadcasts” (i.e. data broadcasts over OnLive’s internal networks) of the live video generated by many different servers hosting many other users. And, when you play back a Brag Clip, yet another server is handling that for you. So, one question you might ask is, why does OnLive go to all of this trouble to transition users around from server-to-server? There are 4 main reasons: 1) many things (e.g. massive spectating) simply can’t be done with one server, 2) it allows us to always provide users with state-of-the-art performance, 3) it dramatically lowers our cost of operations, and 4) it dramatically reduces power consumption.

For example, if a user decides to play a very high-performance game, the user will be transitioned to a very high-performance server that can handle the game. If the user is running a lower-performance game, then the user will be sent to lower-performance server (OnLive has many classes of servers), and, in the case of many games, we can have more than one user share a single server without any impact on gameplay (“real-time virtualization”).

Every six months or so, we install new servers with the latest GPU and CPU technology, able to run the latest most advanced games. But the older servers are still fine for running lower-performance games (or, say, the OnLive user interface), and users never know what server(s) or shared servers are hosting their games. Needless to say, this not only gives gamers access to the very latest gaming hardware, but it also dramatically reduces OnLive’s costs of operation since, at any given time, many users are playing games (or in the OnLive user interface) and require less than state-of-the-art performance. And, from a user’s point of view, the experience is always fast and high quality because each game plays on a server providing the level of performance required. But of course, behind the scenes, OnLive transitions the user seamlessly from server-to-server, leaving the user with the perception of simply having one incredibly high performance and flexible computer.

Finally, OnLive consumes far less energy by only providing each user with as much computing power as is needed for the particular task the user is doing. Not only is this good for the environment (particularly if the user is using an OnLive MicroConsole in the home, which only consumes about a few watts), but it also further reduces OnLive’s costs of operation. Good deal all around.

So, OnLive not only provides you with far more computing power than any single computer or console when you do need it, OnLive provides you with far less computing power when you don’t. Gameplay is always state-of-the-art, but cost of operations and energy consumption is minimized.

I hope you found this OnLive tech overview interesting. As you can imagine, designing and building this technology was really fun. It’s rare to have a chance to design a mass-market system based on a completely different view of computing, yet one that provides an experience to the user where all of the complexity and tricky engineering is invisible.

More cool tech postings to come…
 
I think what we're seeing is early tech, and to me seems really promising for the future. I don't think the current retail market is going to change any time soon though, because I don't see this ever knocking out the Walmarts/BestBuys. But it will be a section of the market, and I think it's a great idea. It won't replace the console, but when the infrastructure is there to support it, who would love to play top tier games at high quality from cheap laptop? I agree that it's not going to work with the current infrastructure, but somebody has to be first, and I'm impressed they can do what they can at these early stages.
 
[quote name='aihuman']Alright, I'm ready for this.Just upgraded my dsl to 3 Gbps.[/QUOTE]

Which company offers DSL at 3 gigs a second?
 
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