OnLive...death of dedicated pc hardware?

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Azazel90x

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http://pc.ign.com/articles/965/965535p1.html

Just announced at this year's GDC, OnLive is an on-demand gaming service. It's essentially the gaming version of cloud computing - everything is computed, rendered and housed online. In its simplest description, your controller inputs are uploaded, a high-end server takes your inputs and plays the game, and then a video stream of the output is sent back to your computer. Think of it as something like Youtube or Hulu for games.
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This could just be about the most amazing thing ever...or is it?
 
This won't work unless the speed of the internet increases. I think this will flop.
 
Seems slick, probably a few years too early though, but who knows.
 
Flop. I can't even get HD streaming over Netflix to work 100% of the time on a 10mbps cable internet connection. Now imagine the overhead that goes along with gaming.

Maybe in 5 years.
 
it will be awesome for mom and the other 90% of people with high speed internet. but it also really could be the death of pc building. it would suck for people like us [H]ere.
 
it will make things interesting though.

say, it works. actually let's say it works awesome, and for $20 a month you can subscribe to their networks and use it unlimited- just buy each title you want for $39.99 (i'd hate to see prices that high but you know they will be).

people will buy it because it offers instant next-gen gaming for under $100. people are also stupid as fuck when it comes to monthly payments. perfect.

now say this happens to go mainstream in a couple years. around the same time xbox 720 or whatever is coming out, and ps4 if there will be one. you know there will be another xbox, that's a given. so we will have a $500 xbox up against a $20 a month plan (hardware will likely be included/rented too) both playing many of the same games at the same quality level. both offer a console-like experience, and the masses have proved that's what they like... so this is automatically popular aside from being only $20 (because you know how many years it will take to pay more then $500 at that rate! i'll, like, have grey hair by then! (2 years)

this just makes all too perfect sense. it's going to happen, and it will be interesting to see how it affects home-based gaming. my worst fear is the publishers forcing everyone to cloud game... but for the same reason they cant make good drm (because any drm that isn't activated live online can be cracked too easily) they won't be able to use cloud gaming as a replacement to consoles or pc's, too many people are stuck with bad or no internet.

as far as im concerned, im sticking with pc gaming. i do not own any consoles (they are emulated on my pc lol ) and i will not buy into cloud gaming. im still pushing for the pvr tv functions to be more accepted in the pc market... and that ship has already sailed and stranded. i still want my pc to do everything. i want this box of parts that i bought to be assembled into a machine that alters the way i live in a positive and very cool way. i want my pc, dammit, and i don't want it circumsized or worse castrated.
 
The horsepower needed is just not available. A nice idea, but that's about it.
 
This wouldn't be just the death of PC gaming, but also console gaming.

I think the whole thing is hog wash really.
 
The basis is a good idea but we are so far off from this happening.

To begin with we would need fiber at every household and unrestricted internet with 0 latency issues. Can you imagine the amount of bw this would require? Games right now require very little bw client side because the information being sent back and forth is so minisucle. So streaming would basically be like streaming a movie to every gamer which will literally break the internet.

Maybe in 10years but I cannot see any sooner.
 
The idea will require hardware that is currently unavailable. This isn't to say that the idea itself is untenable, however.
 
At the end of the day, if you really look far into the future, this IS they way we are headed. Not just with gaming, but with desktop computing. This is the endgame for cloud computing.
 
Won't work, which I kinda think is a pity but mostly think is justified failure.

I have yet to use an internet connection that can properly stream a high-quality video (forget about HD) seemlessly. The only connections that I could imagine this working on are university T1 or T3 connections where you are likely to be limited by just the sending speed and the connections in between. Basically, I just don't think this kind of streaming content is currently possible with a large enough market.

And I can't imagine that it's cost effective. What kind of systems will they have to be running to manage the processing fast enough to make sure that it doesn't create a bottleneck for the already sketchy options for streaming? We're talking about pricing scales like a MMO without the long-term draw that keeps MMOs going.

Neat idea, but I don't see it working just yet and moreso I don't think that I want it to work because of the effect it would have on both PC and console gaming.
 
OniExpress said:
Won't work, which I kinda think is a pity but mostly think is justified failure.

I have yet to use an internet connection that can properly stream a high-quality video (forget about HD) seemlessly. The only connections that I could imagine this working on are university T1 or T3 connections where you are likely to be limited by just the sending speed and the connections in between. Basically, I just don't think this kind of streaming content is currently possible with a large enough market.

And I can't imagine that it's cost effective. What kind of systems will they have to be running to manage the processing fast enough to make sure that it doesn't create a bottleneck for the already sketchy options for streaming? We're talking about pricing scales like a MMO without the long-term draw that keeps MMOs going.

Neat idea, but I don't see it working just yet and moreso I don't think that I want it to work because of the effect it would have on both PC and console gaming.
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LOL T1. Are you serious?
 
If they already have it functioning in a controlled environment, then maybe the system could be used for LAN parties. Can't see that happening with all the DRM hassles involved though :eek:
 
lets not base everything on states cuz our internet provider and availabilty of optic fiber connection blows
 
Seems like a lot of people want to see this fail. The real question should be " What if it succeeds "? PC hardware manufacturers must not be very pleased about this announcement. Especially GPU makers. You can bet that OnLive will become a target for Nvidia & AMD to slam on every chance they get.

-LatinLegacy
 
That's moronic. They'd have to invent a hyperdrive to get input lag low enough, not to mention latency and image degradation associated with compression of the video stream.

And then, you'd still need a gaming computer on the other end plus the (beefy) hardware required to compress the video stream real time.

How do idiots like this get the money to start a business?


But sure, if they can somehow manage a way to get around general relativity, I'm sure everything else will be easy.

EDIT: Oh, they're going to try to do everything on server farms! These people clearly have no idea what they're doing. What an idiotic idea!
 
spacetrader said:
it will be awesome for mom and the other 90% of people with high speed internet. but it also really could be the death of pc building. it would suck for people like us [H]ere.
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it wont be the death , people like to build and there will always be a market for it,people still build their own cars, build their own houses and so on.
 
Security Vulnerabilities!!

Cloud Computing is not and will not ever be secure enough!
 
This won't work...
Many... MANY countries that do buy consoles, just don't have the internet bandwidth to support this

Latin america will probably be excluded, i live in Argentina and i just don't see this working...
1/3 of the time here u have ISP issues... the standard is 2mb ... we have horrible latency with a lot of international servers

The potential market for this now a days is too small to be profitable and worthwhile for developers to assume costs... My 2 cents
 
First thought:

Next they'll want to have the cloud servers do the actual playing and just send the resulting stream to a semi-vegetative viewer... oh wait, that's about the same as TV. :D


Second thought:

How do you overclock a cloud? FTL if I can't get my hands on it, bend it to my will and make it do things it isn't technically supposed to.
 
I just watched their demonstration at the keynote. It actually seemed to work, but there were some minor hiccups. The distance from their servers was only 50 miles, though--it's located in Santa Clara.
 
One day this could be a possible solution--perhaps on fiber optic. If it catches on it would be a major blow to enthusiasts who care about image quality, ect. I like Valve's Steam distribution model better.

I don't understand how this wouldn't end up being a more expensive way to game because both the developers and the servers would have to be reimbursed on both the game itself and the service. Also, how could they possibly hope to serve everyone?

On the other hand, once you get past the actual CPU and GPU processing it is really just a question of streaming video to a monitor and streaming input information to the server. It is not hard to imagine, but I just don't get how they could possibly hope to serve everyone and provide quality on par with what we have now.

American broadband isn't up for this that is for sure.
 
Hehe.. maybe in 10 years this MIGHT work.. but it would still have horrid input latency...

Hrmmm... stream "video", then user has to react with input, input has to go to server, server has to deal with input, and then send back another frame of the streamed "video".

Way too expensive, and they would also need super fast/0 latency connections, and they would have to have systems powerful enough to do all the calculations, rendering, and streaming.

What exactly would be the point of this? You would still need 1 system for each person for the most part.
 
i still dont understand how it works server side, like whats actually running the games loads of gaming PC's or some custom built Mega machines that have the power to run 10 games of crysis at the same time?

:confused:
 
Einhanderkiller said:
I just watched their demonstration at the keynote. It actually seemed to work, but there were some minor hiccups. The distance from their servers was only 50 miles, though--it's located in Santa Clara.
Click to expand...

Do you have a link to this demonstration? I'm very interested in seeing it.
 
I still cant get a ping below 100 on any l4d server making it unplayable in versus mode.
hahaha, NO
 
One thing im curious which they havent talked about is Multiplayer.

Say you own Crysis for example on the server. And you goto play multiplayer. Unless you play on an internal OnLive server you introduce more lag. You need to wait for your input to get to the server and the render to come back as normal (30-100ms depending on distance). But now you also need to deal with the lag from OnLive connected to the Crysis server you're playing on. It just seems like this is a nice idea but not feasable.

I agree with most people here. For simple games this is great, but for twitch based games no. People talk about FPS but think about fighting games. Some fighters require input within a couple frames of animation. That simply becomes near impossible with the input lag of 30-50ms. Great idea but I'm doubtful it will please hardcore gamers.
 
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