OnLive video demo

theNoid said:
80ms, full 720p HD, no hacking, and I don't have to spend hundreds building/maintaining a rig... sounds like a breath of fresh air.

In all seriousness I get a chuckle from some of the fear responses generated by OnLive. People, this is breakthrough technology that is going to shape the way you play games in the coming future, you'd be a fool to overlook OnLive. Whether its OnLive or another service like it ... you are going to see this business model get bigger and pick up speed over the next decade. Change is scary I know, but despite how radical and how threatening this technology may seem, its coming.
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Yeah, seriously man, forget paying hundreds of dollars on a gaming rig. Instead, let's pay Onlive a few hundred dollars in subscription fees over a few years for a subpar experience. Even assuming the subscription fee is very low, like $20/month, that's still $960 after four years. You still have to pay for your games on top of that. For that much I could just build myself a decent computer that would last that long, so I see zero benefit to this service.

The only possible argument for a service like this is saving money, but I seriously doubt it will be priced low enough that it ends up being cheaper than just building your own computer.

Anyway, I'm not arguing against Onlive's possible success, since I'm sure most people will just eat it up. I, however, am not one of them.
 
tmbroe01 said:
Quote: Originally Posted by theNoid 80ms, full 720p HD, no hacking, and I don't have to spend hundreds building/maintaining a rig... sounds like a breath of fresh air. In all seriousness I get a chuckle from some of the fear responses generated by OnLive. People, this is breakthrough technology that is going to shape the way you play games in the coming future, you'd be a fool to overlook OnLive. Whether its OnLive or another service like it ... you are going to see this business model get bigger and pick up speed over the next decade. Change is scary I know, but despite how radical and how threatening this technology may seem, its coming. Yeah, seriously man, forget paying hundreds of dollars on a gaming rig. Instead, let's pay Onlive a few hundred dollars in subscription fees over a few years for a subpar experience. Even assuming the subscription fee is very low, like $20/month, that's still $960 after four years. You still have to pay for your games on top of that. For that much I could just build myself a decent computer that would last that long, so I see zero benefit to this service. The only possible argument for a service like this is saving money, but I seriously doubt it will be priced low enough that it ends up being cheaper than just building your own computer. Anyway, I'm not arguing against Onlive's possible success, since I'm sure most people will just eat it up. I, however, am not one of them.
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I was under the impression they already give you access to all the games
 
tmbroe01 said:
Yeah, seriously man, forget paying hundreds of dollars on a gaming rig. Instead, let's pay Onlive a few hundred dollars in subscription fees over a few years for a subpar experience. Even assuming the subscription fee is very low, like $20/month, that's still $960 after four years. You still have to pay for your games on top of that. For that much I could just build myself a decent computer that would last that long, so I see zero benefit to this service.

The only possible argument for a service like this is saving money, but I seriously doubt it will be priced low enough that it ends up being cheaper than just building your own computer.

Anyway, I'm not arguing against Onlive's possible success, since I'm sure most people will just eat it up. I, however, am not one of them.
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I understand your argument fully, I'm a pc gamer. I'm also a system engineer who specializes in similar technology to OnLive. Unbeknownst to most people, this technology is the driving force of the entire IT business right now. Virtualized applications, centralized distribution, cloud computing, and mainly ... saving money money money. You'd be surprised just how many key players in <insert your favorite market> started implemented and pioneering similar technologies over the past few years.

At this point we know nothing about OnLives pricing model, for all we know it could be $20 a month or $5 + buy your games. But whats the point in guessing? My stance isn't that the end all selling point to OnLive is not having to pay for your own gaming computer but that.. in all seriousness, the companies delivering all the games we all play right now are salivating at this shit. They would do anything to have services like OnLive running the market right now. They are tired of piracy, they are tired of losing tens of millions to the second hand market and they are tired of paying millions to stamp, box, and then ship physical copies of discs around the world. Services like Steam and others that do DD are just the beginning, I hope you didn't think it would end there.

In the end, I feel so strongly about this its hard to get my point across without sounding like I'm talking about some pie in the sky. For once, I truely believe that the consumer is not going to be the driving force any longer. You are going to see the big key players in the gaming industry take this technology and run with it. They will do this because this is where the money leads them this time, not the consumer. When you wake up one day and want to buy a game only to find out its only available through a service like OnLive you'll either stop gaming or jump aboard. Regardless of what you do, the companies standing behind these services are going to be saving and raking in tens of millions for dollars a year because of it. This is the type of change that is coming, regardless if the consumer is ready for it.

Money talks, and this time its not that dollar bill the consumer is holding. You can hold me to it.
 
Is OnLive doing console games or will it only work with PC games?

I can't see why Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo would let OnLive host their games. They would lose incredible amounts of money.
 
I saw something just like this a year ago. And I suspect I'll see something like this a year from now and a year after that. Works great when the server is right there.

For anyone that gamed seriously 80ms latency is perceptible and where I am, that latency floats wildly which would force a buffering to my worst latency for smooth play.

But the biggest downfall is common sense. To get play like you're on a high end PC, you have to be running the game on a high end PC somewhere and someone has to pay not only for that PC but for someone to take care of that PC. And since anyone using that PC has to be within 1000 miles, the PC will be loaded at roughly the same time so there's only so much sharing that will take place.

So effectively you have to pay for a good chunk of a high end PC and people to maintain it plus money for the game rental. Not going to be cheap.

I mean this is hilarious actually. Ever since networked personal computers have shown up and destroyed most mainframe systems, the push to return to such a model periodically resurfaces promising the same kinds of benefits with no hiccups. And it never works out that way.
 
theNoid said:
In the end, I feel so strongly about this its hard to get my point across without sounding like I'm talking about some pie in the sky. For once, I truely believe that the consumer is not going to be the driving force any longer. You are going to see the big key players in the gaming industry take this technology and run with it. They will do this because this is where the money leads them this time, not the consumer. When you wake up one day and want to buy a game only to find out its only available through a service like OnLive you'll either stop gaming or jump aboard. Regardless of what you do, the companies standing behind these services are going to be saving and raking in tens of millions for dollars a year because of it. This is the type of change that is coming, regardless if the consumer is ready for it.

Money talks, and this time its not that dollar bill the consumer is holding. You can hold me to it.
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Can you name any industry in which that has occurred previously? US car manufacturers tried to tell their customers what they wanted, and we know how that worked out. Here's hoping OnLive doesn't qualify for bailout money in 15 years.

OnLive will be a new player in the console arena, nothing more. Get over it.
 
wolfen22 said:
Is OnLive doing console games or will it only work with PC games?

I can't see why Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo would let OnLive host their games. They would lose incredible amounts of money.
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It's up to the publishers whether or not their games will be on OnLive.
 
wolfen22 said:
there is, actually. The PS3 has tons of exclusives that just came out or are coming out soon. Not something the PC can claim.
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PC has tons of exclusives still coming out and an endless back catalog of PC exclusive games that people still play to this day.
 
Tylerdurdened said:
I was under the impression they already give you access to all the games
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Very first info I heard when they first presented it was that you pay for the subscription AND games. I thought, "well that's lame" and haven't really followed it since. I agree that if you ONLY had to pay the subscription ($20-40/month) it would be financially attractive. I don't think that will happen, especially since publishers would never agree to a system where they make less money. That means publishers want the same amount of revenue, and Onlive wants revenue on top of hardware costs. I don't see how a system like could possibly cost the consumer less...
 
Well OnLive might be the first one to get released, but steam been working on their steam cloud. So far they only release the part that stores save games but don't you think steam cloud might be like onlive in the future for valve?
 
who is to say that the console makers (MS, Sony, Nintendo) won't partner w/ Onlive. we've seen them all partner w/ netflix to provide content to users. I'm sure these companies would love to offer rentals like that, just think about how something like this would take market from gamefly/blockbuster etc.
 
TheBuzzer said:
Well OnLive might be the first one to get released, but steam been working on their steam cloud. So far they only release the part that stores save games but don't you think steam cloud might be like onlive in the future for valve?
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It's a massive shift to move from distributing games and storing one's save files to doing the actual processing on the server end -- the "store" part of OnLive, however they choose to do it, isn't the hard part. It's getting the server-side processing to work well enough that it doesn't compromise the end-user's experience. Remember, the party trick is having massive farms of servers that actually do the number-crunching, and send data through to the user who essentially plays remotely. Thereby allowing the user to play Crysis on their netbook, effectively.
 
quadnad said:
It's a massive shift to move from distributing games and storing one's save files to doing the actual processing on the server end -- the "store" part of OnLive, however they choose to do it, isn't the hard part. It's getting the server-side processing to work well enough that it doesn't compromise the end-user's experience. Remember, the party trick is having massive farms of servers that actually do the number-crunching, and send data through to the user who essentially plays remotely. Thereby allowing the user to play Crysis on their netbook, effectively.
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but steam will have both. if your comp can run the game better than their server cloud sure run it on your comp. Just no clue when steam will be done with their service of the cloud part.
 
TheBuzzer said:
but steam will have both. if your comp can run the game better than their server cloud sure run it on your comp. Just no clue when steam will be done with their service of the cloud part.
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I haven't heard anything about this, do you have any links?
 
Spewn said:
It's up to the publishers whether or not their games will be on OnLive.
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But they will probably hedge their bets and support OnLive, because, really, what's the downside for them? If it works, they get a new revenue stream, and if it doesn't they just go back to what they were doing before. You could argue that a subpar experience owuld reflect badly on the developer or publisher, but I wonder how much impact that would really have on their decision.
 
but how are they playing the console games? do they have a huge cluster of PS3's and Xbox 360's?
 
I don't think onlive will take off. Why waste the bandwidth? Plus, what about the subscription fees? It makes more sense to get a powerful gaming pc or a console.
 
Aaron11 said:
I don't think onlive will take off. Why waste the bandwidth? Plus, what about the subscription fees? It makes more sense to get a powerful gaming pc or a console.
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to me, the biggest problem is that they're only doing 720p for PC games. You can build a PC that can do that for cheap. If they were doing 1080p, then I could see how it would make sense, but they aren't.
 
Until bandwidth goes way up, never going to fly......

Anybody remember that in car video Kyle or Steve posted a couple years ago about some shitty car beating some obviously much faster car? Videos can be faked.

These guys built Apache
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Big WHOOP, they built a web server.

I'm also a system engineer who specializes in similar technology to OnLive. Unbeknownst to most people, this technology is the driving force of the entire IT business right now. Virtualized applications, centralized distribution, cloud computing, and mainly ... saving money money money. You'd be surprised just how many key players in <insert your favorite market> started implemented and pioneering similar technologies over the past few years.
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I'll give you virtualization - it only makes sense to make sure the hardware is running as hard as possible all the time, otherwise it's sitting there wasted. Everything else, is just pie in the sky. Saving money is about Cost-Benefit. Even the intangible costs are part of that analysis - Cloud computing has a place, sure, but it isn't going to "Take over the world" like the pundits say, and certainly not take over the gaming space. Cloud Computing is "Mainfame 2.0" Useful in some ways, in others, not so much.
 
theNoid said:
Behold, whether you like it or not... the future of gaming. Anyone doubting the technology need only watch this. Dont rush to the demo, watch the entire video and soak in the presentation, how it works, and why every major publisher if they aren't already signed up will be shortly.

I manage rather large cloud systems for a living, this is the first real attempt at gaming. The guys behind OnLive are those who invented Apache, web publishing as you know it. These are not some shmucks with a startup company, they are successful brainiacs using existing technology with new technology to push the envelop.

I've heard every counter arguement to this type of service, but once all the publishers are on board, its not going to take long before you'll be streaming your games with zero ability to

1. Pirate
2. Buy used.

The publishers are going to finally control the market 100%, and they are not going to waver.


Prepare to say WOW when they play Crysis over the cloud.
http://tv.seas.columbia.edu/videos/545/60/79?file=1&autostart=true
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It will only become the norm if people buy into it. If it doesn't sell, they don't control squat. If people are not into not owning the game, they'll never go for it.
 
theNoid said:
Behold, whether you like it or not... the future of gaming. Anyone doubting the technology need only watch this. Dont rush to the demo, watch the entire video and soak in the presentation, how it works, and why every major publisher if they aren't already signed up will be shortly.

I manage rather large cloud systems for a living, this is the first real attempt at gaming. The guys behind OnLive are those who invented Apache, web publishing as you know it. These are not some shmucks with a startup company, they are successful brainiacs using existing technology with new technology to push the envelop.

I've heard every counter arguement to this type of service, but once all the publishers are on board, its not going to take long before you'll be streaming your games with zero ability to

1. Pirate
2. Buy used.

The publishers are going to finally control the market 100%, and they are not going to waver.


Prepare to say WOW when they play Crysis over the cloud.
http://tv.seas.columbia.edu/videos/545/60/79?file=1&autostart=true
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Thanks for the link. Very informative.

What bothers me most about that presentation was the motivation for publishers to move away from retail disks and move towards the onlive model. We currently have methods of digitial distribution but all of them charge the same as buying retail (in some cases more upon first release). It could be argued that Direct2Drive and Steam add overhead (hopefully still cheaper than $34 cost associated with retail disks as they stated), but even EA has a digital distribution method and they charge full retail price.

Steam and Direct2Drive do have the occasional sale, but why are the normal retail prices not less than the physical media? And how is onlive going to succeed in this changing this concept where all digital distribution methods have failed?

Paying a monthly subscription, paying full price per game, not owning the physical media, and all while providing a subpar experience (lag) sounds like a poor choice for consumers.
 
theNoid said:
I understand your argument fully, I'm a pc gamer. I'm also a system engineer who specializes in similar technology to OnLive. Unbeknownst to most people, this technology is the driving force of the entire IT business right now. Virtualized applications, centralized distribution, cloud computing, and mainly ... saving money money money. You'd be surprised just how many key players in <insert your favorite market> started implemented and pioneering similar technologies over the past few years.

At this point we know nothing about OnLives pricing model, for all we know it could be $20 a month or $5 + buy your games. But whats the point in guessing? My stance isn't that the end all selling point to OnLive is not having to pay for your own gaming computer but that.. in all seriousness, the companies delivering all the games we all play right now are salivating at this shit. They would do anything to have services like OnLive running the market right now. They are tired of piracy, they are tired of losing tens of millions to the second hand market and they are tired of paying millions to stamp, box, and then ship physical copies of discs around the world. Services like Steam and others that do DD are just the beginning, I hope you didn't think it would end there.

In the end, I feel so strongly about this its hard to get my point across without sounding like I'm talking about some pie in the sky. For once, I truely believe that the consumer is not going to be the driving force any longer. You are going to see the big key players in the gaming industry take this technology and run with it. They will do this because this is where the money leads them this time, not the consumer. When you wake up one day and want to buy a game only to find out its only available through a service like OnLive you'll either stop gaming or jump aboard. Regardless of what you do, the companies standing behind these services are going to be saving and raking in tens of millions for dollars a year because of it. This is the type of change that is coming, regardless if the consumer is ready for it.

Money talks, and this time its not that dollar bill the consumer is holding. You can hold me to it.
Click to expand...

I agree with you on this point, I definitely misunderstood your message earlier. I'm very much afraid this will become the standard and if it does I'm jumping ship. I got enough QUALITY games that I won't really be that bummed out about it.
 
lgestle said:
Paying a monthly subscription, paying full price per game, not owning the physical media, and all while providing a subpar experience (lag) sounds like a poor choice for consumers.
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But a great choice for the producers.
 
What if it costs $30-$50 a month? For that kind of money you could build a very very capable gaming rig every two years, run the games at higher settings, and own all the software.
 
I've heard every counter arguement to this type of service, but once all the publishers are on board, its not going to take long before you'll be streaming your games with zero ability to

1. Pirate
2. Buy used.
Click to expand...

Also...I don't buy into this.

First of all, it would make onlive impossible to pirate, but you could still pirate a retail game, so to completely stop piracy you'd need to only distribute on onlive. But of course that could be leaked.

You can't even make the argument that it stops casual piracy because it's easy to lend your login details to somoene else to play games anytime you're not...

Used game sales again im not convinced with, some people will always buy retail, so some form of used games will always exist unless a business moves entirely to onlive.

No developer/publishers are going to buy into onlive as their only method of distribution, it will just NEVER happen, as an additional method to regular distribution methods, sure.
 
Forceman said:
PC Perspective posted a semi-review of the beta - kind of mixed results.
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Yep, good read. There is a major caveat to a lot of his findings regarding latency: apparently the reviewer has "borrowed" a login from a friend of a friend (etc.), and given that the beta is location-based, it is very possible that his location is quite far from the servers.

Having said that, his latency and visual quality issues don't bode well for the service.

[Link to the article]
 
Can't watch the video at work, but remember reading that they are streaming the game at 720p, that's quite a bit lower resolution than I have on my PC.. And I'm assuming not much in the way of AA etc either.

Also, always wondered about this: Say they have 5000 people who want to play Crysis. They then need 5000 pretty high end computers to run the games, + servers etc.. How much will this cost again??

edit: the PC perspective article posted above was very interesting, thanks for posting. Also verified my fears of below-average graffics
 
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This will never kill PC gaming. Main reason is input lag. Why the hell would I want to play with input lag? I'm not a console gamer, I pay for a decent connection so I don't have to deal with input lag based on latency. I was invited to beta but forgot to follow up on it. Oops.
 
ObiDamnKenobi said:
Can't watch the video at work, but remember reading that they are streaming the game at 720p, that's quite a bit lower resolution than I have on my PC.. And I'm assuming not much in the way of AA etc either.

Also, always wondered about this: Say they have 5000 people who want to play Crysis. They then need 5000 pretty high end computers to run the games, + servers etc.. How much will this cost again??

edit: the PC perspective article posted above was very interesting, thanks for posting. Also verified my fears of below-average graffics
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They lease the hardware, which makes it easy for them to move from lower end machines to higher end machines quickly. They discuss in the video how they intend on handling peak loads as well.

You're right about the image quality -- comparing the local and remote screenshots, there was no contest. Not only did it appear that some options were turned off in the Online screenshots, but it looked as though you were playing the game on a monitor with a thin veneer of vaseline. Forget worrying about AA, you need a mop to clean off all that blurriness...

I don't really want to say that this is entirely useless yet, given that A. it's in beta and B. the PCPer article was completed using an account that wasn't tied to his location (i.e. he may have been too far from the data center). Having said that, the article did definitely confirm everyone's fears about the service: significant latency making the experience range from slightly frustrating to unplayable (depending on game genre), and low image quality. There are unknowns such as the subscription cost, and also the question as to whether people will mind that they can't access their accounts if their internet connection isn't functioning. The biggest question that will remain unanswered for a while though is whether it will matter to the average Joe.
 
I think all of this is pretty damn funny. It aint gonna happen any time soon.
 
quadnad said:
I don't really want to say that this is entirely useless yet, given that A. it's in beta and B. the PCPer article was completed using an account that wasn't tied to his location (i.e. he may have been too far from the data center). Having said that, the article did definitely confirm everyone's fears about the service: significant latency making the experience range from slightly frustrating to unplayable (depending on game genre), and low image quality. The biggest question that will remain unanswered for a while though is whether it will matter to the average Joe.
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Keep in mind that the Average Joe is more than happen to fire up a Wii and game at a ridiculous 480P resolution on a big screen TV (and usually at the wrong aspect ratio too). So this might go over pretty well.

Plus in the article he tricked someone into playing the OnLive version of Burnout, and the person did not complain...
 
quadnad said:
I agree, but as bandwidth increases, costs decrease, and the software runs through a few revisions, I wouldn't be surprised if something like this is very mainstream in the next few years.
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I think it will be fine for gamers looking to play for "fun," not looking to immerse themselves in a gaming experience. Graphics fidelity will be compromised greatly, that is all there is to it. Not to mention multi-display gaming...
 
ocellaris said:
Keep in mind that the Average Joe is more than happen to fire up a Wii and game at a ridiculous 480P resolution on a big screen TV (and usually at the wrong aspect ratio too). So this might go over pretty well.

Plus in the article he tricked someone into playing the OnLive version of Burnout, and the person did not complain...
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Actually, reading through the article I saw the screenshot of the OnLive screen first and thought "That isn't as bad as I feared" - and then I got to the local screenshot and realized just how bad it was by comparison. So for folks who have not ever seen the local version, maybe it isn't so bad - but I couldn't watch the video, so maybe it looks significantly worse in motion.
 
Hi its me, the US internet infrastructure. Want a web page and email? HA!! no problem! Want to play an online FPS or MMO without disconnecting or lag? hmm, I will try my best, no promises.

Wait, now you want me to stream an online game from a data center hundreds of miles away with very little lag PLUS sending controller inputs and maybe even voice so your Dragon Slayer doesn't die waiting for me to send out the packets in time and trying not to get you booted from your ISP for "abusive use" of its bandwith? LOL Maybe you should move next to Onlive and run a ethernet cable directly into their switches.

This is niche gaming at best fellas. The US internet infrastruce ie ISP's can't handle this yet.
 
If it happens and it works well with good video quality, then I think that is great.
 
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