OnLive: Gaming on Demand...

Josh Bytes

The service doesn't seem any different that what Steam or Gametap has to offer. Except for the slim console you can use in lieu of a computer. Anybody curious or remotely interested in it?

OnLive Link

Apreche

Hotels have been doing stuff like that for a long time.

Calcaneus

We barely have streaming video down, I'm very skeptical that we would be able to stream recent games without hiccups.

Walker

Cloud computing, guys! Cloud motherfucking computing!

Josh Bytes

Hotels have been doing stuff like that for a long time.

It would get kind of expensive to rent a room at hotel just to play videogames on demand.

gomidog

We here at work are skeptical. Alex is talking about it right now. They only talk about the video compression. What about latency issues?
They have the backing of studios, but there are no demos or anything.

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We here at work are skeptical. Alex is talking about it right now. They only talk about the video compression. What about latency issues?
They have the backing of studios, but there are no demos or anything.

Gabe twittered a demo video about this yesterday. OnLive Demo. If it is what it promises to be, this will be freaking awesome. If not, no loss. Sadly either way I probably won't be using it since at first they aim only for the US.

Apreche

Phantom

omegafinal

I'm with Gomidog about the latency issues. And this article raised some good points. The concept is cool and all, but I'm not too confident on the execution.

lackofcheese

If we can play games on the Internet with acceptable latency, why can't we play games from the Internet with acceptable latency?
EDIT: To answer my own question, the main difference is that the packets are much bigger and need to come more frequently, so the load is higher - but then the problem isn't latency, it's other aspects of QoS such as jitter.

Reason #6 - You Don't Own Anything.

That applies to all games. The point they made about the mod scene dying is quite worrying, though.

Alex

If we can play games on the Internet with acceptable latency, why can't we play games from the Internet with acceptable latency?

Also, client-side prediction hides latency in most cases. But you can't do that with a dumb client (one with no game logic in it); I can't see a way OnLive can avoid a noticeable delay between the player pressing a button and anything happening on screen in response to that press, even in the best of network conditions.

I'm also curious how they'll scale these servers to large numbers of users. There are solutions to this one, but I don't know how well the normal methods of clustering can handle games that are designed for each user having a piece of dedicated hardware (i.e., a video card).

The idea of OnLive is kinda cool, but I remain sceptical that it works as well as they say; I'll believe it when I see it, and not before.

lackofcheese

Also, client-side prediction hides latency in most cases. But you can't do that with a dumb client (one with no game logic in it); I can't see a way OnLive can avoid a noticeable delay between the player pressing a button and anything happening on screen in response to that press, even in the best of network conditions.

As a result of prediction, what happens on your screen isn't what is actually happening on the server, and so problems will often arise. Neither behavior is desirable. It is true, though, that the delay between your input and the apparent output from the screen would be highly disorienting.

Apreche

While what people are saying about latency is true, it only matters for a real time game like an fps. If you're playing checkers, it will be just fine.

ninjarabbi

I kind of like the idea of OnLive but, I don't necessarily think it is completely feasible right now. It is much like steam , but since it is all streamed from the Internet you can't play them if you are offline. I know this isn't a problem for most people but what about when you are using a laptop on a train, where the connection cuts out all of the time, or somewhere where there is no connection at all. You can usually play games in offline mode with steam, but with OnLive no net, no game. Another problem is that we don't know how well the company treats their customers. Steam has proven to be a popular service, and shows no signs of going away, and if they did I'm sure there would be some way to keep playing the games, even if it was some emulator. With OnLive, since you don't own anything, if the company goes under, you are pretty much shit out of luck with the games you already "bought." I think this service would work best if you could just buy games like you normally do from steam or where ever, and just get some OnLive key with it. That way if OnLive goes under you still have the game just in case. I figure this type of thing will be great in ten years when we are all using fiber optic cable, or lag-free terabit satellite Internet. For now I'll just stick to the old fashioned way of actually using my own computer to play the game.

Kiey

I think the problem is not in the technology, but in the economic feasibility of it. It seems that ISPs are moving towards either capping bandwidth, or metering it, either way makes it a bad investment for the consumer. I heard them saying today that you need a 5bit connection for 720p gaming, so with that you will likely reach that cap really fast, or with a metered connection you are going you are going to have to pay a lot for your internet connection each month.

gomidog

OnLive is pretty much the belle of the ball at GDC thus far, and its promise of rapture must be pure exhilaration to anyone who has never worked IT. I wouldn't describe it as a fight, per se - the knives remained sheathed - but I would say that Gabriel and I entered into what you might call a scale model of a fight. There was fury, but it was a very compact fury.

I received an SMS from Robert late last night, no doubt typed at some Game Developer's Conference bacchanal, and something in the way it was formatted managed to communicate a breathless enthusiasm. I reminded him that years ago - during E3 That Was - we saw a demo of the Phantom that was impressive enough to elicit a purchase. The demo was that good. So good that I never wrote about it - it was, in fact, too good. The machines that served the content were situated in a room not ten feet away, connected via gigabit ethernet. Every time I pore over some unchecked torrent from an ecstatic new convert, I start to become very curious about topology.

I mentioned IT before because people who have done time in the field have already been through several cycles of this kind of thinking. I'm not making a value judgment of any kind - I'm just saying that terminal computing is perpetually making a case for itself, because the seat of processing power is always shifting. Back when I worked for the school district, the basement of the administration building was given over to an ancient mainframe serviced by equally ancient people who only knew how to tend to their beloved, humming sarcophagus.

What I'm saying is that server-side solutions invariably lead to sinister necromantic cabals.

I'm not saying that exactly. Even sight unseen, there are genres I prize greatly that would work well on a mechanism like this. Virtually any raw tactics experience would excel under these conditions. Role-playing titles and some massive games would perform adequately, even in the absence of any unique technology. The new Prince is the sort of platformer that might function, and it features prominently in their materials. When I see a racer or a shooter, however, something in my mind rebels.

They have some incredibly forward thinking community solutions, and as a rental scenario what OnLive delivers is near optimal. I resonate in a harmonious way with the idea that discrete gaming "platforms" are a divisive, untenable regime that often obscures the medium. This is precisely why I am careful about things of this stripe: it is the will of my heart to believe it. I believe Matthew 24, verses 23 through 26 might be appropriate here. Due diligence.

If a man claims to be Jesus Christ, you can bet I'll check the wrists.

(CW)TB out.

the city of the great king

Ratchet

I can't help but feel that this service is going to ultimately either fail, or be reduced to a very niche audience in the end. Even though a lot of people out there have an Xbox 360, a PC, or a PS3 in the end the majority of people are casual gamers and are more prone to go with a console like the Wii or the DS. The only way for a game streaming service to succeed is to allow you to play any full game without anything else but the game subscription fee. Even then services like these will ultimately fail, and are riddled with crippling DRM issues like the Zune Marketplace.

iruul

Oh my fucking god...

So I signed up for the "early adopter" program two days ago and got accepted today. The early adopter thing is synonymous to being a beta tester where you can try the service completely free. I was very, very skeptical about this but man, am I impressed. You would think having to deal with latency, video compression, and then sending the video back to your computer would make most games virtually unplayable but this is the real deal. I dont know how they do it but when I play i feel almost no delay. I played unreal tournament on it and I swear I wouldnt be able to tell the difference except for compressed graphics. This review best sums up the onlive experience and I can testify that whats shown in this video is pretty much the exact same as what I experienced. This might usher in a new era in pc gaming.

Omnutia

So, with OL out, does this signal the beginning of the end for dedicated consoles? It's only a matter of time before someone comes up with mostly the same thing, but instead of running to a server, just going across the network to your computer.

Neito

I think there's still going to be a slot for gaming for years to come. OnLive is an experiment; a beta of a technology not quite mature.

Andrew

So...is it dead or something?

Omnutia

Could be a PSP, not a huge sucess in comparison but respectable in and of itself.

Aslo, what do people think the hacking potential for these are?

trogdor9

So...is it dead or something?

I'm not particularly impressed. Basically you're playing the game at a relatively low reesolution and it's very lossily compressed. To me, it's not worth paying full price to play a low-resolution game that I don't really own at all. Basically, even if it worked well, I wouldn't be interested because I don't feel like I actually own the game.

ninjarabbi

Basically, even if it worked well, I wouldn't be interested because I don't feel like I actually own the game.

Thats exactly how I feel. I think the idea is kind of interesting but I wouldn't pay for it. Maybe in a few years steam will have a service where you have the option of streaming your steam games instead of downloading them to your pc. If they just included that every steam game as an extra feature, I could see it catching on granted people have good enough connections for the games to not look like shit or lag.

Apreche

The problem with streaming games is that they do not benefit the gamer in any way. It's a worse experience in every way possible, for what benefit? It really only benefits the game publishers, since they thing it will increase sales by reducing piracy. Something that's only good for the seller and not for the buyer isn't likely to sell, is it? The only way they can get this to work is if they do something that benefits the consumer.

Good ideas would be to make it like Netflix. Play all the games you want all day and all night for a very low monthly subscription fee. Another idea would be to just have ridiculously low game prices. We'll sell you this shitty streaming version of the game that can't be pirated for $10 even though it's a brand new $50 game. The only other hope they have is to have games that aren't available any other way, and are such big games that people MUST play them.

Neito

Good ideas would be to make it like Netflix. Play all the games you want all day and all night for a very low monthly subscription fee.

Gamefly?

Walker

You've all seen it/will see it, but whatever. :P

Techparadox

Play all the games you want all day and all night for a very low monthly subscription fee.

It's been done before. And it's still circling the drain.

Sail

I've always wondered, how does that "hotel video games"thing work, anyway? Are the games emulated on a server or something?

Techparadox

Gamefly?

I wondered why no one brought this up in the thread on video game rental. Gamefly has been in operation since 2002 and is essentially Netflix for video games. Granted, it's console-only and they have fewer shipping depots than Netflix, but it's still game rental on a subscription basis.

Apreche

It's been done before.And it's still circling the drain.

It doesn't exactly have the A list games. Imagine if you had access to every XBLA game or every Steam game for $10 a month.