OnLive goes live on June 17 for PCs and Macs

[TheShiz]

played around with this a bit tonight and it I'm no longer a complete skeptic. it has serious potential. the input lag is definitely there and is a bit annoying for fast paced action. the graphics are blurry compared with crisp 1920X1200 res I usually run games in, but the execution is good.

the good:
being able to fire up whatever game they have for a demo almost instantly is pretty awesome, no waiting for a gig download and install to try out a game.

the interface where you can watch other gamers is amazing, you see all these videos running and can select any and it jumps right in seamlessly. this is amazing, i wish youtube ran this well, you choose and bam it starts playing, seamless. it's like watching cable. just imagine if they had that running a bunch of e3 videos and you could just jump right into any of them and start watching and instantly switch to others.

seamless game saves in the cloud is something i would like, steam should have it by now but it does not, their save game implementation is awful it puts them in different places for different games.

the bad is you game gets cut if your internet gets flaky, the graphics are not as sharp, and there is notifiable input lag, but it is better than I expected.

just for the instant demos and awesome video features I think it is worthwhile. anyone even slightly curious should sign up for the free year to check it out.

 

[JD50]

I could possibly see this being successfully marketed to those of us that run Linux on our main box and still want to game, but of course this doesn't support Linux. Fail.

 

[fatpat268]

I could possibly see this being successfully marketed to those of us that run Linux on our main box and still want to game, but of course this doesn't support Linux. Fail.

The crowd that uses linux is way too small for them to be profitable on that platform. Instead, they'll target the people with low powered pcs and laptops, and they'll probably make a ton of money that way.

 

[taltamir]

isn't this a 'problem' that steam has as well?

Yes it is, and many people have pointed it out and refuse to buy steam games because of it.
You say it as if "steam does it" means its ok.
Also, as you mentioned steam only has some of those issues, onLive brings other issues on top of them.

I don't know enough about the market and indie companies, but companies like 2d boy seem to be fine with it and OnLive's CEO specifically said that it scales well to indie companies.

And recording companies were also great for indie companies when they started out... it is more of a look into the future on this issue, a closed distribution model where you do not have the hardware to run the games, means that 10-20 years from now you would have all major content limited to only such platforms, and the majority of gamers not even own hardware capable of running such games... or indie games. Thus indie gamers will be stuck with the equivalent of the RIAA. Which has abused the heck out of artists for years.

The second hand market gives the devs/publishers about as much loss of revenue as piracy does according to OnLive's CEO

I am aware, and the CEO of sony BGM "dreams of the day" where customers will HAVE to repurchase music for full price every 6 months.
And the I think it was the RIAA homepage that said that libraries are government funded piracy and should all be forced to negotiate distribution contracts with them.
Also, bill gates said that the goal with trusted computing isn't to stop piracy, that that was thinking small... the real target is personal documents.

I don't get it what is with people and not believing it when someone tells you what their plans are.

 

[quadomatic]

I signed up...1 year free? Why the hell not?

Prices that were mentioned earlier don't seem so terrible either...$5.99 for 5 days isn't bad. Unfortunately, I'm the kind of person who takes FOREVER to finish a game, simply because I don't have the time to play them straight through.

Taking up all my bandwidth to play doesn't seem so attractive either...while I'm at home in the burbs, I have a 6MB connection, so I would probably be okay.

When I'm at school in the city, I have a 100MB connection...but it's limited to 3GB a day, so OnLive would probably not fly.

Did anybody get an invitation to join yet?

 

[flashbacck]

Prices that were mentioned earlier don't seem so terrible either...$5.99 for 5 days isn't bad. Unfortunately, I'm the kind of person who takes FOREVER to finish a game, simply because I don't have the time to play them straight through.

Taking up all my bandwidth to play doesn't seem so attractive either...while I'm at home in the burbs, I have a 6MB connection, so I would probably be okay.

When I'm at school in the city, I have a 100MB connection...but it's limited to 3GB a day, so OnLive would probably not fly.

My mistake, it is $4.99 for 3 days and $6.99 for 5. Not all games are available to rent this way. I don't know how they decide... It's probably a publisher decision. Anyway, I will definitely use the service to demo games for 30mins, and I can see myself renting for 3 or 5 days if it's a short game. But, I wouldn't do either if they keep up with the $15/month fee.

According to my network monitoring widget, Onlive uses a steady 700-750 kB/s anytime there's motion on the screen. It uses ~200kB/s if you enter some of the basic looking menus.

 

[heat901]

My friend got into the beta and I checked it out at his house. Not bad but I dont see myself or others using it because of the whole rent and subscription fee. If they got rid of the subscription fee I would see it going some where.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I could see using it to rent or demo games. If you are good and play a lot each day, a lot of current games (read console ports) coul be easily finished in a 5 day rental period. If you did not want to play online or come back and play later, this could work.

However, I think the best possibility would be for those with a laptop (or netbook) without upgradable graphics. I see it could be a good deal here, and eliminate purchasing a separate desktop for gaming.

 

[Chapbass]

Hmmm seems intriguing....too bad Comcast would put the banstick on me if I played even semi regularly with my other internet activities.... awesome!

 

[v8envy]

Did I do the math right? 3 gigabytes/hour of playing this? So let's say I play 1 hour a day (that's roughly my average atm) -- 90 gigabytes right there. Yeah, comcast would send someone over to reject me in person.

When I was younger (and not married with kids) I'd put in multi-hour gaming sessions, sometimes entire weekends solid when an interesting game came out. I could see someone racking up serious bandwidth usage by falling asleep at the keyboard or simply leaving the game running while they go to dinner, movie, etc.

This seems to be targeted at *very* casual gamers who would simply pay the $15/month fee, buy the games because they don't have the ability to "power play" on consecutive days and only game an hour or two a week tops.

 

[aigomorla]

im sorry i dont see how a cloud server can be used to stream gpu intensive games.

Basically they set up a virtual box or port, which loads up the game you want to play, and then streams it.

That means you are limited to the hardware they provide, at the resolution and settings that wont bog down there server...

PASS...

My main system is probably WAYYYYYYYY more powerful then a single server they would use for virtualization. i7 980X @ 4.2

Sorry but games like crysis CAN NOT BE PLAYED ON A CLOUD SERVER when the game still bogs my HD4870X2 in Xfire on a fresh install.

This is just FAIL waiting for it to happen.

And good luck streaming 1080p... and have fun with double lantency... meaning the time it takes for you to send commands... then then the server responding to it, and then trans coding it back to video.

Cloud computing just wont work with the higher demanding games.
And if it does work, the gpu settings are gonna be at minimum on a craptastic 800X600 display otherwise your gonna hit bandwith issues.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Did I do the math right? 3 gigabytes/hour of playing this? So let's say I play 1 hour a day (that's roughly my average atm) -- 90 gigabytes right there. Yeah, comcast would send someone over to reject me in person.

Ouch. My very expensive internet plan only allows me 40gb a month.

 

[quadomatic]

Those of you who doubt the ability of ISPs to make this possible may want to read a blog post on the Wolfire Games website (makers of Lugaru and Overgrowth) put out:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/06/Thoughts-on-OnLive

A common point of skepticism for OnLive goes something like this: 700k/sec seems unbelievable. Normally, I'm happy to download at around 150k/sec! Also isn't this costing OnLive a fortune in bandwidth fees? There's no way it can be viable right?

If you are not familiar with content delivery network technology, like Akamai, then that does seem like a deathblow to OnLive. However, here's another way to think about it:

How much does it cost to transfer 100 GB at 100 megabits/second to your roommate's computer? How about a terabyte? A petabyte? The answer is about $10: the cost of a standard Cat5 Ethernet cable.

Now how about to your neighbor one room over in the apartment complex or in a college dorm? Depending on how the network is set up, your packets may not even leave the building and you will be transferring at 100 megabits right on an internal network.

Now how about transferring to the building across the street? If you are both on the same network provider, it's likely that you can still transfer extremely fast. By doing a traceroute, you'll likely see that you are only a few routers away from the other person.

Just like the $10 Cat5 cable in the first example, none of these transfers really cost anyone anything. The infrastructure has already been placed. Any fees that may be incurred are the companies amortizing their initial infrastructure investment. In many cases, it's simply marketing: sort of like how phone companies may charge you $0.25 per 60 byte text message, while letting you call someone across the country for free (using the bandwidth of tens of thousands of text messages). Data centers typically charge you for a direct pipe to the internet, for example, you simply reserve a 1 gigabit/second connection, and you are not metered by the gigabyte.

The real problem comes when you try to go through underdeveloped infrastructure. For example, there are only a handful of routers between me and the Santa Clara data center. However, if I do a traceroute to the same data center from my friend's ADSL modem, it balloons to twice as many routers. The more networks you have to pass through, the more likely it is to hit a bottleneck.

OnLive seems to be addressing this by having many geographic data centers and by striking deals with various ISPs. They are very tightlipped about the specifics. All I can really say is that "it works for me", at least under the light beta load -- we may soon find out if it works on a larger scale.

They're realistic about the limitations, benefits and pitfalls. It's a good read.

 

[flashbacck]

im sorry i dont see how a cloud server can be used to stream gpu intensive games.

Basically they set up a virtual box or port, which loads up the game you want to play, and then streams it.

That means you are limited to the hardware they provide, at the resolution and settings that wont bog down there server...

PASS...

My main system is probably WAYYYYYYYY more powerful then a single server they would use for virtualization. i7 980X @ 4.2

Sorry but games like crysis CAN NOT BE PLAYED ON A CLOUD SERVER when the game still bogs my HD4870X2 in Xfire on a fresh install.

This is just FAIL waiting for it to happen.

And good luck streaming 1080p... and have fun with double lantency... meaning the time it takes for you to send commands... then then the server responding to it, and then trans coding it back to video.

Cloud computing just wont work with the higher demanding games.
And if it does work, the gpu settings are gonna be at minimum on a craptastic 800X600 display otherwise your gonna hit bandwith issues.

The latency is a problem, there's no avoiding that... and the resolution is at 720p. It works though. I've used it, and so have others in this thread. Go sign up and try it yourself.

v8envy:
Your math is about right. Almost 2-3 gb/hr is pretty insane.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

... and the resolution is at 720p.

I was using close to that resolution 10 years ago. Give me a break.

 

[taltamir]

My main system is probably WAYYYYYYYY more powerful then a single server they would use for virtualization. i7 980X @ 4.2

Sorry but games like crysis CAN NOT BE PLAYED ON A CLOUD SERVER when the game still bogs my HD4870X2 in Xfire on a fresh install.

AFAIK onLive DOES offer crysis... it is played in medium quality settings (aka, way lower then what you would set it on your impressive system); you can't change that.
Also they are limited to 720p resolution. Which loses some quality in compression naturally, and you add the latency to your commands due to the distance. You can see where this is all going.

The biggest issues are latency and amount of hours a day people actually play. with sufficient investment games could be coded specifically to be extremely parallel and distributed (as a render farm). Assigning 2 or 3 i7 cpus would be very impressive; onLive actually says that games have their engines tweaked and modified to run on their servers. But that is a huge investment in software redesign, runs into natural limitation of scaling, and is only practical if people play only a few hours a day overall (and there are no too severe peak hours).

in the end, those are just some more points in the very long list of issues.

 

[aigomorla]

AFAIK onLive DOES offer crysis... it is played in medium quality settings (aka, way lower then what you would set it on your impressive system)

then you miss a big point in playing crysis.

Its so you can get the lifelike scenario...

Ugh... i understand the power of cloud computing... and even virtualization, but a majorly of us who have DYO intel PC's overclock them.

There is no way any virtualization will allow you to get close to a overclocked computer when the physical server cpu's are clocked lower.

I only see the point in this if your on a Dell with onboard video.
Or even a low classed computer.

But once you get into DYO and customization... i cant see how this will replace buying the game on a medium tier to high tier system.

The latency is a problem, there's no avoiding that... and the resolution is at 720p. It works though. I've used it, and so have others in this thread. Go sign up and try it yourself.

How is the FPS?

 

[taltamir]

then you miss a big point in playing crysis.

Its so you can get the lifelike scenario...

Ugh... i understand the power of cloud computing... and even virtualization, but a majorly of us who have DYO intel PC's overclock them.

There is no way any virtualization will allow you to get close to a overclocked computer when the physical server cpu's are clocked lower.

I only see the point in this if your on a Dell with onboard video.
Or even a low classed computer.

But once you get into DYO and customization... i cant see how this will replace buying the game on a medium tier to high tier system.

I agree with you totally... Their claim to running crysis kinda reminds of "the force unleashed" for the PS2. Which was an immensely crappy game compared to the PS3 and xbox360 versions.

I just wanted to clarify that technically you could run crysis, just at significantly lower quality...

A huge issue I see is the pricing scheme. I put a 200$ video card in my 50 year old mom's computer and it outperforms it. At 15$ a month subscription fee AND an extra 10$ per game purchased... well, they need to offer more. (or charge less)

PS. while I mentioned mods and indie games there is something I forgot to mention... http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/Guide_to_FOSS_games_(free_open_source_software)

 

[Red Storm]

I agree with you totally... Their claim to running crysis kinda reminds of "the force unleashed" for the PS2. Which was an immensely crappy game compared to the PS3 and xbox360 versions.

I just wanted to clarify that technically you could run crysis, just at significantly lower quality...

A huge issue I see is the pricing scheme. I put a 200$ video card in my 50 year old mom's computer and it outperforms it. At 15$ a month subscription fee AND an extra 10$ per game purchased... well, they need to offer more. (or charge less)

PS. while I mentioned mods and indie games there is something I forgot to mention... http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/Guide_to_FOSS_games_(free_open_source_software)

I have a lot of friends who are mostly console gamers, and if I stuck a $200 video card in their machine it would also need a new power supply or the CPU and/or RAM would be holding them back.

More and more people are buying laptops and forgoing desktops, and OnLive allows them to enjoy all the new releases that they otherwise would not be able to play. This service is a great idea for them, and for those who like the idea of being able to play games nearly instantly on a vast array of machines, regardless of their performance level.

 

[taltamir]

More and more people are buying laptops and forgoing desktops

That is what some industry bigwigs believe. But in actuality more and more people are buying laptops IN ADDITION to their desktops.

and OnLive allows them to enjoy all the new releases that they otherwise would not be able to play

Sure they could, on a PC they just need to lower graphic settings, on the xbox360 or PS3 they just play it.

This service is a great idea for them, and for those who like the idea of being able to play games nearly instantly on a vast array of machines, regardless of their performance level.

The promise of buying one copy to play on your xbox360, PS3, laptop, and desktop is tarnished by it playing poorly on all of those (latency, quality, etc), the price, and a variety of other issues which I have listed

 

[quadomatic]

That is what some industry bigwigs believe. But in actuality more and more people are buying laptops IN ADDITION to their desktops.


Sure they could, on a PC they just need to lower graphic settings, on the xbox360 or PS3 they just play it.


The promise of buying one copy to play on your xbox360, PS3, laptop, and desktop is tarnished by it playing poorly on all of those (latency, quality, etc), the price, and a variety of other issues which I have listed

Wouldn't "industy bigwigs" know what people are buying? They are the ones actually selling hardware.

Lowering graphics settings won't do a whole lot for you with, for example, an Intel GMA. OnLive would be a godsend to those limited by Intel gfx chipsets.

I'm still waiting for more impressions in the near future before I decide to fully dismiss OnLive. It will probably never mean much for me, but I imagine it could be very useful to a lot of other people.

 

[taltamir]

Wouldn't "industy bigwigs" know what people are buying? They are the ones actually selling hardware.

They know how many units are selling, but they have no idea what people already have in their house. And they have access to the same studies we do (I have read the studies showing sales figures for laptops and desktops).

I'm still waiting for more impressions in the near future before I decide to fully dismiss OnLive.

The impressions only tell you of whether or not it is able to provide quality gameplay. Which to be honest I think it would.
I hope it fails because of the myrid issues I listed before (in regards to modding, resale, etc etc). I am not predicting it will fail (based on the technical issues it faces), I am hoping it will fail (based on the moral issues).

 

[PingSpike]

I think consumers are stupid, but I actually don't think they're quite stupid enough to buy this. At least not in the numbers required to support such an expensive undertaking. This is a crowded market space. And this offers nothing to consumers they can't already get better and cheaper already. It actually only offers unbreakable DRM to content producers, so I have to assume that is the main point.

I can't even think of one thing this is better at doing for a consumer than other available offerings.

 

[Red Storm]

I think consumers are stupid, but I actually don't think they're quite stupid enough to buy this. At least not in the numbers required to support such an expensive undertaking. This is a crowded market space. And this offers nothing to consumers they can't already get better and cheaper already. It actually only offers unbreakable DRM to content producers, so I have to assume that is the main point.

I can't even think of one thing this is better at doing for a consumer than other available offerings.

What other available offerings are there for someone who has integrated graphics and wants to play new release games?

 

[taltamir]

What other available offerings are there for someone who has integrated graphics and wants to play new release games?

buying a real video card or an entire console. Both the xbox360 and the PS3 are affordable enough today that they are a much better deal than onLive is. Amazon is now selling xbox360 for 150$ and free shipping. divide by 15$/month and you get that it breaks even compared to onlive after 10 months. Add in the issues with latency, no second hand market (both buying and selling... I bought my copy of fable2 for xbox360 for 20$ used), and all the other plethora of issues we mentioned and the xbox is a far better deal. So is the PS3.