OnLive killed the game console star?
By Thomas Ricker 
posted March 24th 2009 2:51AM
posted March 24th 2009 2:51AM
What if you could stream games, any game, over a decent broadband connection to your PC or Atom-based netbook at the same quality as the PS3? Would you walk away from your beloved console? That's the of hope of Palo Alto-based OnLive. But this is much more than empty rhetoric -- OnLive's been dropping jaws of the press who've seen it working this week. GameDaily dubbed the play "fantastic" after seeing Crysis streamed "smooth" off a server to a plain ol' MacBook laptop. See, OnLive claims to have perfected the interactive video compression technique so that latency is low enough to support on-line multi-player setups. Broadband connections of 1.5Mbps (71% of US homes have 2Mbps or greater) dials the image quality down to Wii levels while 4-5Mbps pipes are required for HD resolution. At the moment, OnLive is showing 16 high-end titles at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco and expects to be able to release new games within the same window as traditional retail launches. The games can be played on "any PC (Windows XP or Vista) or Mac" without the heavy cash-burden of a high-end graphics card, fast disk, quad-core proc, and truck-load of memory. Otherwise, OnLive plans to release what it calls a MicroConsole with Bluetooth (for voice chat) and optical audio-out that can be connected to your HDTV over HDMI -- pricing has not been announced but it will cost less than a $250 Wii. There's a community element too, of course, with OnLive reps boasting about it operating on an "unprecedented scale." This includes the ability to join live games at any point, the creation of "brag clips" that saves the last 10 seconds of game play for sharing, as well as leaderboards, rankings, and the rest. And if you think publishers will never buy in to the model, think again: Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, THQ, Epic Games, Eidos, Atari Interactive and Codemasters are already on-board. Expect OnLive to launch this Winter with monthly subscriptions available in "a variety of different pricing packages and tiers, competitively priced to retail." Damn.
Update: GameDaily's quote of 1-ms latency is in reference to encoding/decoding video, not Internet delay, obviously. Added a few more pics including one of the MicroConsole to the gallery.
[Via FT and Venture Beat]
Update: GameDaily's quote of 1-ms latency is in reference to encoding/decoding video, not Internet delay, obviously. Added a few more pics including one of the MicroConsole to the gallery.
[Via FT and Venture Beat]
I have to wonder if one could noticably reduce his power bill by playing this way.... Might offset the price entirely...
Okay, so I'm watching the press conference and this might actually work. They don't use the standard ways of breaking down video and there is a client application that installs on the other end. The real question is how well it will work with millions of gamers on at once.
This is going to facilitate a complete revolution in gaming. There will be some growing pains. But imagine. Their supercomputers can pre-render millions of scene views. Today with texture mapping - tomorrow with ray tracing. This is a hardware race and they will win. Add in the elimination of piracy concerns - it makes sense all around. And for end users too. I'd take SD ray tracing rendered game over crappy texture mapped rendering in HD any day.
this is already failing i cant even sign up for the beta testing.the server is already busy!!!!!!!!!wtf!!!
it will be the biggest failing ever,streaming hd games.never happen!!!!!!!!
I assume OnLive has thought through the security issues with this concept. All it would take is one savvy hacker to cause chaos with this subscription service....not only with their servers but also with subscribers' personal data.
Why does everyone assume they'll only have one server location? PWNZILLA!
I've got some OnLive discussion forums up and running now so that we can discuss this... let's hope we all get to try a beta soon!
http://www.onlive-forums.com/
im not sure why everyone is saying that this wont work. they have been working on this for 7 years and im pretty sure their not going to put out something that doesnt work. oviously we will have to wait and see if they are lying about the lag but for now we really cant be sure
I agree. We have to see what happens when the beta comes out before anyone can get an idea where this idea's headed. I still can't help but wonder how the servers will handing thousands of people, especially if those thousands are playing the same game at the same time.
It's cool, but I don't like not having a physical copy of my games that I can play myself, I want a mod scene, I want to be able to play it offline, I don't want to ruin my bandwidth, I want to play over lan, I don't want a pay to play subscription.
Really, It's the worst DRM I've seen.
Wow, I love blind faith.
NO ONE (outside the company, apparently) has seen this in action. No GAMEPLAY videos on the site. Just a PR blitz. I would have eased my doubts even a little if they would have posted gameplay footage. BUT, THERE ISN'T ANY.
And I'm not saying this won't work. I'm from Missouri, you're going to have to show me...
this is the gamechanger every developer dreams of:
1 - no publisher fees
2 - no "give 53% to the retailer"
3 - no "returns of 11%"
4 - no "we have no idea who played this so you can never build a loyal customer base from your art"
It reminds me a lot of what Graham Clemie and T5 Labs were doing since 2004 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW0HsL7byJ8 and it also reminds me of some work that Eidos were doing with compressed video streaming back in the early 2000's (and I note that Mike McGarvey is at Onlive now).
I'd give it 8/10 for now, but reserve judgement over response times, twitch responses, stability of servers, cost of scaling, bandwidth costs, license fees, customer relationship management and international reach.
But, honestly, ANYTHING that gets the retailer, publisher and distributor OUT of the loop is a darned good thing in my books.
That sounds fantastic for playing "on the fly!" It won't replace consoles or even disc media, but for impulse playing it's the place to go. From what it sounds like, it's the new arcade scene. What would be better though is if it could connect you not just to fresh retail content but mainly to you home console and your games and then be able to pay via your laptop.
I'd pay for something like that with video streaming. Otherwise it's too greedy for a company to expect people to pay for something like this, especially with an audience that has a rapidly dwindling attention span.
They are better off making free short online games that take advantage of users computer hardware rather than this.
It a good idea but it should be to connect gamers to their home console rather that to others servers.
phantom, phantom, phantom.
either these guys are actually engineering GODS, or they think we're freaking idiots! There is no effing way they could possibly get this to work on the scale they are claiming.
+1 to vaporware
This is just absolute bullshit... First of all they do not even mention on what graphics settings they are playing any of the games. Secondly You will always need an internet connection offline or online imagine your just playing and the internet drops there goes your game.. Thirdly these crappy controls cannot be matched with xbox,ps3,wii controls also you have this shitty Gui that boasts nothing like any of the pc's or consoles do such as Folding, internet browsing you name it. fourthly all your friends may have an xbox so what then? Fithly the graphics performance will never be as good as an direct connection from your GTX295 nowhere near! This is just some little shitbox and has nothing revolutionairy about it. I can access my home computer from my laptop anywhere around the world I just need an internet connection and play games on it which is the same principle. This shitbox cannot be matched with actual proper hardware you own this is just one big shithole.
So game publishers have a choice between selling me a game for $40-$70, or letting me play the game by paying a subscription to a different company, giving said publisher only a fraction of the price they could have made?
LOL k
i fucking hate the stupid people here. Do you really think the maker of quicktime and web tv will waste 7 years of his fucking life and more than 80 millions making a fucking service that was imposible to sustain.
I have an idea...
How about we just get back to what works best!
PC Gaming... it simply has the potential to have the best games with the best mods!
Forget about consoles and this thing... PC Gaming is where the future is and we need to stand up together as gamers to make this happen!
=-)~
I have an idea...
How about we just get back to what works best!
PC Gaming... it simply has the potential to have the best games withthe best mods!
Forget about consoles and this thing...
PC Gaming is where the futureis and we need to stand up together as gamers to make this happen!
=-)~
Why do people keep calling BS on this? Perlman himself said compression/latency problems were SOLVED http://www.onlive1.com/showthread.php?t=20 and isn't that the biggest criticism of this game service?
Another thought to chew on: 7 years of development. Stealth development, mind you. Why just announce all of a sudden after almost a decade of development if there was no chance it wouldn't work?
I had the chance to check it out when at GDC. The input lag was definitely noticeable - much more so than the optimists would like to believe - and that was over a LAN with the servers 20 feet away (despite their lies about the servers being in Santa Clara, they did not have internet access on the expo floor according to the GDC expo staff). 80-100 ms of input lag is pretty bad - especially considering that even OnLive is talking about 40ms as easily noticeable by core gamers. Steady input lag is pretty easy to get used to for most gamers up to a certain threshold, but the complete idiots talking about how maybe OnLive has special tech to work around ping-based input latency are just wrong. It's not currently possible to increase the speed of light, AFAIK. Either way, OnLive does not have a solution for that problem. That's not even touching on the problem of packet loss, small fluctuations in your connection speed, etc. Unstable/inconsistent input latency is impossible to acclimate to for most people because it's seemingly random. Their hope is that it just won't be that bad.
It's cool tech and I'm sure it could work just fine for a ton of games (Grim Fandango or Sims, for example) but for any game that requires any sort of timing or precision input (FPS, RTS, shooters, scrollers, brawlers, fighting games, timing-based Puzzle games, combat sims, action-adventure games, platformers, etc.) would be a total nightmare and unplayable for anyone who cares about a smooth experience or snappy input feedback, IMHO. I'm interested to see just how many people just don't care about things like that and can actually tolerate it for core/core-casual games.
this is like the antichrist of gaming. consoles will still exist is just like another console entering the war late in pepole are not going to spend craploads of money just so they dont game a disc blu-ray just came out and the ps3 is utalizing this so i just dont think they will just abandon the ps3 and let onlive take over. the 360 will need a real insentive as they still just print on regular dvds. video streaming did not kill the dvd player so i dont think this will kill the console if it even works.
anyone else think this is a complete scam It highly unlikely that they can do this in fact its imposable to meat their claims, personally I think they are getting as much hype as possible get a buggy prototype out get lots of people to buy stock increasing there own shares then sell out to Some big boy like publisher who has no intrest in running it but wants to kill off competition
Wouldn't be surprised if these guys are in jail a year from now for this BS
I've read through a lot of these comments, and there are a lot of good points being made - I can't discount the quality of this article either. We all know that OnLive would be a dream for many gamers, and there are obviously a lot of different aspects to consider. I happily invite all of you to join in on related discussions at www.onlivefans.com . We have a growing community dedicated to the discussion and following of the OnLive service.
check out gaikai.com and otoy
Our company is listed as a developer for this effort, and while it is an astounding piece of work, I don't personally think it's ready for prime time. The estimates of 200ms lag are wishful thinking. Over a 9mb cable modem (which is available although not all that common) we were measuring more like 500-700ms at best. We'll be adapting games to run on this because it is wicked cool and we don't want to be left out, but we'll also be supporting our standard hardware choices.
If anyone can ever make this work it's the tech dudes at Onlive. They're awesome. It's just too big a problem with too many variables they can't control. Maybe we should contact Al Gore and ask him to invent a faster internet?
I understand the need for people to be referring this as a high speed internet connection, but there is so much more to it than just that, as pointed out in the high level overview at http://onlivetips.com/uncategorized/high-level-breakdown-of-the-onlive-technology/. With this newer technology that has been developed, there is no reason why this is going to be the future of gaming...
OnLive is going to be some exciting stuff. Can't wait to get my hands on the beta!
http://www.onlivetips.com
i might not make it to the release date. and for all you naysayers, you probably just watched this video. go watch the fucking developer walkthrough and then see whos a fuckin computor whiz. its is FUCKING FLAWLESS DEFINITION WITH NO LAG. i was planning on spending a 1000 bux to build myself a badass gaming rig, but now i can play crysis HD on my shitty out dated laptop. holy shit