OnLive goes OnBeta, wants you to help by playing games
By Vlad Savov 
posted September 3rd 2009 9:23AM
posted September 3rd 2009 9:23AM
[Via Joystiq]
posted September 3rd 2009 9:23AM
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is this like SegaTV all over again? I remember how well that went...
This will not fly in Canada.
Not with the low bandwidth caps (60GB/month) that the major ISPs are imposing around here.
We need to give a good kick in the ass to Canadian and American ISPs.
60 GB? I dream of that, my backwoods local shitty cable company has a 20 GB limit (and we aren't even backwoods at all, just the cable company)
Im sure they won't bing this to this small town.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaS028GN7ss
Im down with free.
So hang on - OnLive announces this system at CES and everyone goes "yeah right, pull the other one". Then they demonstrate it running under controlled conditions, and everyone goes "yeah right, pull the other one". Now they're starting up open beta testing (meaning they've already gone through alpha and closed beta testing with little to no problems) and everyone goes "yeah right, pull the other one". What is it going to take to stop being so damn sceptical all the time and not pass judgement until it's actually released to market? If you write it off before you try it, two things can happen - either you're right and you can keep that smug grin on your face that makes all the ladies run away, or you're wrong and you've wasted all this time being a douche. However, by keeping an open mind, no-one thinks you suck and ladies don't flee from your self-satisfied mug.
I won't believe it until I try it because I've tried playing games on my PS3 from my PSP remotely and it's been uncontrollable IMO. If the round trip on my near-zero latency of my LAN is too much for a game then I don't see how any game can function when it goes through any ISP. And anyone mentioning their 20mbps Comcast line... what's your latency? What's your upload rate? That's a big factor for this kind of thing, but Comcast doesn't advertise anything except the max theoretical speed and people buy the service thinking that it must be the best because the number is bigger than anyone elses.
My point is that people seem to predisposed to rubbishing anything that hasn't been done before prior to actually trying it. Remote play is not great because Sony aren't great at compression. From what I've read, OnLive has a unique scaleable compression algorithm that is allowing this service to work with a wide variety of connections. This isn't Orbo, it's not breaking any scientific rules, and they are actually able to not only demostrate the product working, but allow the public to try it. Until people have provided feedback, I for one will withold judgement.
It looks good to me. Me and my wife's cousin are thinking of getting one. We liked the idea since it was first mentioned.
I bet if everyone gets one of these things, the internet would go to a crawl like AT&T is with iPhone users (and I own one, 3G is slowly)
It's a nice concept, but I doubt it's going to ever last, does anyone remember "Sega Channel" for the Sega Genesis? It failed (and I even had a subscription to it)
Then look at today, Comcast will bitch about you using too much bandwidth, and picture this, a typical game is about 5GB average. Imagine loading that every time you turn it off and on. Then you have to wait for it to load over the internet and depending on which service you have for internet, it can be SLOW.
You do realize that you are simply downloading a video stream of the game being played remotely right?
And all you are sending back are keystrokes. The games are not installed on your computer.
From the OnLive FAQ:
"What kind of Internet connection do I need to use the OnLive Service?
OnLive works over nearly any broadband connection (DSL, cable modem, fiber, or through the LAN at your college or office). For Standard-Definition TV resolution, OnLive needs a 1.5 Mbps connection. For HDTV resolution (720p60), OnLive needs 5 Mbps."
But I'm sure the argument will go on for another five pages regardless...
ool ultra 100mpbs down
holla whats good
I'll stick with my 360 thankyou very much.
720p60 OnLiveneeds 5Mbps, so what does it need for 1080p60?
Also 5Mbps bitrate sounds a bit nastey compression wise to me. Lets get ready for lots of nice artifacts when playing our highspeed racing games / shooters. Or are we talking about running really old games like quake.
1080 Isn't gonna happen soon. It's gonna require about 10Mb if you think about it. 720 is a 1MP image. 1080 is about a 2MP image.
I wonder if this is going to be anything like gametap? I subscribed to that service way back when and loved it. Since then I've purchased an Xbox 360 and then a PS3 but still, I'm always open for a new player in the market. For me, Gametap was slick and the choices of games were to my liking. Granted, the service wasn't without the occasional hiccup here and there but then again, back then, I was running on a 1.5Mbps DSL line. I'm curious to see how this thing would run on my AT&T U-Verse as well as on the dedicated T1 here at the office. Errr... I mean... no, I don't play games at work. Crap, I guess I'm not reading engadget at work right now either. Gotta run!!! :)
The 1.5Mbps DSL kills it for me. My local phone coop doesn't offer anything faster than 1 meg, though we have had that for about 8 or 9 years now.
I can see the tumbleweed tumbling across your yard right now :)
I'd love to try this out for beta purposes. I run a gaming forum that discusses game reviews, and being able to talk about this product after some hands-on testing would be fantastic writing material. :)