[gamersat678]

I'm surprised no one has posted anything about OnLive. I wonder what will happen if anything. Will consoles die or will life just go on?

OnLive killed the game console star?

 

[Gossamer]

I'm surprised no one has posted anything about OnLive. I wonder what will happen if anything. Will consoles die or will life just go on?

OnLive killed the game console star?

"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?"

I do.

"Would you walk away from your beloved console?"

I did.

Granted, I read the rest and in theory this would kill piracy but it would also be very megalomaniac-like. One company streaming games 24/7 for some random subscription fee; it sounds too easy to be true, there has to be loads of horse **** behind this.

 

[gamersat678]

Forgot to mention this *site is supposed to come out in 45 minutes. OnLive: The Future of Video Games
It does seem to easy to be true but....

 

[ElijahTW]

I really don't think this is practical.

Lets say you have a decent connection to the server, say 25ms. So you press a button, it takes 25ms to get to the server, 1ms (so they claim) for video processing, and 25ms back. That's 51ms.... Add 2 to 3ms for you computer to decode it aswell. That's 54ms. May not sound like a lot, but in high-speed games it may be noticeable.

Not to mention, a 60ms ping is more practical (60+60+1+3 = 124ms).

 

[makotech222]

no thanks. i love my super computer and use it as such

 

[Project Epsilon]

the idea and tech is sorta interesting. but i don't think this is really aimed at the enthusiast. i wonder about 2 things...

1. video quality. right now its limited to 720p. and the fact that its just streaming video. I've downloaded some huge high quality 720p vids and they still show artifacts. not to mention in general videos just don't look as crisp as something rendered in real time.

2. as mentioned, latency issues.

 

[Spyhop]

Poor OnLive. They're dead already and they don't even know it.

 

[Cheesus]

I see this turning into the new video game rental system. Nobody's going to want having their entire gaming experience owned by a single corporation... But for trying out a game, or playing a quick fighting game with your mates, I definitely see this being a huge hit. I'm intrigued to see if they successfully manage to play it out well. Fingers crossed?

 

[Hard core Rikki]

Poor OnLive. They're dead already and they don't even know it.

Seconding the prediction.
Its unlikely this could scale well. It also falls into commercial use, which still isnt really authorized in many game EULAs (some seem to have clauses that cover streaming too).

Pay now, keep paying ?

 

[Exodus]

the idea and tech is sorta interesting.

Indeed.

But in practice, I don't see how they'd be able to have servers for so many games. And, as already noted, obviously this will be crazy for bandwidth, or the quality will be garbage.

 

[Paratech]

I see this turning into the new video game rental system. Nobody's going to want having their entire gaming experience owned by a single corporation... But for trying out a game, or playing a quick fighting game with your mates, I definitely see this being a huge hit. I'm intrigued to see if they successfully manage to play it out well. Fingers crossed?

That's about the only thing I see it viable for at the moment, but there are a few issues...

What kind of video card and sound are they going to support? Let's say you have a state of the art PC and want to see how it will look on your PC but their PC doesn't have such a kick butt setup? then you'll see a glorified video playback of the game at a lower resolution than your system is capable of delivering.

And how long will they support games? Give games about six months and people generally aren't interested in playing them, plus the licensing issues, and new games being released.

I see this as a bad use of technology. Other than PC games, I cannot see this working, as if you own the console, there are numerous ways of obtaining a copy of the game legally to try it, from mail order game rentals, to game rental stores, to friends lending you the game to try.

And imagine trying to play multiplayer on these games when you talk about latency, I seriously doubt it works very well.

oO :dead:

 

[D.D.]

For an indepth editorial on why it won't work from the head of Digital Foundry (a company specializing in video capture and compression), click here

GDC: Why OnLive Can't Possibly Work Article - Page 1 // PC /// Eurogamer - Games Reviews, News and More

 

[Spyhop]

We deal with high definition video conferencing at work. We have units the will encode and decode 720p @ 60fps and only use 1.5mbit of bandwidth both ways. However, the latency, just by eyeballing it, is about 500ms. There's noticeable delay in conversations. And this is with very expensive, very powerful encoding/decoding equipment at both sides. I can only imagine what a gong show it would be trying to control a game in real time with that amount of latency.

 

[Hard core Rikki]

The concept isnt new, by the way (late 2007).

http://www.streammygame.com/smg/index.php

Stream PC titles to laptop/PS3 News // PC /// Eurogamer - Games Reviews, News and More

StreamMyGame has revealed fresh technology that will let you remotely play games installed on your home PC.
Using a small application you can record, broadcast or stream titles across the Internet or a LAN, and access them on anything from your laptop to your PS3. A bit like you are living with robots in the future.
Effectively you allow a remote user to take over control of your PC, allowing much lower-end computers to play the latest and greatest games.
The performance is described on the website as "almost identical" to playing it on the native machine, although naturally your speed of connection plays a large part in determining it.
Your friend whose computer you are streaming the game from can take over at any time, too, introducing a fancy kind of coaching tool if you are having trouble or if you just want to learn a trick or two.
So far only LAN streaming is supported, though, and features like broadcasting game demonstrations across multiple computers at an event or recording yourself shooting others in the head are being talked up.
Broadband integration is expected later in the year, alongside support for Linux-supporting machines like the PS3 and digital receivers.
It sounds intriguing, and is also one step closer to what EA bigwig Gerhard Florin was harping on about a couple of weeks ago - saying content streamed to hardware like Sky HD boxes would be the future of games.

 

[Gossamer]

Well my world was almost over.
I guess I can get on with my life, now.

*opens a can of coors light.
*smokes a cigarette
*plays Team Fortress 2

 

[bobrocks95]

Interesting link DD, I read the whole thing. I like the last line.

 

[D.D.]

Interesting link DD, I read the whole thing. I like the last line.

Glad you enjoyed it. I like the last line as well...seriously if this works out, I think it just might be a huge commercial hit, but the way it looks now, its looking rather bleak.

I had hoped that it would be a huge resource pool innovatively dynamically allocated to get rid of problems like rendering and compression, but I guess I was wrong.

Still, like that guy I want to be proved wrong !

 

[Irukapooka]

Hmm...I read this yesterday. It sounds interesting, I think it may become popular, but I doubt that the other big video companies will have anything to really worry about, especially if they keep up a good fanbase.

 

[skoreanime]

I'll have to say, also, this isn't going to fly.

Interesting, yes, but not really practical.

Doesn't this idea take a crap load of bandwidth? The actual lag is probably bigger then what they showcased. And what do you do if the internet in your area goes down? You can't play if you can't stream.

 

[cottonvibes]

sadly cloud-gaming is the future of gaming.
all we need is 1 big company like micro$oft supporting this for their next 'console', and it'll gain the support it needs to flourish.

maybe it won't happen now though, but it will most-likely happen in the future.
basically a huge super-computer network where people 'pay' per month to use the computer 'power'.

of course this means 'the man' will have a say in everything, and it could be the end of emulation or anything 'the man' doesn't like.
'the man' in this case being big business corporations and most-likely the government would be involved as well.

the advantage of this would be basically anything with a fast enough internet connection would have the power of a super-computer (cellphones, laptops, pcs, pdas, tvs, etc..)

if it never happens i'll be really happy, but i know people *will* support this idea if some big company like m$ uses it for their next gaming platform (look at all the people that pay per month for xbox live ;p).

edit:
also, 'the man' would love this because it'll probably prevent/stop piracy of games.
and game developers would like just 1 system to make games for, since porting games is expensive.

so the only real disadvantages is for the consumer; 'the man' gets a lot of advantages.