OnLive's Gaming-on-Demand Service Demoed on an iPad

[NickK1066]

If you have 300,000 subscribers who play for an average of an hour or two a day you need 12-24,000, even assuming everyone playing is playing a game which requires a single high powered PC to run (where in reality the likelihood is that many of those will be 'casual' games, several of which could run on a single machine).

Very true however the value in this to the gamer is to remove the cost of having a specific gaming platform (console) or have a high cost PC. Casual games are quite possible on the current series of Apple/Google/MS mobile platforms so it doesn't make sense for the majority of users. Those that causal game often do this on the move - so gaming whilst commuting on the train (with really bad stable mobile coverage).

I can see the first MMORPG done like this for iPad.

However todo this properly, the game engine itself will need rearchitecting to have banks of specialist graphics renderers, game loop servers, specialist physics engines, user profile data bases etc rather than having 30,000 individual PCs executing off-the-shelf game installations (which render, control the game loop, store the user profile etc). Then the system can assign resources as needed.. the result would be games that are far greater than a standard PC game..

 

[dingamahoo]

Seems like the founding member offer saves you around $60 a year in membership fees ($4.95/month for the second year). But you still pay for all your games. I'm not sure how much it costs to play one of the games beyond the monthly membership fee, though.

 

[edkill]

Are you saying On Live are lying? Seriously, is that what you're implying?

That a company, heavily funded and with partnership with EA, Ubi etc etc are simply making up a website, taking people's 1 years founder subscriptions, and lying about the service?

Nice appeal to authority there bro. Big companies never make extraordinary claims about their upcoming products only to later reveal an underwhelming rendition of their original product idea.

The lack of savvy is astonishing.

What's astonishing is that you'll believe any outrageous claim as long as it has the backing of big shot videogame publishers.

With service like this, you have to roll out slowly. Look at openings for MMOs - they stagger the service, with early starts for pre-orders - that isn't just to let some people to get a head-start, that's to technically not overload their servers.

We're not talking about overcoming the technical hurdles of congested launch day traffic, we're talking about overcoming the fundamental limitations of modern internet technology. The fact is, the internet is just not fast enough right now to make this type of service viable, especially for the type of games that this service is trying to target, intense, highly detailed, first person shooters where even a one second delay ruins the gaming experience.

I personally don't like it because of the sub model. But I'm not going to talk crap about them and imply that they're lying.

Nobody thinks they're outright lying, but there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that they're even close to producing a service that resembles the image they're trying to portray.

 

[muskratboy]

is there really any way this is going to work? i mean, the entire service?

so when i'm in the middle of an action-heavy, fast-twitch shoot'em up game, and i'm running and gunning just as fast as i can... and the INTERNET is supposed to take those taps, send them across the country, then send back my results?

this really seems like something that's not going to work well at all.

maybe one day... when our broadband finally catches up. but right now? no way. i say, no way.

where even a one second delay ruins the gaming experience.

way, way LESS than a second. you can easily hit your A button what... 5 times a second? EVERY second? for an hour? and the internet is going to keep up with that? REALLY?

it's a good idea, in theory. but does anyone seriously think this would work for FPS?

 

[ScottishDuck]

is there really any way this is going to work? i mean, the entire service?

so when i'm in the middle of an action-heavy, fast-twitch shoot'em up game, and i'm running and gunning just as fast as i can... and the INTERNET is supposed to take those taps, send them across the country, then send back my results?

this really seems like something that's not going to work well at all.

Unless the speed of light changes, OnLive will never work.

I suppose they have some tachyons they aren't telling us about

 

[NyArtboy]

Would be so sweet

This seems like it could be so awesome. I mean being able to buy a game and decide later where you want to play it sounds great in theroy but, are you kidding? I looked at the line-up of games so far. I have borderlands for the PC (fully loaded vista system) and that game STILL lags when you play it online. How are they going to deliver the whole game and not have some amount of lag always?!?!

This seems like a pipe-dream to me. I'm more excited about Steam coming to the Mac then this company's offering.

 

[HiRez]

If it is true and along as it streams with a decent resolution with absolutly NO lag then they will not only drive sales for the iPad BEYOND current demand but we will begin to see people playing WoW in the daylight!!! O.O my gawd!

This is one of the issues with this system, addons. Who doesn't have a bunch of addons that they rely on for WoW? How do you implement that if your game isn't being processed locally? Maybe there's some mechanism they can invent to automatically load mods and addons dynamically for each virtual game played? Dunno, but I do know it would be painful to play WoW without my addons.

The technology looks really great, but yeah, the controls are horrible (probably improvable), and the lag is an issue, that one might be harder to overcome. But bear in mind the iPad probably has significantly higher device lag than other devices like a desktop or laptop. I don't know what the iPad latency is, but I know on the iPhone it's really high, over 300ms I think.

 

[askduds]

Look, it's very simple.

What OnLive SAY they can do is encode AND stream you YouTube HD quality video.

With no buffering
And no skips, EVER. Because a SINGLE skip and you'll lose whatever game you're playing.

It seems somewhat unlikely even on that basis, before you get to the other reasons (starting with the whole "speed of light" thing) why this is largely bollocks for anything other than low reaction games.

 

[blackcrayon]

Well it must be vaporware then! I concede!

I didn't say it was or wasn't vaporware- I was just stating what I thought to be true (that it was not yet launched, and that the launch was tonight). For all I know, i read wrong, and it was already out, and you could've directed me to where i could try it *shrug*.

 

[dlewis23]

Unless the speed of light changes, OnLive will never work.

I suppose they have some tachyons they aren't telling us about

Ah So I can finally talk about this, as my NDA as expired.

ONLIVE WORKS AS ADVERTISED. And they did a fantastic job with the service.

I have been using it for about 2 weeks now. I have AT&T UVerse on there 12 Mbps, and anyone who has UVerse knows that the latency on it is not the greatest. About 30 - 50 MS more then normal DSL.

I have had NO problems with lagg in games. Responses are instant. I fire a gun, and it fires. Online play is great because no one has any lag, its like playing on your local computer with bots.

So far the only complaint I have with the service is it doesn't work with a logitech mouse when you have the logitech mouse software installed.

Other then that Onlive has done a amazing job getting something that shouldn't work, to work as good as it does. Hopefully soon they will be able to up the video quality a bit.

Just want to add for anyone who has a ISP with a cap, its not very bandwidth friendly. Watching a usage meter it pulls about 800 Kb/s (6.4 MBPS) for 720p. Over the last 8 days I have used about 30 GB of bandwidth just on Onlive.

 

[ViperDesign]

Wasn't it supposed to go live today? It is now 8:20pm PST (11:20pm EST) and still nothing.

WHy say you are going live on a day and yet don't do it

 

[dalcorn1]

guessing it didn't go live then. still no sign up form, though macworld is reporting that it's up and running.

 

[micahR]

This service is kind of useless, because the best "PC" games are going to run well on Mac anyways. I am speaking of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3.
15 dollars a month (after the free period) just to have access to games you still have to pay for. For the same money I can get a subscription to gamefly and not have to pay for games. They need to restructure their business model, if they want to compete.

 

[bobertoq]

Are you saying On Live are lying? Seriously, is that what you're implying?

That a company, heavily funded and with partnership with EA, Ubi etc etc are simply making up a website, taking people's 1 years founder subscriptions, and lying about the service?

The lack of savvy is astonishing.

With service like this, you have to roll out slowly. Look at openings for MMOs - they stagger the service, with early starts for pre-orders - that isn't just to let some people to get a head-start, that's to technically not overload their servers.

Which happens anyway, which you would know if play any game served online. What On Live want to do is bold, and their partners think it's technically doable.

I personally don't like it because of the sub model. But I'm not going to talk crap about them and imply that they're lying.

You do realize that companies always do whatever it takes to make their products look good, including lie? His point is, that it's impossible to have zero latency if you are a certain distance from the server.

First the controller sends a message to the console (or keyboard to the computer), then it sends that message to your computer, which then sends it to the OnLive servers. The OnLive servers then have to read the code and process it. It then compresses the video and sends it back to you. Unless you're really close to the server, I highly doubt that there will be zero latency.

 

[ScottishDuck]

Ah So I can finally talk about this, as my NDA as expired.

ONLIVE WORKS AS ADVERTISED. And they did a fantastic job with the service.

I have been using it for about 2 weeks now. I have AT&T UVerse on there 12 Mbps, and anyone who has UVerse knows that the latency on it is not the greatest. About 30 - 50 MS more then normal DSL.

I have had NO problems with lagg in games. Responses are instant. I fire a gun, and it fires. Online play is great because no one has any lag, its like playing on your local computer with bots.

So far the only complaint I have with the service is it doesn't work with a logitech mouse when you have the logitech mouse software installed.

Other then that Onlive has done a amazing job getting something that shouldn't work, to work as good as it does. Hopefully soon they will be able to up the video quality a bit.

Just want to add for anyone who has a ISP with a cap, its not very bandwidth friendly. Watching a usage meter it pulls about 800 Kb/s (6.4 MBPS) for 720p. Over the last 8 days I have used about 30 GB of bandwidth just on Onlive.

Cool viral ad bro, take your ******** elsewhere. There hasn't been a single piece of evidence that it works. All the leaked beta footage shows horrible looking graphics with horrendous response and lag.

 

[doctoree]

Not sure how heavy the ipad feels in the hand, but i'm guessing he'd drop it if the controls were at the bottom. If it were me i'd have it on the two sides so you can operate the controls without taking hands off..

Of course, a proper game controller (or even just mapped to the external keyboard) would be tons better

That's just the next stupid idea. Who plays while holding the device in mid air?

 

[bluemonkeyguy]

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