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I'm not at all interested in OnLive, but in just the first paragraph you convinced me that the original criticism was unreasonably ignorant. Thanks for clearing that up.
I don't know the exact details about OnLive so I can't say what resolution it streams at... But I can at the very least say streaming a 720p video image is going to kill my bandwidth limit for the month. If it's compressed then it will look like crap. I'm honestly expecting it will manage both.
Also what subscription method are they using? I mean if it's a flat rate per month. Some publishers aren't going to want their triple A title on it because they won't be pushing unit numbers. Which means their titles won't be available on OnLive and you'll need your 360 / PS3 / PC to play them. Mean you'll probably have to own the hardware to play the games anyway making OnLive pointless.
If you just pay per title like say steam... How do they afford the servers? I mean my brain hurts just thinking about how much power and bandwidth something like that would eat.
I mean hell I don't even need to go this far into it... All I need to say is sometimes I'd like to play games if my ISP is down for the day. Ohhh noes I've discredited OnLive so quickly.
I have other disagreements with the service like inability to tweak or modify games. But I understand that isn't available on all platforms anyway.
Also yeah whine it's a beta all you like... It hasn't even hit retail where people are going to be pounding on the cloud server setup like hell. Have fun playing your games at peak hours. I'd just really love to live in the fantasy land the OnLive engineers envision though. Sounds like that place has a really nice internet infrastructure. Wish we had that.
But hell if you want to sit here and think OnLive will be comparable to what we have now in our homes... More power to ya. Keep on dreaming because I don't think OnLive will be giving me uncompressed 1080p anytime soon. Honestly I don't even understand the need for OnLive. Why is buying the hardware that bad? A 360 or PS3 doesn't cost that much.
Also what subscription method are they using? I mean if it's a flat rate per month. Some publishers aren't going to want their triple A title on it because they won't be pushing unit numbers. Which means their titles won't be available on OnLive and you'll need your 360 / PS3 / PC to play them. Mean you'll probably have to own the hardware to play the games anyway making OnLive pointless.
If you just pay per title like say steam... How do they afford the servers? I mean my brain hurts just thinking about how much power and bandwidth something like that would eat.
I mean hell I don't even need to go this far into it... All I need to say is sometimes I'd like to play games if my ISP is down for the day. Ohhh noes I've discredited OnLive so quickly.
I have other disagreements with the service like inability to tweak or modify games. But I understand that isn't available on all platforms anyway.
Also yeah whine it's a beta all you like... It hasn't even hit retail where people are going to be pounding on the cloud server setup like hell. Have fun playing your games at peak hours. I'd just really love to live in the fantasy land the OnLive engineers envision though. Sounds like that place has a really nice internet infrastructure. Wish we had that.
But hell if you want to sit here and think OnLive will be comparable to what we have now in our homes... More power to ya. Keep on dreaming because I don't think OnLive will be giving me uncompressed 1080p anytime soon. Honestly I don't even understand the need for OnLive. Why is buying the hardware that bad? A 360 or PS3 doesn't cost that much.
We'll see how the final project ends up, but I doubt as much work will be put into the canadian network as the US network.
I wonder how the European support is going to work out.
I wonder how the European support is going to work out.
Using UDP for games isn't exactly novel. They've been doing it for years. Pretty much since online gaming has existed. Pretty much the only time TCP is used is to announce to the server that you're alive and well.
@Iron Dragon: I must agree with you on a number of points. I am very heavily invested in my PC hardware and over 60 games on Steam. I don't envision me committing full force to cloud game, but merely from a technical standpoint this idea has a lot going for it.
I admit that I am not thrilled that should I lose my internet connection I would lose all access to the games that I paid for. It sucks that game mods wouldn't be possible on this system, or at least they would have to rely on a traditional sales model to give modders access to the game so they could make mods. So obviously the traditional model has many strengths over OnLive, and it would be silly for me to claim that OnLive will replace consoles for home PC's any time soon. All I wished to do with this blog was point out that people who are knocking the technology are a bit premature in their judgments.
As one final note, OnLive's engineers have already thought of how to mitigate peak hour congestion. Once the full service is active they plan to have 5 server farms to deal with all their traffic. So as peak hours hit at their eastern center, they will switch people to their other center in Chicago to balance the load.
I admit that I am not thrilled that should I lose my internet connection I would lose all access to the games that I paid for. It sucks that game mods wouldn't be possible on this system, or at least they would have to rely on a traditional sales model to give modders access to the game so they could make mods. So obviously the traditional model has many strengths over OnLive, and it would be silly for me to claim that OnLive will replace consoles for home PC's any time soon. All I wished to do with this blog was point out that people who are knocking the technology are a bit premature in their judgments.
As one final note, OnLive's engineers have already thought of how to mitigate peak hour congestion. Once the full service is active they plan to have 5 server farms to deal with all their traffic. So as peak hours hit at their eastern center, they will switch people to their other center in Chicago to balance the load.
I think it's technically possible on a small scale sure... Just it'll have limitations: image quality, slight input lag, possibly monthly fee, restrictive system with little user control, bandwidth usage, etc... I just think it's a grand dream on the aging internet infrastructure we have in North America.
Frankly my biggest problems with OnLive are just feasibility concerns. I just don't see it being a better solution to a problem that frankly... Isn't very significant with how cheap hardware is. TVs cost more than the hardware to run these games. I mean we can try and do it... The question is do we need to?
Also if they are mitigating traffic at peak hours then is it correct to assume that won't be the optimal connection? I mean if I'm in California and they connect me to Chicago at peak hours... Would I not have the same issues faced by people cheating the beta? Service would still get worse as some users were mitigated. It doesn't fix the problem.
Frankly my biggest problems with OnLive are just feasibility concerns. I just don't see it being a better solution to a problem that frankly... Isn't very significant with how cheap hardware is. TVs cost more than the hardware to run these games. I mean we can try and do it... The question is do we need to?
Also if they are mitigating traffic at peak hours then is it correct to assume that won't be the optimal connection? I mean if I'm in California and they connect me to Chicago at peak hours... Would I not have the same issues faced by people cheating the beta? Service would still get worse as some users were mitigated. It doesn't fix the problem.
You make a good argument. If the technology you describe works as well as they say, then theoretically this could revolutionize gaming as a whole. If it works, I'll give it a chance. But, see there are so many issues with the concept right off the bat.
Are Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft getting behind this? I highly doubt they are, since they are dependent on hardware and software sales which is virtually the opposite of what OnLive supports, aside from the the unit you need to play with. Which means they are going to need support from major publishers such as EA, Acti-Blizzard, Ubisoft, etc. Now, I love a competitive market, because we as consumers have more options and it forces companies to make better products. But it would be incredibly hard for something like this to start off and last without a huge impact and success from the beginning. Although, I suppose that is what the beta and testing is for.
What about owning a copy of the game? I know that digital distribution is the path of the future; its inevitable. But even the digital copies of the games I have in my hard drive or flash drive are mine. I may not have a physical copy I can touch, but I can control what I do with them. This gives me far more control of my games than what OnLive does, as far as I know. Unless there is a detail I'm not aware of, where I own the game more than is implied, I'm not O.K. with OnLive's system. Especially if I have to pay a subscription. To date, I have to pay no subscription to any game or system I have, and quite frankly, I'd be hard pressed to start at any given time.
Lastly, the controller is ugly and looks uncomfortable. Just my opinion, though.
Are Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft getting behind this? I highly doubt they are, since they are dependent on hardware and software sales which is virtually the opposite of what OnLive supports, aside from the the unit you need to play with. Which means they are going to need support from major publishers such as EA, Acti-Blizzard, Ubisoft, etc. Now, I love a competitive market, because we as consumers have more options and it forces companies to make better products. But it would be incredibly hard for something like this to start off and last without a huge impact and success from the beginning. Although, I suppose that is what the beta and testing is for.
What about owning a copy of the game? I know that digital distribution is the path of the future; its inevitable. But even the digital copies of the games I have in my hard drive or flash drive are mine. I may not have a physical copy I can touch, but I can control what I do with them. This gives me far more control of my games than what OnLive does, as far as I know. Unless there is a detail I'm not aware of, where I own the game more than is implied, I'm not O.K. with OnLive's system. Especially if I have to pay a subscription. To date, I have to pay no subscription to any game or system I have, and quite frankly, I'd be hard pressed to start at any given time.
Lastly, the controller is ugly and looks uncomfortable. Just my opinion, though.
Just as a small clarification, at least from my understanding of their intended business model, there will be a subscription that you have to pay to access the service and you will have to buy individual games you want to play. They plan to have the ability to demo any game, but you will need to buy it to play the whole game.
Now of course being a PC gamer at heart I object to this subscription plan, but it does allow OnLive to operate without needing a boat load of cash to compete with Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. They are renting the servers at their data centers, so as long as enough money is coming in from subscriptions to pay their rental then they win. They also have had a very easy time convincing major publisher to put their games on OnLive. The PC version of any game can run without modification on OnLive, so the publishers don't need to do anything special, and without the need to package a retail disk. From a business standpoint OnLive makes a lot of sense, you can't pirate the game because you aren't getting any of the interactive code, just the video feed. You don't have Gamestop or other used game stores siphoning money from publishers.
So really the barrier to entry is quite small for OnLive. Also considering that the plastic for their microconsole cost more than the tech in it, they can give that away with a subscription. So I don't imagine the hardcore crowd flocking to Onlive in droves, but I still think their is a place for it in the market. Also considering that they are releasing an iphone version (and no you can't play over the cell network because there is nothing that can be done about the lag in current generation cell phone tech), there are many avenues for people to access the games they buy on the system.
And I do realize that I sound like a flip flopper because I defend the system and turn around and admit that I probably won't use it much, but I really think the debate over OnLive should be about the ownership of the content and what happens when I don't have an internet connection. How will this effect bandwidth usage limits? I am truly excited to see what this tech can do, and it does have some features that you can't find anywhere else. They can use ip multicasting to broadcast tournament games. They have a system in place to combine the mic input of all the observers to make the ambient stadium sounds in sports game tournaments. These are admittedly simple novelties, but it is something new and fresh.
So to wrap up all my rambling from this post and comments, this technology has real potential. They have spent a lot of time working out the technical aspects of the system. Whether or not I will be comfortable with my games living solely in the cloud is still to be determined, but I truly can't wait to see how this effects the video game industry.
Now of course being a PC gamer at heart I object to this subscription plan, but it does allow OnLive to operate without needing a boat load of cash to compete with Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. They are renting the servers at their data centers, so as long as enough money is coming in from subscriptions to pay their rental then they win. They also have had a very easy time convincing major publisher to put their games on OnLive. The PC version of any game can run without modification on OnLive, so the publishers don't need to do anything special, and without the need to package a retail disk. From a business standpoint OnLive makes a lot of sense, you can't pirate the game because you aren't getting any of the interactive code, just the video feed. You don't have Gamestop or other used game stores siphoning money from publishers.
So really the barrier to entry is quite small for OnLive. Also considering that the plastic for their microconsole cost more than the tech in it, they can give that away with a subscription. So I don't imagine the hardcore crowd flocking to Onlive in droves, but I still think their is a place for it in the market. Also considering that they are releasing an iphone version (and no you can't play over the cell network because there is nothing that can be done about the lag in current generation cell phone tech), there are many avenues for people to access the games they buy on the system.
And I do realize that I sound like a flip flopper because I defend the system and turn around and admit that I probably won't use it much, but I really think the debate over OnLive should be about the ownership of the content and what happens when I don't have an internet connection. How will this effect bandwidth usage limits? I am truly excited to see what this tech can do, and it does have some features that you can't find anywhere else. They can use ip multicasting to broadcast tournament games. They have a system in place to combine the mic input of all the observers to make the ambient stadium sounds in sports game tournaments. These are admittedly simple novelties, but it is something new and fresh.
So to wrap up all my rambling from this post and comments, this technology has real potential. They have spent a lot of time working out the technical aspects of the system. Whether or not I will be comfortable with my games living solely in the cloud is still to be determined, but I truly can't wait to see how this effects the video game industry.
