Actually quite excited !!

Hmm, 14.99 a month before you even rent or buy games... So within a year you'll have spent more than buying an xbox for example.

It's certainly an interesting concept and could be one possible future for gaming, but at the moment I remain to be convinced that the current broadband infrastructure could cope with the bandwidth requirements.
 
How loud can you say 'LAG!' :)

And yes, I can't wait for a service that takes my games and how and when I can play them even more out of my control.
 
Ysmalari said:
Hmm, 14.99 a month before you even rent or buy games... So within a year you'll have spent more than buying an xbox for example.
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Aye it does seem a lot at first, but i'm pretty sure that most xbox owners will buy more than 3 to 4 new games a year which are usually 40 quid each. 3 or 4 games also comes to the same price of an xbox360, they're only 150 quid now.
 
Ysmalari said:
Hmm, 14.99 a month before you even rent or buy games... So within a year you'll have spent more than buying an xbox for example.

It's certainly an interesting concept and could be one possible future for gaming, but at the moment I remain to be convinced that the current broadband infrastructure could cope with the bandwidth requirements.
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It say £9.99 ($14.95).
"OnLive breaks the console cycle. We don't need new hardware devices," said company founder Steve Perlman.
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So, little johnny's pentium 4 with onboard graphics and 512mb of ram won't need to be updated to play Mass Effect 2 ?
Or am I completely missing the point here ?
 
pmbuzz said:
So, little johnny's pentium 4 with onboard graphics and 512mb of ram won't need to be updated to play Mass Effect 2 ?
Or am I completely missing the point here ?
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That's right. The games is played using the computers at OnLive and then the video of the game is transferred to you. You're basically watching a video and controlling the game remotely.

I can't see it working. If my internet is going slow this will make the service unusable. Nevermind the increased ping times.
 
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- £9.99/14.99 per month to access the service
- extra to 'buy' the games
- 1.5Mbps requirement for 480p and 3.5Mbps (may be off a little there) for 720p
- who knows what the video streaming/compression quality will be (bit unfair comparison but look at any 720p video streaming site such as (even more unfair here) youtube then compare the same footage to the visual quality of an HD download/blu ray/any pc game made in the last decade.)
- no offline play
- not heard anything about the audio but chances of getting good surround sound?

Where do I sign up?
 
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The lag will be horrible playing with a mouse, though you might get away with a controller. And the cost is ridiculous, paying £15 a month and then having to buy games on top. And then you lose access to all the games if you stop paying!

The graphics won't be as good as running it locally. They won't be able to stream 1080p, that's pretty much guaranteed, and the real-time compression they'll be using will introduce artifacts (it has to be done so quickly it won't be anywhere near as good as offline video compression). Oh, and they won't be running things at max settings because they want to fit as many game instances on each server as possible, though with the other two issues I doubt you'd notice anyway.

Basically you may as well just buy a console. It'll work out cheaper in the long run and be generally better.

I'm a bit sceptial :)
 
I can almost imagine it now....

OH CRAP ZOMBIE !!! SMASHES SHOOT BUTTON.............. wha........... (2 secs later) .......... GAME OVER YOU DIED. :p

I would not like to rely on a service like this tbh. The lag could be awful. Also as already shown by ubisofts last venture at DRM. If the server goes down that means no gaming. Sod that.
 
Also, do they mean 1.5Mbps dedicated? Otherwise how do they deal with varying contention ratios between different ISPs?

In fact, OP, why exactly do you find this so exciting? I'm struggling to see any benefit at all over current setups.
 
I think the tech, idea and features are great and will hopefully push the future of gaming. But its just too early and OnLive is going to have a lot of issues and growing pains, but hopefully pave the way and demonstrate the tech for someone like Steam/Microsoft to fully flesh out the idea in a few years. Then hopefully fibre will be much more common in the next 5 or so years with pings being brought drastically down and ISPs provide a much better service (lols). Ping on average is 50-70ms I believe OnLive aim for which isn't that far off a Wii remote or an Xbox controller with low signal/multiple controllers.

Still I can't see this replacing PC gamers any time soon but hopefully adding another option for casual gamers which would really benefit from something like this :)
 
Mahnsikir said:
- who knows what the video streaming/compression quality will be (bit unfair comparison but look at any 720p video streaming site such as (even more unfair here) youtube then compare the same footage to the visual quality of an HD download/blu ray/any pc game made in the last decade.)
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YouTube is a fair comparison IMO, it may even look worse. They are able to use more bandwidth than YouTube but this is countered by the fact that they will have to use much less efficient compression as they have to do it in real-time.

This is at least 5-10 years too early. You almost need fibre to make it competetive with offline gaming IMO.
 
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Why does everyone think that, now we access to high powered processing and graphics power at home, that a move back to client-server (I refuse to use the term 'cloud') is a good thing!

I hope this dies a quick and painful death... as soon as the early adopters get slaughtered by the ping or can't play anything when the server end is down or attacked (like Ubi's new DRM!).
 
How is it too early? The UK and US are lagging way behind in broadband capabilities but it won't be long until we catch up. One of my mates went to Hong Kong for a funeral recently, he was staying with an aunt who knows bugger all about computers yet had a 1GB line. 100MB is being rolled out here this year then 200MB soon after, with them arriving and BT ramping up to 40mb (knowing BT it will be crap at first though) competition has to start heating up soon.

- who knows what the video streaming/compression quality will be (bit unfair comparison but look at any 720p video streaming site such as (even more unfair here) youtube then compare the same footage to the visual quality of an HD download/blu ray/any pc game made in the last decade.)
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This is the most pointless way to try and guess how well it will stream, almost every streaming site limits the bandwidth that they make available to you to x*video bitrate. If you use a divx generator like http://www.mrbrownee70.com/gen.php and stream 1080p movies from filehosts such as megaupload you will max out your connection and the vid will be buffered in no time, it takes me only a few minutes to fully buffer a 4GB 1080p movie that way.
 
Thegoon84 said:
I'd be gutted if this takes off! would be the death of custom PC's as we know it!
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I'm sure they said the same thing when consoles first began appearing on the market. There will still be those of us who like gaming on the PC more than any other platform and I can't see that changing much over the next few years.
 
theukmoog said:
I hope this dies a quick and painful death... as soon as the early adopters get slaughtered by the ping or can't play anything when the server end is down or attacked (like Ubi's new DRM!).
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I dont think we have anything to worry about, I'm sure the UK ISPs will have us covered for quite a few years to come.

Actually come to think of it who here knows a good/marketable number of people who have a good, unlimited and constant download speed of >1.5Mbps, who don't already own a good pc or modern console but would want to pay to stream games.
 
It fails in so many areas, it's to advanced for the world it is being placed in

I can hardly see how this will be a killer anytime soon
- US release June 2010, Europe will probably trail behind a year or two
- You need a constant internet connnection
- You need a 1.5Mbps connection just for standard def
- You need a 5Mbps connection for 720p
- They don't supply a resolution higher than 720p, when they do bandwidth will be even higher
- Compression reduces quality
- Input lag
- An hours worth of gaming with 720p will use up 1GB bandwidth
- ATi, Nvidia, other hardware vendors + Sony and Microsoft will likely launch their own, oh and nintendo ?? LOL
- PC owners love their PC's
- How will it affect other computers/devices on the network
- Server outages and attacks which will already be under very high load
- ISP bandwidth caps and throttling, meaning sometimes you just can't play
- Death of mods enitrely
- Save games/stats problems
- Hacked accounts/security

Personally I think they should have kept quiet and kept developing it, it will simply not work without the use of cable as well
 
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This is good tech, just a bit to early I think. Client server models are the way to go for businesses at the moment (my job deals with me implementing such architecture at the moment). It makes sense in business.

However like people have pointed out, would we get the benefits we expect from games now, through such a service. I think not. But this is mainly due to the current BB infrastructure we have and the charges and caps we have should we go over our monthly limit.

In 10/15 years may be. But I don't think it will be a viable business yet.
 
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