Console killer' OnLive to launch in June

They have proved it works on certainly a small scale, however even on a reasonably fast connection in the States there was lag that made an FPS difficult to play.

The tech is absolutely fine. Unfortunately the world's network infrastructure isn't.

It'll have a niche market, but I doubt it'll be enough to keep it alive for too long.
 
movingtables said:
A gaming service that aims to kill off the traditional gaming console will begin streaming popular games over the internet in June this year.

more here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8556874.stm

how on earth will this work? when i play call of duty online there can be lag and thats on a decent 10mb. but to stream a whole game and user input? perrrlease lol.
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Laggy imprecise gaming is surprisingly popular. Nintendo Wii, case in point. :)

Seriously though for some kind of games I can see this working and it is quite cheap, so you never know. Apparently it works on 2MB connections in USA, due to them having a really good video codec to deliver the HD images fast.


rp2000
 
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I hope it works and hope it doesn't work at the same time... I'd love to be able to buy an average laptop and play crysis through the wifi whilst waiting for a flight for example - on the other hand, I do love to upgrade my computer - and the only thing worth upgrading for is usually gaming :p
 
You have to realise, that you'll be paying a monthly subsciption, then pay/rent the game itself, to play on your laptop/pc/tv, in sub hd resolutions.

So you have the choice, pay subsciption + game and play on you pc/laptop/tv, with lag in sub hd.

Or buy the game for your console/pc, play in hd, no lag, with option to sell/trade the game once you're done with it.

It sounded great at first, but the fact that you have to pay/rent the game as well, is simply not worth it. Something the guys who are behind it failed to tell everyone before until recently.

Initially it was pay a subsciption and play away, now you have to rent/buy the game too, nice of them to drop that one in a couple of months before launching.
 
ravl585 said:
You have to realise, that you'll be paying a monthly subsciption, then pay/rent the game itself, to play on your laptop/pc/tv, in sub hd resolutions.

So you have the choice, pay subsciption + game and play on you pc/laptop/tv, with lag in sub hd.

Or buy the game for your console/pc, play in hd, no lag, with option to sell/trade the game once you're done with it.

It sounded great at first, but the fact that you have to pay/rent the game as well, is simply not worth it. Something the guys who are behind it failed to tell everyone before until recently.

Initially it was pay a subsciption and play away, now you have to rent/buy the game too, nice of them to drop that one in a couple of months before launching.
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they will have to review that payment scheme surely ?
its like paying lovefilm £9.99 month then paying for the film rental as well.
haha.
 
I would say 10 years untill this would be feasable on a big scale. Pretty sure we will see at least one more generation of console first. But really, what would be the point? As pointed out above, you will be paying out left, right and centre for it anyway. People still buy blu-ray players etc.

Forgetting the connection speed issue, which will sort it self over time. I mean, I'm on a 10mb connection because it's cheap. I could have 50mb by making a phonecall. Only 3 years ago i had just gone from a 1mb connection to a 2mb connection so in 10 years - who knows!

The main advantage I can see from something like this is that they wouldn't have the generation-long restrictions on hardware that consoles have now. They could update whatever the hell they run the games on their end and the end user wouldn't have to do anything.
 
Can see this working for games where speed of response isn't important, which is the minority pretty much.

Can see developers loving it though as it makes piracy a lot harder.
 
If you think about TFTs when they first arrived, you were looking at 25ms response time - whilst FPS purists shyed away from them for that reason, for a lot of people they were fine. 25ms is probably actually an above average ping these days for most people to servers in London, so depending on their setup, this could really work.
 
It's a fantastic idea however it will only work semi-decently in a country like USA. Not UK as the internet is not reliable enough here. Also I dislike subscription. :(
 
Macky said:
It's a fantastic idea however it will only work semi-decently in a country like USA. Not UK as the internet is not reliable enough here. Also I dislike subscription. :(
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USA has poor speeds just like here, might work well in korea where they pretty much all have 100mb lines
 
Good concept, cannot comment until there are user reviews. WOW springs to mind as the idea game.

If lag is of concern, definitely will not be a good idea for FPS i.e. MW2 :D
 
daz said:
If you think about TFTs when they first arrived, you were looking at 25ms response time - whilst FPS purists shyed away from them for that reason, for a lot of people they were fine. 25ms is probably actually an above average ping these days for most people to servers in London, so depending on their setup, this could really work.
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Yeah, but that's 25ms one way. If you consider your key inputs would need to be sent to the server first and then the game needs to respond to you accordingly, that's actually double the latency.
 
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