OnLive now FREE and WORKS in the UK!

It's all well and good having this service, but on Virgin Media broadband I'd get about half-an-hour's use before my connection was throttled so low the service would be unusable.

It won't take off unless ISP's offer the service separate from bandwidth caps and traffic management.
 
Xilo connection here and appears to be working fine.. played 30min demo of Batman Arkham and seemed very playable. There was a hint of lag, but actually quite hard to notice. Not sure ill use the service much past this test though.. (aint got time for games :) )
 
RoyMi6 said:
Of course, this means you are constantly downloading... People have investigated and found that you download about 1.6GB every 30 minutes while playing a game.
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Nasty - that's more than the real-world throughput of an 8mbit ADSL MAX line (7150kbit IP profile), meaning that if you don't live in an ADSL2+/LLU/Cable area, you're screwed.

They absolutely have a market here, it just isn't us. It's for the people who don't care/understand about input lag etc. Those without PCs and game consoles. They don't have to spend a penny on hardware, or know anything about anything
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The issue is that the market in question (really casual users who maybe don't have a PC or games console) are much less likely to have a high quality internet connection than hardcore geeks like us.
 
It won't let me connect, I just get the 'high latency' message and it won't let me proceed.

VM 50mb connection and I get low pings all the time.

Tried loads of times, still no go. Awesome.
 
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looks like i have already signed up for this, must have done it a long time ago :)

downloading now...

EDIT: FAIL: high latacy error

EDIT2: PLAN B, is it possible to turn my pc into a cloud gaming server, steaming over high-speed LAN? if so i may be tempted to get a laptop :D
 
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There seems to have been an update released which adds a continue button even though it says your latency is too high. Just a heads up.

It might just be me though, correct me if im wrong.
 
Tizzer said:
There seems to have been an update released which adds a continue button even though it says your latency is too high. Just a heads up.

It might just be me though, correct me if im wrong.
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After the update i still only have the exit option.

EDIT: after a few tries it seems to be working now, the update must have raised the maximum latency.
 
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Lyon85 said:
They have demoed OnLive streaming Borderlands at full speed on an ipad. It really doesn't take that much to decode the format. I don't think Xbox is the correct vehicle though, it already does what onlive does without half the drawbacks.

They absolutely have a market here, it just isn't us. It's for the people who don't care/understand about input lag etc. Those without PCs and game consoles. They don't have to spend a penny on hardware, or know anything about anything. It just works on anything with a net connection. The only issue is the ISP one as far as I am concerned.
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Working on the ipad is pretty impressive.

I wouldn't be surprised with the possibility that we could see something like this popping up in the xbox (or PS) corner. We're beginning to see the end of the xbox's hardware life (compared to PC performance) and depending what the running costs of an Onlive type service is compared to the development and manufacturing costs of a new console is, it may make sense.

They've already got 18million xboxs sold in the US of which a large amount of them (any with a hard drive) could be easily patched to use an onlive service that could be advertised with enabling 'next gen graphics' on your old console at no cost (:rolleyes:) to the consumer. The home consoles already only render at 720p or less for the vast majority of games, so theres no resolution step down in using an onlive type service but all other graphical features would/could be a big step up from standard console capabilities.

Live already gives them the framework for doing something like that, and has proved that people will pay for average online services and the success (its been relatively popular hasn't it?) in things like brining netflix streaming to the 360 in the US isn't exactly a stones throw difference away from game streaming.

EDIT: Short version, Mircosoft already have millions of media boxes in peoples homes that they could 'upgrade' with better graphics/features, a framework of people paying for online services and proven streaming capabilities. So depending on their own costs for running gamestreaming 'onlive' service it wouldn't surprise me that if something similar get announced in next 12-18 months.
 
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Mahnsikir said:
Working on the ipad is pretty impressive.

I wouldn't be surprised with the possibility that we could see something like this popping up in the xbox (or PS) corner. We're beginning to see the end of the xbox's hardware life (compared to PC performance) and depending what the running costs of an Onlive type service is compared to the development and manufacturing costs of a new console is, it may make sense.

They've already got 18million xboxs sold in the US of which a large amount of them (any with a hard drive) could be easily patched to use an onlive service that could be advertised with enabling 'next gen graphics' on your old console at no cost (:rolleyes:) to the consumer. The home consoles already only render at 720p or less for the vast majority of games, so theres no resolution step down in using an onlive type service but all other graphical features would/could be a big step up from standard console capabilities.

Live already gives them the framework for doing something like that, and has proved that people will pay for average online services and the success (its been relatively popular hasn't it?) in things like brining netflix streaming to the 360 in the US isn't exactly a stones throw difference away from game streaming.

EDIT: Short version, Mircosoft already have millions of media boxes in peoples homes that they could 'upgrade' with better graphics/features, a framework of people paying for online services and proven streaming capabilities. So depending on their own costs for running gamestreaming 'onlive' service it wouldn't surprise me that if something similar get announced in next 12-18 months.
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I hadn't really thought about extending the life of the console, it's a good point. Whether or not the console audience want it I would be intrigued to see.

There are probably more hoops to jump through than it sounds though. Microsoft like to be in control of all new content being delivered to the end user (and more importantly, put a price tag on it and take a commission). OnLive would be totally out of their control. It's kinda similar to how Valve are able to implement Steam on the PS3 but not the 360. It would be interesting to see if MS would even be interested.
 
Yeah I doubt microsoft would let a third party control game streaming (video stuff like Netflix and sky player fair enough) but I doubt there's much stopping them from doing it themselves unless onlive have some restriction (I'm pretty clueless in this aspect of law) preventing or at least demanding royalties against another game streaming service.

EDIT: I guess Natal is similar to this, it could be seen partly as a way to extend the core hardware life via the addition of motion control and one that doubt was ever part of the 360s initial development ideas but taken from the success of the wii. Though its more along the lines of attracting the wii type gamer audience rather than properly extending the service life, but it'll have an effect on it.
 
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Just tried it.

Its not bad im sure it will be much better when servers are in the UK.

Does the image quality improve with a better connection? for me right now there is no way it would replace my PC or xbox due to how fuzzy the graphics look. Its quite a step down from even the xbox 360 imo.

It looks like when you first played the 360 in 2005 on a SDTV its got that kinda fuzzyiness about it.
 
Finally able to give it a go now that they have added the continue button and I am very impressed. Sure latency was a little high and the image quality wasn't great but it was still playable even at this early stage.

It really is staggering to think of the techincal hurdles that they needed to jump over to get this running in the polished form that it is.

They also seem to have got a lot of developers on board as most games seem to be slightly customised to fit into on live.

Regarding the image compression people have been mentioning, I remember the CEO stating that one of the key components of the tech was the algorithm/codec they developed to stream. It is highly variable, and dependent on connection speed and latency. So its logical to assume that the faster your connection and the closer your location to an onlive data centre the better the image quality.

Obviously it won't increase above 720p for quite some time, and frankly given their target audience (users who have low resolution laptops, or are only used to the current 720p consoles) it is perfectly adequate.

Its definitely not going to replace my lovely PC, but it is impressive, useful, and very innovative. I think they have answered most of the critics.
 
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