Like someone said already, this Onlive service would be cool for places like hotels and stuff. But the majority of us like to own stuff. Consoles are the way to go.
@Deus-Ex: Stick it to him! I'm so fed up with people dissing Crytek and Crysis. The game is great and runs reasonably well on modern hardware and much better than a lot of other games with less graphical prowess and Crytek themselves have excelled as game developers
@-MasterDex-: Oddly enough, Crysis will run well on my computer at medium settings, and ok on high, as long as there aren't too many explosions or enemies on screen, but the Empire Total War demo just crashes. Crytek's not all that bad.
Okay I'm asking this as an ignorant New Yorker, a place that has very cheap, very fast, and very reliable internet connections with absolutely no monthly limits; Is the average speed of internet connections in this country really that low? Because from where I'm from this service would work in just about every household I know of.
I can understand a lot of the arguments floating around here, but I don't see why most people aren't just excited for the possibility of it working.
I mean, I know you think it probably wont work, but shouldn't you be more excited at the fact that it just might work?
This can and will change everything if it succeeds. Maybe gamers are just too afraid of change and are unwilling to part with there little gaming boxes.
I, for one, look forward to the possibility of saving myself a lot of cash and at the possibility of playing any game I want on my Mac Mini.
@Theoutlet: I actually hope it doesn't succeed because I don't like the model it's pushing. I like owning the games I buy and being able to play them when I want regardless of the state of my connexion. I also don't like paying twice for online (one of the reasons I don't have an Xbox 360).
@Narishma: People on these boards have been heralding that the age of digital distribution is here and that Blu-ray will fail because of it, but when this comes along they start screaming: "DON'T TAKE AWAY MY GAMES!!!".
@Theoutlet: Actually, I think the same people who favor digital distribution over blu-ray probably don't care about hi-def gaming either.
I'm sure it will work to some degree. For some kinds of games I am sure it will work really well. After all as technology progresses, the impact of ever higher quality graphics on your gaming experience saturates. It's just that some people like me would rather have great games AND the best quality graphics.
It's the same thing that happened with iPod and iTunes. You've got the digital distribution and widespread adoption, but you settled for lower quality bandwidth.
Wait or no wait, the whole hype surrounding OnLive is around the potential it presents for future progression of the industry.
Even presenting the idea has influenced ways of thinking and future expectations. Whether it's all talk or not, further down the line this service will be viable, and if (God forbid) the guys at OnLive can't pull it off, another team will.
@Ghetto-Cornetto: OnLive is just SaaS (Software as a service) video games. It's not a revolutionary idea, the revolution would be in the delivery method (magical intertubes) being able to transfer the amount of data necessary in the amount of time necessary.
Most ISP's wouldn't even allow it. They will throttle the hell out of your bandwidth usage. It would be like you are using your broadband connection for datacenter server hosting. It just won't work with most ISPs.
If OnLive was to market their device to LAN centres, I can imagine both the LAN centres and OnLive making a very healthy profit and the LAN centres could use alot of their old hardware to set up a small server farm to act as a cloud, greatly reducing cost.
If it were to play out like this, I could see LAN centres becoming a lot more popular and maybe even the prime location for teenage gamers.
@-MasterDex-: Will never happen in the U.S., transportation opportunities for those that cannot drive are extremely limited unless you're in one of like 10 cities.
The way bandwidth is capped and limited, and oversold by ISPs I doubt this kind of service would by useable by the majority of its potential customers.
He is right. And it will be a lot longer than a few years. You will need a ~12mbps connection for this to work decently. The masses don't have it, and the masses are what pay for the production costs.
@Jim Wade: i don't think connection speed is a problem, most isp's have high speed broadband now, i have 20mbit myself and i live in Ireland, which was shit slow at rolling out broadband.
i'd be more concerned about latency and how many hops the game data will travel across, and the inevitable packet loss (ever play CSS on a bad server which has really bad reg and lots of packet loss/choke? -- well this will be a million times worse :P)
@cyruss: You're with UPC(Chorus/NTL) I take it. Have you ever actually gotten that 20mb when doing a speed test? I haven't. Bleddy rip-off artists!
Anywho, you're right about the latency. It won't matter if you have a fast connection if it's taking 160+ms for a round trip. I imagine packet loss causing terrible artifacts in the stream too which will deter quite a lot of people from using the service.
This was my initial reaction to the tech as well. They'd really have to pull something out of the bag to offer such a service over the current infrastructure we have in the UK.
@Gofthick: No kidding. I can only get 1MB/s (I live out in the sticks) and my cheap-as-chips BT contract caps me at a measly 10GB a month!
Even if I thought that OnLive would work one tenth as well as they're claiming (and I don't), it still wouldn't be a useful service for either myself or a great many others :(
@4nonymo: Word up, if Moore's law keeps on rolling then it's going to take a big jump in internet speeds and bandwidth to catch up with high-end videogames. Right now the standard for PCs seems to be 1920x1200, but for someone playing using a streaming service like this 720p would be good.
By 2011 or 2012 I'd expect the standard resolution on laptops and lower powered computers to be 1920x1200, and 2560x1600 to be more mainstream among gamers, instead of it's current status as the upper echelon. 1080p instead of 720p will be expected by gamers, especially with the next generation of consoles likely to support this on most, if not all, games.
The thing is 1080p is 2.25 times the pixels of 720p. The hardware to render the video can keep up but that's double the internet load. Streaming video is already putting a strain on the tubes (youtube is the bandwidth leader and nearly the majority of all internet traffic, taking up more tubespace than p2p) and ISPs aren't happy about it. A lot of them want to charge per usage for bandwidth, which would quickly increase the cost of streaming games and movies for the end user and the provider. Not to mention that connections just aren't fast and reliable enough.
In the end, it might just be a better deal for consumers to buy the hardware to play games. $400 for a console or graphics card seems like a lot but if it provides a markedly better experience, with smoother gameplay at a better resolution, and avoids subscription costs and bandwidth fees it might not be a bad choice.
I'm sure video-based streaming games could succeed at some point, but maybe not as we're envisioning them, or at least as I am- not as the cutting edge graphics on any machine type of deal. But maybe as a service geared more towards portability- gaming on your netbook, perhaps. If they could provide WoW at a playable framerate and resolution without much lag so that it could be played on any laptop or netbook I'm sure they'd be fairly successful.
And maybe at some point as the world of computing shifts more towards the idea of low-power terminals and a model of cloud computing, as it seems to be doing, then bandwidth will catch up with user expectations. Maybe we'll have consoles whose job is only to stream video from a server bank for us to play. But for now, as tasks like photo storage and email and word processing and other tasks trend towards external computation, these types of high bandwidth jobs may be some of the only things that really require a dedicated machine.
And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Consoles have long proven that a dedicated machine for one function can be successful, and we can export everything else to the cloud. But for now, the infrastructure just isn't there to deal with the growing demand for high quality video entertainment.
@mhlaxp: Moore himself stated a little while back that his law would be coming to an end in the next 10-15 years. Other than that, I agree with pretty much everything you said.
@Frequen-Z: I can easily tell when a game is running at 1280x720 scaled to 1680x1050 compared to a game running at 1680x1050, and that is smaller than 1920x1080. There is considerably more aliasing when scaling 720p, so you'll have to use a higher amount of AA. the textures will be blurry even if they are high resolution, you can only show so much detail at 720p, and scaling them will cause this blurriness. Not to mention, using more AA means more blur, which means more AF is needed.
Of course, 720p isn't bad, but as technology advances and hardware can handle higher and higher resolutions, you bet your ass I'd want to see it at those resolutions.
@supo: Depending on the game, ive played crysis without AA at 1280x720, and ive never saw a single jagged edge in the entire game, the thing is that its not about the amount of detail because its the exact same signal at 16:9, what changes from 1280x720 to 1920x1080 are the amount of pixels, i dont get why people want to run everything on 1920x1080, locked or stable framerate >>>>>>>>>>> ultra high res...
@Sir-Lucius: I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing either. There comes a point where something develops too fast to the point where it implodes on itself.
I agree, what I think is more important than advancing the technology we use is balancing and stabalising the technology we use. If Moore's predictions are correct and his law ceases to be relevant in 10-15 years, it will probably because of a) we will have reached a point where a more powerful processor, etc isn't neccesary or b)the market collapses due to flooding it with unneeded technology. Of course, both could occur together also. I believe the end result will be the same; manufacturing of processors, etc will become more about stability, efficiency and reliance than about power. For now, I'm just hoping I'm not alive when the singularity occurs :P
@TOCATL: @Sir-Lucius: Alot of people don't know anything more about resolution, pixel count, etc than 720p and 1080p = HD and 1080p>720p.
What most people fail to understand is that a resolution of 480p can look as clean and clear as 1080p because it isn't the resolution that matters but the resolution in relation to the size of the screen.
the thing is that its not about the amount of detail because its the exact same signal at 16:9, what changes from 1280x720 to 1920x1080 are the amount of pixels
I need to correct you here. Although your monitor/tv is recieving the same signal at 720p as it is at 1080p, if you're using a 24" monitor/tv and running your game at 720p, you're effectively doubling the pixel size that's outputted to the monitor.
Think of a sheet of rubber with a picture on it. If you and a friend grabbed two corners each and started to pull, the picture would get bigger but it would lose alot of the detail that it had when the rubber wasn't being stretched.
Just to reiterate, it's the resolution in relation to the size of the screen that's important.
@FlagshipFighter: The technology is based on being able to play graphically stunning games on PC's with limited (or no) 3D graphics hardware, but is reliant on having a very high bandwidth and low latency internet connection.
What would that be perfect for?
You guessed it - playing Crysis on your office PC!!!
@FlagshipFighter: Not going to happen. It may be the future for some gamers, but for me, I'd rather own copies of my own games, and buy my own hardware.
@Kaneda: Except it's not really the same. They're offering you access to hardware that goes above and beyond what the typical home user will have. Going back to your analogy, you can stick with that Corolla in your driveway, or rent a Lambo at a comparable price.
I agree with the sentiment that having something tangible in your hands just feels better. But it seems like this streaming/cloud computing trend is being pushed by some seriously big players, like Microsoft and Google. I mean, forget gaming. What if every piece of software you used was based on a server somewhere?
I get the feeling that this is going to be here sooner than later, and here to stay.
@SmilingPolitely: Cloud-computing is already here and has been for a few years. I think however that we're now reaching the point where it begins to become a part of everyones daily life. We're still a few years off yet, I reckon.
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crap, strike through "OBAMA" text didn't work. darn HTML.
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maybe they should have been doing research on graphics hardware instead of clouds :P
04/02/09
I can also run crysis very high at a standard 1280x1024 res at 56 fps.
(both of these games are on my laptop that cost around $1200)
People overestimated how much power/expense you need to run it...
Crytek know graphic hardware wtf are you talking about?
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A) can't afford a console
B) don't care about getting the best resolution and bitrate
C) Don't notice or care about controller lag
Yay progress.
04/02/09
I can understand a lot of the arguments floating around here, but I don't see why most people aren't just excited for the possibility of it working.
I mean, I know you think it probably wont work, but shouldn't you be more excited at the fact that it just might work?
This can and will change everything if it succeeds. Maybe gamers are just too afraid of change and are unwilling to part with there little gaming boxes.
I, for one, look forward to the possibility of saving myself a lot of cash and at the possibility of playing any game I want on my Mac Mini.
04/02/09
04/02/09
They'll still charge you $49.99+ for the game. Yet you only own the right to play it. YOU WILL NOT be able to transfer your rights to another person.
Your brother wants to borrow a copy of _____ forget it.
Comcast see's you wasting lots of bandwidth knowing your addiction, they'll want to charge you an extra $15 a month.
The more I think about Onlive the more is must fail.
04/02/09
They'll still charge you $49.99+ for the game. Yet you only own the right to play it. YOU WILL NOT be able to transfer your rights to another person.
I buy my games for me and don't lend them out or ever take them to a friend's house. Wait, I don't think that's even possible with computer games.
Comcast see's you wasting lots of bandwidth knowing your addiction, they'll want to charge you an extra $15 a month.
I already have a 12mbs connection and if COX does start charging more it will be across the board and not just because I am using OnLive.
I'm starting to think people don't like this project because it prevents them from pirating games and will end up costing them more money.
I've never been one to pirate a game and I hate the idea of throwing money down the toilet every two years to upgrade my computer to play one game.
I really didn't think I'd be in the minority here, but I guess gamers really are afraid of change.
04/02/09
Which is it people?
You can't have it both ways.
04/02/09
I'm sure it will work to some degree. For some kinds of games I am sure it will work really well. After all as technology progresses, the impact of ever higher quality graphics on your gaming experience saturates. It's just that some people like me would rather have great games AND the best quality graphics.
It's the same thing that happened with iPod and iTunes. You've got the digital distribution and widespread adoption, but you settled for lower quality bandwidth.
04/02/09
Even presenting the idea has influenced ways of thinking and future expectations. Whether it's all talk or not, further down the line this service will be viable, and if (God forbid) the guys at OnLive can't pull it off, another team will.
Looking forward to seeing how this develops.
04/02/09
OnLive isn't presenting anything new. They are just the first to claim they have a solution. But really they don't.
04/02/09
New to me I guess.
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If OnLive was to market their device to LAN centres, I can imagine both the LAN centres and OnLive making a very healthy profit and the LAN centres could use alot of their old hardware to set up a small server farm to act as a cloud, greatly reducing cost.
If it were to play out like this, I could see LAN centres becoming a lot more popular and maybe even the prime location for teenage gamers.
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He is right. And it will be a lot longer than a few years. You will need a ~12mbps connection for this to work decently. The masses don't have it, and the masses are what pay for the production costs.
04/02/09
i'd be more concerned about latency and how many hops the game data will travel across, and the inevitable packet loss (ever play CSS on a bad server which has really bad reg and lots of packet loss/choke? -- well this will be a million times worse :P)
04/02/09
Anywho, you're right about the latency. It won't matter if you have a fast connection if it's taking 160+ms for a round trip. I imagine packet loss causing terrible artifacts in the stream too which will deter quite a lot of people from using the service.
04/02/09
04/02/09
Even if I thought that OnLive would work one tenth as well as they're claiming (and I don't), it still wouldn't be a useful service for either myself or a great many others :(
04/02/09
I'm currently in Japan. And apparently OCN set a new upload limit of 20 GB a DAY
and it's not a hard limit either, more like "please, dont go over this or if you do it too much we might call you and ask you to stop again"
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By 2011 or 2012 I'd expect the standard resolution on laptops and lower powered computers to be 1920x1200, and 2560x1600 to be more mainstream among gamers, instead of it's current status as the upper echelon. 1080p instead of 720p will be expected by gamers, especially with the next generation of consoles likely to support this on most, if not all, games.
The thing is 1080p is 2.25 times the pixels of 720p. The hardware to render the video can keep up but that's double the internet load. Streaming video is already putting a strain on the tubes (youtube is the bandwidth leader and nearly the majority of all internet traffic, taking up more tubespace than p2p) and ISPs aren't happy about it. A lot of them want to charge per usage for bandwidth, which would quickly increase the cost of streaming games and movies for the end user and the provider. Not to mention that connections just aren't fast and reliable enough.
In the end, it might just be a better deal for consumers to buy the hardware to play games. $400 for a console or graphics card seems like a lot but if it provides a markedly better experience, with smoother gameplay at a better resolution, and avoids subscription costs and bandwidth fees it might not be a bad choice.
I'm sure video-based streaming games could succeed at some point, but maybe not as we're envisioning them, or at least as I am- not as the cutting edge graphics on any machine type of deal. But maybe as a service geared more towards portability- gaming on your netbook, perhaps. If they could provide WoW at a playable framerate and resolution without much lag so that it could be played on any laptop or netbook I'm sure they'd be fairly successful.
And maybe at some point as the world of computing shifts more towards the idea of low-power terminals and a model of cloud computing, as it seems to be doing, then bandwidth will catch up with user expectations. Maybe we'll have consoles whose job is only to stream video from a server bank for us to play. But for now, as tasks like photo storage and email and word processing and other tasks trend towards external computation, these types of high bandwidth jobs may be some of the only things that really require a dedicated machine.
And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Consoles have long proven that a dedicated machine for one function can be successful, and we can export everything else to the cloud. But for now, the infrastructure just isn't there to deal with the growing demand for high quality video entertainment.
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Of course, 720p isn't bad, but as technology advances and hardware can handle higher and higher resolutions, you bet your ass I'd want to see it at those resolutions.
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I agree, what I think is more important than advancing the technology we use is balancing and stabalising the technology we use. If Moore's predictions are correct and his law ceases to be relevant in 10-15 years, it will probably because of a) we will have reached a point where a more powerful processor, etc isn't neccesary or b)the market collapses due to flooding it with unneeded technology. Of course, both could occur together also. I believe the end result will be the same; manufacturing of processors, etc will become more about stability, efficiency and reliance than about power. For now, I'm just hoping I'm not alive when the singularity occurs :P
@TOCATL: @Sir-Lucius: Alot of people don't know anything more about resolution, pixel count, etc than 720p and 1080p = HD and 1080p>720p.
What most people fail to understand is that a resolution of 480p can look as clean and clear as 1080p because it isn't the resolution that matters but the resolution in relation to the size of the screen.
the thing is that its not about the amount of detail because its the exact same signal at 16:9, what changes from 1280x720 to 1920x1080 are the amount of pixels
I need to correct you here. Although your monitor/tv is recieving the same signal at 720p as it is at 1080p, if you're using a 24" monitor/tv and running your game at 720p, you're effectively doubling the pixel size that's outputted to the monitor.
Think of a sheet of rubber with a picture on it. If you and a friend grabbed two corners each and started to pull, the picture would get bigger but it would lose alot of the detail that it had when the rubber wasn't being stretched.
Just to reiterate, it's the resolution in relation to the size of the screen that's important.
04/02/09
Oh yeah, what now? WHAT NOW?!?!?
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What would that be perfect for?
You guessed it - playing Crysis on your office PC!!!
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04/02/09
There will always be people who prefer not to own a car and only rent a Prius when they need to go to the store.
But there will always be those who prefer to pay more to own a GTR and keep it in their driveway, ready to burn rubber 4-wheel-drive anytime.
Same thing with this streaming business.
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04/02/09
I agree with the sentiment that having something tangible in your hands just feels better. But it seems like this streaming/cloud computing trend is being pushed by some seriously big players, like Microsoft and Google. I mean, forget gaming. What if every piece of software you used was based on a server somewhere?
I get the feeling that this is going to be here sooner than later, and here to stay.
04/02/09