Onlive: on demand gaming

[Allegedman]

okay apparently there's a new On-Demand system coming this winter.

It's called Onlive (http://www.onlive.com/)

If you ever messed around with on demand systems like comcast on demand or directtv on Demand, then you'll get this if not then i dunno.

Onlive is setup for any tv, pc, or mac to play any game anywhere anytime, on demand.

a few years ago, something else came along and said they wold do the same thing. this was called The Phantom (http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/141/phantom1.jpg) which turned out that nobody took it seriously and it ended up flopping because of marketing and hardware problems.

I think onlive will go the same route as the phantom

[DreadZer0]

3 reasons it won't work:

You need to have a good internet connection to play. Fine if you're in the US, but in the UK...

It's going to be open to hacking.

It'll kill all the good small developers, leaving us with an Activision-EA wasteland.

[Dajmin]

apparently it only requires a 1.5Mbps connection to work, and most of the UK now has access to way more than that. I, for example, average around 12 :)
They say it's not supposed to need that much more than running a HD video.

If it works and is genuine then I can see it being really successful. Not needing to upgrade a PC every few months? I'd be all for that.

Hacking it could be a challege though - if no data is stored locally it could be a nightmare to actually modify it.

I think the market and the major labels will stifle it though. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo aren't going to be happy that one box that plays any games from any platform with no real hardware requirements.

Also, the server charges will be utterly enormous. Imagine trying to host that amount of data transfer. Control updates one way, streaming EVERYTHING the other. That's a shedload of data and they'll need to serious hardware to keep that up. They're claiming it'll be a similar subscription to Xbox Live, but I can't see them sticking to that for long.

[DreadZer0]

apparently it only requires a 1.5Mbps connection to work, and most of the UK now has access to way more than that. I, for example, average around 12 :)

They say it's not supposed to need that much more than running a HD video.


Yeah, seeing as i struggle with 1 SD youtube video on my network, i can see me sticking with my 360 for a while...

And according to BT, my exchange is updating to 21st century broadband in april. Is that good?

[gcountach]

It's an interesting idea, but anything that's too good to be true probably is.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/26/eurogamer-on-why-onlive-is-unlikely-to-work/

I hope they can prove me wrong, but I think it'll either be delayed come winter 2009 til it no longer exists or it'll come out and be so awful the company will go bankrupt. In order for this to work, assuming they have the hardware required, you'd have to have near zero pings to the server so that when you turn the wheel in your in-game car in burnout, the server can instantly do it on their end and send the result back to you. Any higher than say 50ms (which I can't usually ping to any gaming server on my computer), and you'll probably notice a delay in what you do and what is done on the screen.

I'm also wondering how high the pricing will be. The servers needed to do all this aren't cheap... not by a long shot. Having you pay 20 bucks a month, or 240 bucks a year probably won't cover the costs to replace hardware as it gets older. A new computer that can run these games can be built starting at about 800 dollars, so if they charge 50-60 a month, people may notice this and just build the entry level PC instead of pay for the service.

Like I said, hope it works though. Allow for a bigger gamer audience and that's never a bad thing.

[[WC]streetrod]

Will be neat but I wont do it because of the monthly pay to play.