OnLive goes live on June 17 for PCs and Macs

[v8envy]

Plus the ps3 is a very nice upscaling blu-ray DVD player, the 360 a passable dvd player. Both consoles are usable as media extenders and come with controllers. Really, the value proposition here is extremely low. While I *could* have simply attached an older machine to my upstairs TV and used OnLive I jumped all over a $100 xbox360 instead. If I get tired of it I just sell it. Can't do that w/ onlive.

Laptop owners who aren't currently gamers, have an aversion to consoles yet don't mind low resolution and settings, are not concerned with value and are on incredibly thick, unmetered internet pipes are the target market. I'm pretty sure none of us are candidates. I'm almost sure very few people on this planet are, in fact.

That said, for free it's not a terrible way to check out demos. I wouldn't be surprised if the cost structure for OnLive is changed to at least one free rental a month, and soon.

 

[Winterpool]

[Mmm, can't remember last time I posted in the Gaming forum... take what follows with appropriate serving of your favourite sea salt]

Farhad Manjoo has reviewed the service for Slate. He's not Anand, but he is very influential with the general educated middle-class reader, though a step down from the likes of David Pogue. Like most of us, he was a sceptic, and then he tried it on some of his systems (including a basic white MacBook) and was extremely impressed. Note he does have a 20 Mbps cable connexion.

Like many Greater Powers of the Intarweb, OnLive tries to host servers locally, as close as possible to end users in order to reduce lag/latency. Manjoo does wonder whether the infrastructure investment makes profitability problematic.

Obviously this service is not directed at the likes of us AnandTech geeks, or even serious console gamers. On the other hand, I could see many casual gamers considering the service, especially once they see it demonstrated at a friend's home. It might be possible to do some gaming from an office computer, if your workplace has a fat enough pipe (and less vigilant IT)!

Regardless of whether this sort of thing is feasible now, I think it's silly to presume that it won't be plausible to push gaming horsepower into the cloud some day. Eventually lag will be reduced until it's not an issue for all but the twitchiest of twitch-gamers. The biggest problem I foresee, like many of you, is in fact the ISPs themselves and their bandwidth limits.

Edited: We're geeks; we more than anybody should be aware of the potential of disruptive technologies. Everyone from nVidia to Electronic Arts should consider the potentially massive disruption here. I might even invest in this service (or a similar one) when they go public.

 

[taltamir]

btw, if laptop users are the target audience, what about the fact most laptops are on wirelss and wireless adds a whole lot to the already bad latency?

 

[quadomatic]

buying a real video card or an entire console. Both the xbox360 and the PS3 are affordable enough today that they are a much better deal than onLive is. Amazon is now selling xbox360 for 150$ and free shipping. divide by 15$/month and you get that it breaks even compared to onlive after 10 months. Add in the issues with latency, no second hand market (both buying and selling... I bought my copy of fable2 for xbox360 for 20$ used), and all the other plethora of issues we mentioned and the xbox is a far better deal. So is the PS3.

That doesn't really solve the problem for people who have laptops and don't want to play games on a console or a desktop. You cannot argue against the fact that OnLive certainly does offer a lot of stuff that other products don't:

OnLive allows you to play top notch games on whatever hardware you want (pretty much). You can tell people to buy 360s, PS3s or video cards all they want - that's not a solution to allow people to play a game like Crysis on a laptop with an old Core 2 Duo and an Intel GMA x3100...but OnLive is.

Also, OnLive makes operating systems irrelevant. Mac users (and Linux users if they decide to support it...) can play the same games that Windows users play.

I happen to have a XPS M1330 running Ubuntu. It really isn't capable of playing games since it only has an Intel X3100 gfx chipset, and even more so because I run Linux. But, when on my college campus (which is most of the year), I have a 100MB internet connection.

I imagine this is a common situation for a fair number of people: crappy laptop, fast internet connection at school or work...or even home. OnLive could be very nice for them...

I'm probably not the target market of this sort of a service. I like to own my own games, and despite what some of you may believe, my PC is fully capable of playing new games with 4xAA (one of the benefits of not having a 1080P monitor I suppose). So, I don't need OnLive. But I don't hate it, and I'll consider it in the future, should my computer not receive more upgrades.

Winterpool: I'll be keeping an eye out for the IPO as well. I may hate Apple with a passion, but their stock still gives me a respectable return.

BTW: The service is $5 a month, not $15. But yeah...games aren't cheap:

For instance, the first-person shooter game Borderlands goes for $6 for three days of access, $9 for five days of access, and $30 for full access, which entitles you to play the game for as long as it is available on OnLive (at least until June 17, 2013, the game informs you).

 

[taltamir]

That doesn't really solve the problem for people who have laptops and don't want to play games on a console or a desktop.

I don't see the problem... what do you mean they don't WANT to play games on anything but the laptop, are they brain damaged? Who the hell is this target demographic that owns a desktop with crappy IGP and demands it play games while absolutely refuses to run games on any other platform even if buying a whole new system to run those games are cheaper!

Only reason to limit yourself to laptop only gaming is because you:
1. Need a laptop
2. Don't have the money to buy anything else
3. Get it cheaper on the laptop then buying a secondary system for games only.

You cannot argue against the fact that OnLive certainly does offer a lot of stuff that other products don't:

It offers a lot of DRAWBACKS others don't, it doesn't offer ANYTHING worthwhile that others don't.

Also, OnLive makes operating systems irrelevant. Mac users (and Linux users if they decide to support it...) can play the same games that Windows users play.

Or they could dual boot windows or they could get a console... both of which are cheaper and far superior prospects all around.
Also, according to their website onlive supports Mac and Windows, no linux support exists.
Windows users don't need it, mac users should run bootcamp.

I'm probably not the target market of this sort of a service. I like to own my own games, and despite what some of you may believe, my PC is fully capable of playing new games with 4xAA (one of the benefits of not having a 1080P monitor I suppose). So, I don't need OnLive. But I don't hate it, and I'll consider it in the future, should my computer not receive more upgrades.

You are as close as humanly possible to the target audience. You just refuse to buy it because you like to own your games. If even you, who runs ubuntu on an old laptop with a fast internet connection who doesn't care about latency and refuse to buy a console even if it is CHEAPER than onlive don't want to buy onLive because of its draconian policies on ownership then why do you insist on thinking anyone else would?
Well, ok, closest would be a Mac user who refuses to bootcamp. As an ubuntu user your OS is unsupported.

PS. do you honestly think your school will let you drink up so much bandwidth on playing compressed games? HAHAHAHA!

 

[quadomatic]

Or they could dual boot windows or they could get a console... both of which are cheaper and far superior prospects all around.
Also, according to their website onlive supports Mac and Windows, no linux support exists.
Windows users don't need it, mac users should run bootcamp.

I don't know if you've heard, but dual-booting is annoying as hell. I hate having to reboot my OS just to play a game for 30 minutes to an hour. A lot of people pay for Cedega for this precise reason...I feel like many of those people would rather pay $60 a year for OnLive instead of $50 a year for Cedega. And yes, I do realize that my assumptions are based on the idea that OnLive support for Linux would come, and there are no guarantees of that.

You are as close as humanly possible to the target audience. You just refuse to buy it because you like to own your games. If even you, who runs ubuntu on an old laptop with a fast internet connection who doesn't care about latency

I'm about as far from the primary audience as is humanly possible. My primary computer isn't my laptop, check my sig. My desktop is plenty powerful, it runs Windows 7, I buy games on Steam, D2D, and physical media occasionally, my home connection is on AT&T ADSL, and my college limits bandwidth to 3GB per day (I provided the college example previously because I imagine most other campuses don't provide strict limits like that).

and refuse to buy a console even if it is CHEAPER than onlive

How is a console cheaper? It's $300 for an XBOX 360. Then there's the expense for a $100 wireless adapter, $50 for XBOX Live, and $60 per game after that.

If one paid $60 a year for OnLive's service, compared to buying just a 360 and Live, you would have $290 left over (probably more considering taxes) to buy games. Console gaming isn't looking like such a hot offer anymore.

 

[taltamir]

How is a console cheaper? It's $300 for an XBOX 360. Then there's the expense for a $100 wireless adapter, $50 for XBOX Live, and $60 per game after that.

If one paid $60 a year for OnLive's service, compared to buying just a 360 and Live, you would have $290 left over (probably more considering taxes) to buy games. Console gaming isn't looking like such a hot offer anymore.

Xbox 360 is now on sale in amazon for 150$, from a non sale price of 180$. not 300$.
And last I checked onlive was 15$/mo, not 60$/year. where is the 60/year deal?

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Cliff's Notes:
Service costs more than regular gaming
Service runs at resolutions we were gaming at in 2000
Service has noticeable input lag
Service uses an absurd amount of bandwidth

What are the upsides again?

 

[taltamir]

Cliff's Notes:
Service costs more than regular gaming
Service runs at resolutions we were gaming at in 2000
Service has noticeable input lag
Service uses an absurd amount of bandwidth

What are the upsides again?

service is impossible to pirate, sell/buy second hand, use mods, etc, thereforce you can expect it to have exclusives as soon as it proves to even marginally work.
The current service as it is today isn't actually meant for people to buy to play games with. It is meant as a tech demo to convince companies its workable to convince companies to make exclusive games for it; because there is no low they wouldn't sink to in order to kill the second hand market.

 

[quadomatic]

Xbox 360 is now on sale in amazon for 150$, from a non sale price of 180$. not 300$.
And last I checked onlive was 15$/mo, not 60$/year. where is the 60/year deal?

It doesn't look like it's $15/mo. I know that was the original announcement, but OnLive is listing it as $5 a month.

 

[taltamir]

It doesn't look like it's $15/mo. I know that was the original announcement, but OnLive is listing it as $5 a month.

that is an amazingly better price. It is literally 1/3 the price, huge improvement.
looking at the website though I see that you can't just pay them money and play. Right now you sign up and they might invite you to get 1 year free and 1 year at 5$/mo. with a "thanks to AT&T" plastered over this "offer" and they specifically call it the "founding members program" (this is the only offer they have).

This is from checking their website this very second:
1. How the heck could you call it a launched service if you can't just buy it and have to be invited to participate.
2. This is a promotional offer, and not indicative of final pricing. I doubt the final pricing when it really comes out is "be a founding member and get 1 year free and 1 year @5$ a month, thanks to AT&T if we decide to invite you to join"

link: http://www.onlive.com/signup

 

[Red Storm]

that is an amazingly better price. It is literally 1/3 the price, huge improvement.
looking at the website though I see that you can't just pay them money and play. Right now you sign up and they might invite you to get 1 year free and 1 year at 5$/mo. with a "thanks to AT&T" plastered over this "offer" and they specifically call it the "founding members program" (this is the only offer they have).

This is from checking their website this very second:
1. How the heck could you call it a launched service if you can't just buy it and have to be invited to participate.
2. This is a promotional offer, and not indicative of final pricing. I doubt the final pricing when it really comes out is "be a founding member and get 1 year free and 1 year @5$ a month, thanks to AT&T if we decide to invite you to join"

link: http://www.onlive.com/signup

Yeah, it is a bit weird for them to say they've "launched" and yet you have to sign up for a wait list. I was offered a spot in the program when the beta came to an end, unfortunately I just never got around to signing up at the time.

 

[PingSpike]

What other available offerings are there for someone who has integrated graphics and wants to play new release games?

taltamir pretty much already covered it. This service most closely compares to console systems, not PC games. And when put head to head it loses or barely ties on all metrics.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

I guess it's just me, but I like the idea of being able to play a game anywhere, anytime without a lot of hassle.

Now it won't replace my desktop rig, but could use it for something like an RPG like Baulders Gate.

Play it at home, then at work, on my phone while waiting at the Dr. or on my netbook while traveling. Don't have to worry about save games on each machine or configuring it on each.

Maybe I'm too old and fuddy duddy. 720P isn't the best, but good enough for fiddling around with a $9 rental for a week instead of spending $40.

 

[taltamir]

Now it won't replace my desktop rig, but could use it for something like an RPG like Baulders Gate.

Baldur's gate is an old game with no official support. On my own PC I can play it, using BGTUTU (to two), widescreen mod, improved gfx mods, etc etc.
The inability to play older games and inability to use mods is actually one of its drawbacks of the service.

http://www.usoutpost31.com/easytutu/

And do realize that once this thing is in full swing and has exclusive titles (aka, nobody has the files of the game), then said titles will not be moddable... you play them when they are released and never again, they will literally be lost to annals of time with no hope of recovery.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Baldur's gate is an old game with no official support. On my own PC I can play it, using BGTUTU (to two), widescreen mod, improved gfx mods, etc etc.
The inability to play older games and inability to use mods is actually one of its drawbacks of the service.

http://www.usoutpost31.com/easytutu/

And do realize that once this thing is in full swing and has exclusive titles (aka, nobody has the files of the game), then said titles will not be moddable... you play them when they are released and never again, they will literally be lost to annals of time with no hope of recovery.

Yeah I just threw BG out there as an example.

 

[Slick5150]

I just got my invite from them. I'll fire it up tonight and see how it works.

 

[WraithETC]

I was in the beta and it was certainly playable, but the video quality was very finnicky and usually not good (I have 16 Mbit down speed).

Paying for the service and renting/buying games is too much in my opinion. If the service was free (more like incorporated into the rental/buy costs) it would be more appealing.

A gaming console is still a better choice right now.

Running an MMORPG on OnLive would be interesting if the mmo was also hosted on OnLive's network.

 

[Slick5150]

Well, I fired it up and played for a bit last night. Impressions are that it's an interesting idea, but not ready for primetime. I admit I was a bit startled at first when I clicked on Splinter Cell as I was in the "Steam" mindset thinking ok, it's going to download something to my computer now so I can play it. Well, of course, it just immediately started the game up and I'm reminded that oh yeah, this is just a streaming video feed coming to me.

Anyway, as others have said, lag is the biggest issue. It's not bad, but it's noticeable which makes a game like Splinter Cell hard to play. I'd imagine for slower games, MMOs, strategy games, etc.. it wouldn't be a big deal, but for a shooter game, yeah, it unfortunately is a problem that I'm not sure how they can overcome.

Video quality I actually thought was pretty good. When Sam would be running in the game and the background would be moving quickly there was definitely artifacting going on from their video compression, but overall I was surprised it looked as good as it does.

Its biggest downfall will be the pricing. I just can't see how they can convince people of the value. Yeah, they're giving me a year free of the service, but even with that I can't imagine paying the purchase/rental prices they're asking. Add on top of that the $5/month they'll normally ask just for access to the service, and you're talking a lot of money. I don't see that working.

In any case, really interesting concept that they have working better than I would have thought something like this could work, but still not what it would ultimately need to be in my opinion.

I agree with someone else in this thread that talked about the idea of using their technology on a home network, so that you could have a gaming server somewhere in your house and could stream the gameplay to any computer in your house. You wouldn't have the same lag issues over a home network obviously. That'd be a product I think they could interest people in buying from them.

 

[taltamir]

I agree with someone else in this thread that talked about the idea of using their technology on a home network, so that you could have a gaming server somewhere in your house and could stream the gameplay to any computer in your house. You wouldn't have the same lag issues over a home network obviously. That'd be a product I think they could interest people in buying from them.

This existed for a while now:
http://www.streammygame.com/smg/index.php
http://www.streammygame.com/smg/modules.php?name=Products#Consumer
According to wikipedia it was first released on the 26th of October 2007 as Windows only software. linux supported added in 2008 (and PS3 via linux)

Stream Games over Broadband networks: Members can access and play their games and applications remotely via broadband and new mobile broadband networks and share their games with other members. Your friends can play your games at their house, without installing them, and you can play their games.

Stream Games at Home : Members can access and play their games remotely via their local/home network. You can play high end PC games on an old PC or laptop or even on the PS3 with Linux installed

Record their game-play to video in a format that can be uploaded to YouTube
Broadcast their games so anyone on their network can watch them play

Members also get access to our community services to help them meet other gamers and form gaming groups with tools including forums, chat, search, who's online, private messaging, profiles, avatars and news.

 

[gorcorps]

Got accepted and I installed it, but apparently my connection is too slow for it to even start. Guess I won't be using it...

 

[Crow550]

Where is the advertising for this?

 

[quadomatic]

I got my invite today. Installed and plays just fine. I have a 6 Mbps AT&T ADSL connection, and I'm relatively close to Chicago (30 to 40 miles or so). So, my experience may not be a great representation of OnLive's usefulness to most people. I'd bet that if you're not very close to a major metropolitan area, OnLive isn't for you. At least not yet anyways.

Distance to data centers seems to be more important. One of the developers at Wolfire Games used the slowest Comcast cable connection (1.5 Mbps) with OnLive and had a pretty good experience, but he was also really close to a data center.

Picture quality is about what you would expect. 720p, decent bitrate. Obviously, it's not what you would hope for from your own gaming computer, but it's still quite good.

I spent the full demo period playing FEAR 2. I've only played the FEAR 2 demo, which is quite different from the first 30 minutes of the actual game (which is what demos are in OnLive). The picture quality was consistent through the whole experience. The only "lag" that occurred came up when the game was saving my checkpoints, which is understandable. The game probably wasn't running at maximum settings, but it still looked pretty good.

There's definitely some input lag. Keyboard lag is very minor. Mouse aiming lag is certainly noticeable, but it's very playable and you'd get used to it pretty quick. I found myself enjoying the experience. Of course, I would prefer it running directly on my PC, but if that's not an option, why not?

Prices vary greatly in the service. Games vary from $60 (i.e. Splinter Cell: Conviction), all the way down to $20 (i.e. FEAR 2, UT3). Some games have rental options, some don't.

I think OnLive is off to a good start. At this point, it's certainly no replacement for a high end gaming computer. Once they start streaming in higher resolutions at higher bitrates, I'll probably pay more attention to it. Also, if anything pans out from hopes that OnLive could one day support games that commercially available gaming hardware isn't capable of playing, OnLive could become very attractive.

Of course, I am still VERY wary about the lack of ownership. When you pay for a "unlimited" PayPass, it says it guarantees availability up to some certain point. While I don't believe OnLive would screw customers over, it's always important to take note of. To be fair, Steam could do the same thing.

 

[Soundmanred]

Where is the advertising for this?

To be fair, I've never seen advertising for Steam or anything like that either.
Might start seeing it when (if) it becomes mainstream.

 

[quadomatic]

Wait for the microconsole. There will definitely be advertising for that, and I feel like that's where OnLive will really take off...if they ever put out games like split-screen shooters, I'd consider OnLive for that.