OnLive

[CottonRabbit]

IGN has a pretty interesting article about a start-up developing a service akin to cloud computer for PC gaming. You subscribe to the service ( you can buy or rent games), and you receive a streaming video of the game to your computer or TV while you play it in realtime. The author states that he has played Crysis on a MacBook Air in a demo of this.

GDC 09: OnLive Introduces The Future of Gaming?

Video interview

I'm quite intrigued by the idea, and it's good to see that they actually have a working demo. If it's done right (a big if), it could really revolutionize PC gaming. Complaints about expensive hardware would be gone, and this kind of service would eliminate the possibility of piracy. Of course, I won't be trading in my rig any time soon to deal with additional lag and 720p resolutions. However, if this type of service matures, it could drastically expand the PC gaming market and potentially eliminate the need to even distinguish between the PC and various consoles.

 

[fords8]

Very interesting CR! Yeah it is a big if. Have to keep a eye on this and see where it goes.

 

[skulkingghost]

It all doesn't add up. Technical Reasons:
1. "The current solution only introduces one millisecond of lag to encode the video, which alone is completely unnoticeable to you."
It takes longer than 1 millisecond to read or write from a hard disk...let alone encode 1 frame of 720p video, no way is that possible.

2. How can this be real? Crysis requires a mid to high end computer to run at 720p.
You mean to tell me they are going to have a mid to high end computer playing crysis remotely, encoding video, streaming the video, waiting for your inputs from the controller, sending those inputs to Crysis and then repeat. HA HA HA. Why not just have the USER have a computer that can run Crysis at his house? Because if you think about it...they will have to have MANY servers JUST RUNNING CRYSIS to server anyone that wants to play it. What about the other 1000's of games?

3. Tell me any server (I've seen servers that run in into the millions of dollars) that can play Crysis for MANY people simultaneously. There aren't any. Crysis is heavily GPU dependant and those servers that cost millions of dollars don't have many GPU's...they have many CPU's...which won't cut it for Crysis.

4. How many datacenters that will house all of these server will they have? You will need a server that is located (physically) pretty damn close. Going from coast to coast introduces at least 30 milliseconds of lag. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second and a round trip from los angeles to New York is at least 30 milliseconds, which is not bad, but considering thats ONLY travel time for the data to travel and not time take by the computer to do anything else...it sounds like BS to me. They would need Datacenters all over the United States...which would bring up the cost dramatically.

4. I've never heard of this company...no one has...and its near April 1st.

The quote on the page pretty much sums up what I was going to type, anyone have any insight on how this is possible?

 

[erwos]

Well, the guys at streammygame.com have this technology already, so the concept is certainly viable in theory. But I tend to agree that lag would seem to be very difficult to overcome in a scenario like what's being described.

I was actually hoping that it could stream from the user's PC, which I would find a lot more helpful.

 

[ShawnD1]

This sounds like a load of BS. Have you ever tried to watch a video through Remote Desktop or Citrix? Even on a 100mb connection it lags like hell. For something like 720p gaming, you're going to need a hell of a lot more bandwidth than 100mb/s.

I hope they prove me wrong and find a way to stream video over a standard ~3mb cable connection.

edit: here's a video of what it looks like when you try to stream motion through a virtual desktop like Remote Desktop or Citrix. Citrix is pretty good for basic stuff like CAD, but it falls apart when you try doing anything moving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RMTM7vaMnI

 

[BD2003]

Even if they could get the video working at a reasonable latency (1ms is bullshit), the input lag would destroy it.

There's already enough lag between most wireless mice and your PC, and some lag between your PC and display. Internet lag is on a whole different scale though - it'll add 50-100 ms, and that will be a deal breaker. It might be fine for some turn based strategy games, or for some really non-discerning gamers, but thats it.

 

[JasonCoder]

Hmm well I doubt these people are using Citrix for the streaming. And the reason Citrix gargles balls for video streaming is because it isn't just streaming the video - it's sending information about the whole session in a format that isn't optimized for high fps. Citrix probably has more optimized setups for special cases but in general it's not ideal for anything like this.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: JasonCoder
Hmm well I doubt these people are using Citrix for the streaming. And the reason Citrix gargles balls for video streaming is because it isn't just streaming the video - it's sending information about the whole session in a format that isn't optimized for high fps. Citrix probably has more optimized setups for special cases but in general it's not ideal for anything like this.

Actually that other information is why Citrix is so much faster than VNC. VNC really is the most basic thing possible - it literally sends you a bunch of pictures. You can even configure what level of jpg compression you want it to use. Sending pictures takes an insane amount of bandwidth, so VNC typically has far worse performance than RDP or Citrix for the amount of bandwidth used.

wiki: ICA
"Key challenges of such an architecture are network latency and performance - a graphically intensive application (as most are when presented using a GUI) being served over a slow or bandwidth-restricted network connection requires considerable compression and optimization to render the application usable by the client. The client machine may be a different platform, and may not have the same GUI routines available locally - in this case the server may need to send the actual bitmap data over the connection. Depending on the client's capabilities, servers may also off-load part of the graphical processing to the client, e.g. to render multi-media content."

The bolded part is what Citrix currently does. Send a bunch of data and have the client render it. It's a lot faster than VNC's approach of sending pictures but still way to slow to be useful for games or even low quality video. Sure you could optimize it in some way, although I'm pretty sure their application server is already heavily optimized.

 

[CottonRabbit]

Their website just opened up today and you can sign up for the beta planned for this summer there.

 

[hans030390]

The live feed of the conference was worth watching. I'm sure it'll be up somewhere to re-watch soon. Also, as brought up above, they plan on having 3 data centers in the US (already 2 built, they said), and each is supposed to operate up to 1000 miles. You can apparently only play with and interact with people using that same data center. The demos they showed seemed to actually do what they claimed it would do...and they said, "You should be (skeptical)", so it may actually be real. Of course, those things could be staged. I guess we'll also have to see how people respond to the demo stations set up at GDC.

At the very worst, it doesn't work, and the early reviews say so. No one buys it, and everything is just as good as before. If anything, it'll get more people thinking and trying to actually do this stuff.

 

[gorcorps]

Signed up for the beta. Would be cool to help it along early.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

Seems too good to be true, but signed up for the beta anyways.

If this actually works, for a reasonable price, and makes PC gaming easy and worry-free (no update-hunting, no isntalling, no game/driver/hardware troubleshooting, no upgrading, just play!), then I'm all for it.

 

[exar333]

Sound's like a great idea, but I am definitely skeptical. I signed-up for the beta too; it would be fun to test this technology out.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Doesn't this sound like that phantom console ripoff from a few years ago? They don't seem to be as scandel ridden though.

 

[hans030390]

Originally posted by: Fanatical Meat
Doesn't this sound like that fantom console ripoff from a few years ago? They don't seem to be as scandel ridden though.

I believe the phantom console had a hard drive where you'd actually download the games onto the console, similar to Steam.

 

[Adam8281]

Originally posted by: hans030390

Originally posted by: Fanatical Meat
Doesn't this sound like that fantom console ripoff from a few years ago? They don't seem to be as scandel ridden though.

I believe the phantom console had a hard drive where you'd actually download the games onto the console, similar to Steam.

Apparently it ain't phantom: Zeebo launches 3G wireless console

 

[ibex333]

Originally posted by: CottonRabbit
IGN has a pretty interesting article about a start-up developing a service akin to cloud computer for PC gaming. You subscribe to the service ( you can buy or rent games), and you receive a streaming video of the game to your computer or TV while you play it in realtime. The author states that he has played Crysis on a MacBook Air in a demo of this.

GDC 09: OnLive Introduces The Future of Gaming?

Video interview

I'm quite intrigued by the idea, and it's good to see that they actually have a working demo. If it's done right (a big if), it could really revolutionize PC gaming. Complaints about expensive hardware would be gone, and this kind of service would eliminate the possibility of piracy. Of course, I won't be trading in my rig any time soon to deal with additional lag and 720p resolutions. However, if this type of service matures, it could drastically expand the PC gaming market and potentially eliminate the need to even distinguish between the PC and various consoles.

I already said it on gamespot, and I'll say it here again. SAY NO TO VIRTUAL COMMUNISM!

How can anyone here say it's an interesting/good/nice idea? There is nothing good about it? Why would you want someone to control how you game? Why would you want that someone to be the only way you can play and obtain certain games? I don't want anyone to stream games to me! I want to have these games on my PC, permanently, and not just through OnLive. Someone might tell me that no one is forcing me to use OnLive, but if enough people start using it, and if enough devs shift to making game for OnLive only, I will be forced to use it whether I like it or not.

Don't know about you, but I want to be free! Free to mod and hack games on MY PC any way I like. Free to obtain them in any way available to me, and not just in a way someone feels I should get em. Free to upgrade my PC whenever I like, and pay money for that upgrade only when I need to!

I'd rather pay $180 for a new video card once a year, and have it play my games at resolutions that are GOOD ENOUGH for me, for that year, and possibly much longer, then pay $15-30 every month, for 12 months for the OnLive subscription.

I DON'T MIND troubleshooting my PC when a game doesn't work, and I feel PROUD when I solve my problems. I LOVE arguing with people on the forum and discuss bugs and glitches in a game. I like hacking, botting, modding, etc.

I don't want someone to "take care" of me, and make my gaming experience "pleasant", "easy" and "user friendly".

With this stupid OnLive gizmo, I have to pay monthly fees to play games, and have a constant internet connection, but every time I upgrade my PC and buy a game, I can play it for as long as I want, online or offline - it's MINE, not only when I pay every month for it, but for all eternity. It's FREE to play as long as I bought it, even if I take it to a friend's house and install it there!

I say, fuck those guys and their OnLive. Let them shove it up their ass. I bet someone who thinks he's real clever is already dreaming of stopping piracy with OnLive.

 

[Barfo]

Originally posted by: ibex333

Originally posted by: CottonRabbit
IGN has a pretty interesting article about a start-up developing a service akin to cloud computer for PC gaming. You subscribe to the service ( you can buy or rent games), and you receive a streaming video of the game to your computer or TV while you play it in realtime. The author states that he has played Crysis on a MacBook Air in a demo of this.

GDC 09: OnLive Introduces The Future of Gaming?

Video interview

I'm quite intrigued by the idea, and it's good to see that they actually have a working demo. If it's done right (a big if), it could really revolutionize PC gaming. Complaints about expensive hardware would be gone, and this kind of service would eliminate the possibility of piracy. Of course, I won't be trading in my rig any time soon to deal with additional lag and 720p resolutions. However, if this type of service matures, it could drastically expand the PC gaming market and potentially eliminate the need to even distinguish between the PC and various consoles.

I already said it on gamespot, and I'll say it here again. SAY NO TO VIRTUAL COMMUNISM!

How can anyone here say it's an interesting/good/nice idea? There is nothing good about it? Why would you want someone to control how you game? Why would you want that someone to be the only way you can play and obtain certain games? I don't want anyone to stream games to me! I want to have these games on my PC, permanently, and not just through OnLive. Someone might tell me that no one is forcing me to use OnLive, but if enough people start using it, and if enough devs shift to making game for OnLive only, I will be forced to use it whether I like it or not.

Don't know about you, but I want to be free! Free to mod and hack games on MY PC any way I like. Free to obtain them in any way available to me, and not just in a way someone feels I should get em. Free to upgrade my PC whenever I like, and pay money for that upgrade only when I need to!

I'd rather pay $180 for a new video card once a year, and have it play my games at resolutions that are GOOD ENOUGH for me, for that year, and possibly much longer, then pay $15-30 every month, for 12 months for the OnLive subscription.

I DON'T MIND troubleshooting my PC when a game doesn't work, and I feel PROUD when I solve my problems. I LOVE arguing with people on the forum and discuss bugs and glitches in a game. I like hacking, botting, modding, etc.

I don't want someone to "take care" of me, and make my gaming experience "pleasant", "easy" and "user friendly".

With this stupid OnLive gizmo, I have to pay monthly fees to play games, and have a constant internet connection, but every time I upgrade my PC and buy a game, I can play it for as long as I want, online or offline - it's MINE, not only when I pay every month for it, but for all eternity. It's FREE to play as long as I bought it, even if I take it to a friend's house and install it there!

I say, fuck those guys and their OnLive. Let them shove it up their ass. I bet someone who thinks he's real clever is already dreaming of stopping piracy with OnLive.

:heart:

 

[Piuc2020]

720p and additional lag doesn't cut it for any kind of serious PC gamer.

To play games on max settings at 1280x720 you don't need any kind of expensive computer (even for Crysis).

Also how will mods be handled? I really don't see ANY way user-made mods could fit in the whole OnLive scheme.

 

[hans030390]

Originally posted by: ibex333

Originally posted by: CottonRabbit
IGN has a pretty interesting article about a start-up developing a service akin to cloud computer for PC gaming. You subscribe to the service ( you can buy or rent games), and you receive a streaming video of the game to your computer or TV while you play it in realtime. The author states that he has played Crysis on a MacBook Air in a demo of this.

GDC 09: OnLive Introduces The Future of Gaming?

Video interview

I'm quite intrigued by the idea, and it's good to see that they actually have a working demo. If it's done right (a big if), it could really revolutionize PC gaming. Complaints about expensive hardware would be gone, and this kind of service would eliminate the possibility of piracy. Of course, I won't be trading in my rig any time soon to deal with additional lag and 720p resolutions. However, if this type of service matures, it could drastically expand the PC gaming market and potentially eliminate the need to even distinguish between the PC and various consoles.

I already said it on gamespot, and I'll say it here again. SAY NO TO VIRTUAL COMMUNISM!

How can anyone here say it's an interesting/good/nice idea? There is nothing good about it? Why would you want someone to control how you game? Why would you want that someone to be the only way you can play and obtain certain games? I don't want anyone to stream games to me! I want to have these games on my PC, permanently, and not just through OnLive. Someone might tell me that no one is forcing me to use OnLive, but if enough people start using it, and if enough devs shift to making game for OnLive only, I will be forced to use it whether I like it or not.

Don't know about you, but I want to be free! Free to mod and hack games on MY PC any way I like. Free to obtain them in any way available to me, and not just in a way someone feels I should get em. Free to upgrade my PC whenever I like, and pay money for that upgrade only when I need to!

I'd rather pay $180 for a new video card once a year, and have it play my games at resolutions that are GOOD ENOUGH for me, for that year, and possibly much longer, then pay $15-30 every month, for 12 months for the OnLive subscription.

I DON'T MIND troubleshooting my PC when a game doesn't work, and I feel PROUD when I solve my problems. I LOVE arguing with people on the forum and discuss bugs and glitches in a game. I like hacking, botting, modding, etc.

I don't want someone to "take care" of me, and make my gaming experience "pleasant", "easy" and "user friendly".

With this stupid OnLive gizmo, I have to pay monthly fees to play games, and have a constant internet connection, but every time I upgrade my PC and buy a game, I can play it for as long as I want, online or offline - it's MINE, not only when I pay every month for it, but for all eternity. It's FREE to play as long as I bought it, even if I take it to a friend's house and install it there!

I say, fuck those guys and their OnLive. Let them shove it up their ass. I bet someone who thinks he's real clever is already dreaming of stopping piracy with OnLive.

Wow, it's not like they're taking your personal computer or gaming consoles away. :roll:

 

[CottonRabbit]

Originally posted by: ibex333

I already said it on gamespot, and I'll say it here again. SAY NO TO VIRTUAL COMMUNISM!

How can anyone here say it's an interesting/good/nice idea? There is nothing good about it? Why would you want someone to control how you game? Why would you want that someone to be the only way you can play and obtain certain games? I don't want anyone to stream games to me! I want to have these games on my PC, permanently, and not just through OnLive. Someone might tell me that no one is forcing me to use OnLive, but if enough people start using it, and if enough devs shift to making game for OnLive only, I will be forced to use it whether I like it or not.

Don't know about you, but I want to be free! Free to mod and hack games on MY PC any way I like. Free to obtain them in any way available to me, and not just in a way someone feels I should get em. Free to upgrade my PC whenever I like, and pay money for that upgrade only when I need to!

I'd rather pay $180 for a new video card once a year, and have it play my games at resolutions that are GOOD ENOUGH for me, for that year, and possibly much longer, then pay $15-30 every month, for 12 months for the OnLive subscription.

I DON'T MIND troubleshooting my PC when a game doesn't work, and I feel PROUD when I solve my problems. I LOVE arguing with people on the forum and discuss bugs and glitches in a game. I like hacking, botting, modding, etc.

I don't want someone to "take care" of me, and make my gaming experience "pleasant", "easy" and "user friendly".

With this stupid OnLive gizmo, I have to pay monthly fees to play games, and have a constant internet connection, but every time I upgrade my PC and buy a game, I can play it for as long as I want, online or offline - it's MINE, not only when I pay every month for it, but for all eternity. It's FREE to play as long as I bought it, even if I take it to a friend's house and install it there!

I say, fuck those guys and their OnLive. Let them shove it up their ass. I bet someone who thinks he's real clever is already dreaming of stopping piracy with OnLive.

In their conference yesterday, they said that they're service isn't going to sway hardcore PC gamers. If this works, it will hugely expand the PC gaming population mainly by attracting (a) the many people who even today believe that you need a $3000 PC to run Crysis or (b) people who simply prefer to game in their living room.

I don't want to turn this into a PC gaming is dieing thread, but it's pretty obvious to me that the number of PC oriented game releases are decreasing every year while console gaming increasingly outpaces PC gaming in growth. As an avid PC gamer, I would like to see PC gaming regain some of the spotlight. In a recent poll, the majority of developers voted the iPhone as their favorite platform in 5 years time and as the platform with the most potential. While you and I may like to tinker with their computers, the majority of people just want their games to work, and developers are going to focus their time and money on the majority.

I also highly doubt that services like Steam and retailers will just idly let services like OnLive take over the market.

 

[SamurAchzar]

It all doesn't add up. Technical Reasons:
1. "The current solution only introduces one millisecond of lag to encode the video, which alone is completely unnoticeable to you."
It takes longer than 1 millisecond to read or write from a hard disk...let alone encode 1 frame of 720p video, no way is that possible.

That's not the case if you use massively parallel customized silicon to do so. Most delay in video processing today originates from the algorithms (which need a certain amount of data to operate on), and not from the processing power. They said their algorithms are new, so with the right kind of bespoke hardware, that would be easily possible.

2. How can this be real? Crysis requires a mid to high end computer to run at 720p.
You mean to tell me they are going to have a mid to high end computer playing crysis remotely, encoding video, streaming the video, waiting for your inputs from the controller, sending those inputs to Crysis and then repeat. HA HA HA. Why not just have the USER have a computer that can run Crysis at his house? Because if you think about it...they will have to have MANY servers JUST RUNNING CRYSIS to server anyone that wants to play it. What about the other 1000's of games?

3. Tell me any server (I've seen servers that run in into the millions of dollars) that can play Crysis for MANY people simultaneously. There aren't any. Crysis is heavily GPU dependant and those servers that cost millions of dollars don't have many GPU's...they have many CPU's...which won't cut it for Crysis.

Easy - I'll be willing to bet they use some kind of Virtualization on their servers, which changes everything. That explains how they are able to pause/resume games also, or how normal games run on this very non-standard hardware. Every user is hooked up with a VM running somewhere on the cloud.
With such usage, central computing becomes so much more efficient than end-user computing. You have a giant pool of resources which you use according to demand.

 

[SamurAchzar]

Originally posted by: CottonRabbit

Originally posted by: ibex333

I already said it on gamespot, and I'll say it here again. SAY NO TO VIRTUAL COMMUNISM!

How can anyone here say it's an interesting/good/nice idea? There is nothing good about it? Why would you want someone to control how you game? Why would you want that someone to be the only way you can play and obtain certain games? I don't want anyone to stream games to me! I want to have these games on my PC, permanently, and not just through OnLive. Someone might tell me that no one is forcing me to use OnLive, but if enough people start using it, and if enough devs shift to making game for OnLive only, I will be forced to use it whether I like it or not.

Don't know about you, but I want to be free! Free to mod and hack games on MY PC any way I like. Free to obtain them in any way available to me, and not just in a way someone feels I should get em. Free to upgrade my PC whenever I like, and pay money for that upgrade only when I need to!

I'd rather pay $180 for a new video card once a year, and have it play my games at resolutions that are GOOD ENOUGH for me, for that year, and possibly much longer, then pay $15-30 every month, for 12 months for the OnLive subscription.

I DON'T MIND troubleshooting my PC when a game doesn't work, and I feel PROUD when I solve my problems. I LOVE arguing with people on the forum and discuss bugs and glitches in a game. I like hacking, botting, modding, etc.

I don't want someone to "take care" of me, and make my gaming experience "pleasant", "easy" and "user friendly".

With this stupid OnLive gizmo, I have to pay monthly fees to play games, and have a constant internet connection, but every time I upgrade my PC and buy a game, I can play it for as long as I want, online or offline - it's MINE, not only when I pay every month for it, but for all eternity. It's FREE to play as long as I bought it, even if I take it to a friend's house and install it there!

I say, fuck those guys and their OnLive. Let them shove it up their ass. I bet someone who thinks he's real clever is already dreaming of stopping piracy with OnLive.

In their conference yesterday, they said that they're service isn't going to sway hardcore PC gamers. If this works, it will hugely expand the PC gaming population mainly by attracting (a) the many people who even today believe that you need a $3000 PC to run Crysis or (b) people who simply prefer to game in their living room.

I don't want to turn this into a PC gaming is dieing thread, but it's pretty obvious to me that the number of PC oriented game releases are decreasing every year while console gaming increasingly outpaces PC gaming in growth. As an avid PC gamer, I would like to see PC gaming regain some of the spotlight. In a recent poll, the majority of developers voted the iPhone as their favorite platform in 5 years time and as the platform with the most potential. While you and I may like to tinker with their computers, the majority of people just want their games to work, and developers are going to focus their time and money on the majority.

I also highly doubt that services like Steam and retailers will just idly let services like OnLive take over the market.

If it works, it WILL be the end of PC gaming as we know it. Hardcore gamers are what, 10% of the users at an utopian world? Try 2%. No one is going to develop graphics cards or titles for those, especially not when the costs are escalating every year (for both hardware and software development).
It's like everyone started using trains exclusively, and GM would say it doesn't matter because some guys will still buy Corvettes. Without mainstream customer base to sponsor this R&D, the market will collapse.

If it works - and I have every reason to believe it does - you're witnessing history. This will spell doom for the companies, possibly stagnate PC hardware development altogether and give a huge boost to mobile platform gaming. Sad but inevitable.

Between this, IT Virtualization and enhanced web based apps, very little will be left for the traditional PC in the not very distant future.

 

[CottonRabbit]

Originally posted by: SamurAchzar
If it works, it WILL be the end of PC gaming as we know it. Hardcore gamers are what, 10% of the users at an utopian world? Try 2%. No one is going to develop graphics cards or titles for those, especially not when the costs are escalating every year (for both hardware and software development).
It's like everyone started using trains exclusively, and GM would say it doesn't matter because some guys will still buy Corvettes. Without mainstream customer base to sponsor this R&D, the market will collapse.

If it works - and I have every reason to believe it does - you're witnessing history. This will spell doom for the companies, possibly stagnate PC hardware development altogether and give a huge boost to mobile platform gaming. Sad but inevitable.

Between this, IT Virtualization and enhanced web based apps, very little will be left for the traditional PC in the not very distant future.

In the foreseeable future, its not going to work well enough to displace the entire PC gaming market. Currently, at best, the developers of OnLive state that this will work to a maximum of 1,500 miles before limitations in the internet connections and the speed of light make the input feel laggy. You also have to deal with video compression issues and resolutions limits. This service has much more appeal to semi-casual PC gamers or non-PC gamers than to the current population PC gamers.

I would argue that this will do very little in terms of siphoning away the consumers that are currently supporting the development of high end PC hardware. People with the know how will continue to buy PC parts for their own machines to enjoy customizable gaming, and people with the extra money will continue to splurge on Alienware for bragging rights to an "elite" PC gaming experience. Besides that, the owners of cloud gaming services will become a new major customer for hardware manufacturers and drive R&D. I'm sure potential OnLive competitors would love to claim that they have superior hardware.

 

[MasterTactician]

I had always dreamed of this concept, but just assumed that the latency issues alone would never allow it to happen. Wrong.


So, giving them the benefit of the doubt about latency, which was obviously the first problem that came to their minds SEVEN YEARS ago when they started this, consider the potential of this complete bombshell to the gaming world. If this service works, it has effectively leapfrogged the whole concept of digital distribution that is just starting to take shape in the form of Steam, and to a lesser extent Live and PSN, and moved straight to streamed content via cloud computing. think of the possibilities:

First the disadvantages:
1) Lag - even with the best server-side network, the "last mile" of connections to the consumer household will still introduce significant latency. This may not be enough to diminish the experience for those with mid to high end connections, but the effects will be felt on older or more remote connections until they are upgraded by their ISP.

2) 720p with heavy compression. Even if the compression artifacts are dealt with, 720p is quite a downgrade for those of us sporting 24-30" panels with 2-4x that resolution. Fortunately, as bandwidth improves, there's no reason the service can scale to 1080p or higher.

3) Price. Will a monthly fee really be a better deal in the long run than a console (if not a PC)? Will games drop in price over time as fast or as much as they do in retail? Likely not.

4) Mods, physical media, messing with config files, reselling games etc.. No reason (popular) mods couldn't be supported, but it would likely never reach the level of customization that you get on PCs. The rest are history.

5) Server load. Assuming they have no trouble handling average numbers of users on a daily basis, how will they handle times like major game releases, when everyone is hitting the servers at once. For games like Crysis, it is 1 user per server, and they obviously will not be able to provide that for everyone at once and call themselves a business. So what will it be. Long waiting ques on and after releases? Pay more for early access?

6) Video and voice chat. Will there be a unified system for this across all games? Seems like once ingame, interfaces were left pretty much up to the developers from the demo. Are there even enough ports on the TV box for a camera and controllers?

7) Offline play. ...duh.



Now, for the advantages, and some speculation on what this could make possible:



1) Short term: Better PC game development. All the games running on onlive are PC games. If this service takes off, PC development will boom like crazy. Unless developers decide to develop exclusively for onlive, PC games will likely be released alongside onlive games, with better optimization and use of current hardware.

2) Unimaginable graphics. Games are not currently designed to use every last core of a GTX 285. If developers are suddenly given a platform that has a single, bleeding edge configuration, they can optimize or even design games for it. Imagine a game designed from the ground up for a 285, like they are for console hardware, with every last possible ounce of power utilized? PC gamers with similar hardware to that used in the onlive servers (mid-high end spec PCs with a special video compression card) will benefit hugely from this.

3) MMOs and their derivatives: MMOFPS etc... All of the high bandwidth interaction is occurring between servers located mere feet away from each other, over GBit+ links. Imagine the types of MMOs this allows for. No longer does it matter how many people are on a server. Each player is merely sending their controller input and receiving a video stream. More players does NOT equal more bandwidth to OR from the end user. Only more processing power and bandwidth between SERVERS, where there is plenty to go around. Imagine an MMOFPS with THOUSANDS of players on maps hundreds of times larger than the biggest Battlefield maps. Memory, processing, it all matters very little now. There's no need to design a game for min spec for onlive, so the if a map requires a min 8GB of ram - no problem!

4) Your profile...anywhere. Like Steam, but now on your HDTV as well. But far better. From the demo: you could PAUSE a game at home on your TV, go to work, and resume it from its exact state on a whole different platform anywhere in the country instantly. Without even having to load a save file. Amazing.

5) Small developers - can publish a game straight to the service without a publisher or retail presence and immediately have access to millions of people. Like PSN or Live Arcade, but bigger and potentially less restrictive, especially for full games.

6) Exclusive titles. Just imagine what a game developed for this platform could do. Imagine a game designed to run at 720p on an i7 920, GTX285, 8GB ram, SSD / enterprise level storage and nearly unlimited bandwidth. Blows current consoles out of the water, and even if a future console was released that could match that performance, the upgradeability of onlive would ensure that that would not last for long, certainly less than a 5-year console cycle.

7) Movie distribution etc... Finally the right device for media digital distribution? Depending on licensing and studios, it very well could be.




I can not imagine what's going through the minds of Sony and MS execs. They must have shat a collective brick. Or 10. Nintendo is safe for now with their unique gameplay, first party titles and interface, but what's to say they just release another controller (or allow third party controllers) for onlive? Gamepad, mouse and keyboard are already supported - even on the TV unit. After all, the only thing unique about the Wii's hardware is the controller. It already can be made to work on the PC. Just a matter of time...

I doubt that Onlive will be an immediate death blow to its competition at launch. But 3 years out... 5 years? If the current Big 3 don't react quickly, lets just say that the next generation of consoles that have to go up against this thing are in for the fight of their lives. I have never before been so excited at the future of the gaming industry. Even if it isn't immediately successful, Onlive has begun a revolution that will change the way we play our games forever... Assuming it's not another Phantom.