OnLive - a new way to play games?

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OnLive - a new way to play games?

Postby Thoul » Tue Mar 24, '09, 9:10 pm

There's an interesting new online gaming service in the works. Called OnLive, it promises to let users with broadband connections play games that are hosted on the service. The users don't have to download anything; the game is played on the server and video is streamed to the user. Supposedly this would allow users to get new games without the need to upgrade or replace hardware, like we have to do with PCs or consoles every few years.

You can read more about it at IGN: http://pc.ign.com/articles/965/965535p1.html

What do you think, does this have a chance at succeeding? It'll never totally dominate the gaming market, because you know Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony won't be embracing it, but third party developers and publishers already seem to be lining up to jump on board.
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Postby LordShibas » Wed Mar 25, '09, 2:22 pm

I've been seeing this thing all over the place lately. I think it's interesting, but I doubt it will ever come to be. It requires a pretty high bandwidth rate, and the quality of your gaming sessions is based on your broadband connection. I now have a reliable internet connection, but I did not for years, and I could see many people having problems with this. There is also the issue of a bandwidth cap by most internet providers. Someone figured it out in another topic, saying that 3.8 hours of HD gaming per day would put you over a 250GB monthly limit that is imposed by the internet provider.

I know that I usually don't play that much per day, but occasionally on my day off I will do a long gaming binge, and it would be nice to not feel guilty about it.
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Postby Thoul » Wed Mar 25, '09, 3:25 pm

Yeah, I think the connection issue will be their largest stumbling block. They claim to have some new form of video compression that reduces lag to almost nothing, but I find that hard believe.
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Postby LordShibas » Wed Mar 25, '09, 4:20 pm

Thoul wrote: They claim to have some new form of video compression that reduces lag to almost nothing, but I find that hard believe.


Haha, yeah right, definitely hard to believe. It's like this with every new fighting game that comes out with an online service. Prior to the game's release, everyone is talking about how it's "lag free" online play, and everyone is going to love it, then they all turn into unplayable messes online.
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Postby Wolf Bird » Wed Mar 25, '09, 8:14 pm

LordShibas wrote:It's like this with every new fighting game that comes out with an online service. Prior to the game's release, everyone is talking about how it's "lag free" online play, and everyone is going to love it, then they all turn into unplayable messes online.


Smash Bros Brawl = one of many cases in point. I STILL can't even pull off a successful PK Thunder recovery with Ness much of the time playing online due to lag, and they've had a long time to try and improve this. :grumpy: The lag on that is quirky...sometimes it's awful and other times it's not there at ALL. I'd just like some consistency. Weird since I've heard Mario Kart Wii's online control lag isn't that bad. Granted, that's not a fighting game, but still...
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Postby Thoul » Wed Mar 25, '09, 9:57 pm

The OnLive service is now taking signups for beta testing that will start in the summer. They say you need to be at least 18, based in the US and have a broadband-connected PC running Windows Vista®/XP®, or an Intel®-based Mac.

Sign ups are here: http://www.onlive.com/beta_program.html
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Postby Celeith » Wed Mar 25, '09, 10:23 pm

Heh I saw this earlier today and I signed up to be a beta tester. Although this thing doesn't seem like its going to work to well other then those with extremely good connection
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Postby LordShibas » Thu Mar 26, '09, 11:57 am

I just saw a video of the demo on ign. Here's the link:

http://pc.ign.com/dor/articles/965599/g ... ld_pc.html

It's Crysis running on a less than stellar laptop. However, it's probably streaming from a local server backstage.
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Re: OnLive - a new way to play games?

Postby Thoul » Sun Apr 5, '09, 7:02 pm

Yeah, I'm a bit wary of that demo because we can't see where the server running the game was located. If it was backstage, that's not very impressive.

Here's a couple of interesting follow up articles. BBC News has an interview with the founder. It has some really interesting claims about the technology. Among other things, it says the video seen by the player is not perfect and may have little glitches here and there. Also, it looks like they're planning to have servers in several locations to help reduce lag.

This editorial attempts to debunk some of the claims may in the BBC News article.
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