OnLive

Serge 13

Serge 13

Cranium Cat oTO
Orderite
I am too lazy to write anything so:


Wikipedia:

OnLive is an on-demand video game distribution system announced at GDC 09. The service is a gaming equivalent of cloud computing with the game being computed, rendered and stored online. The service was announced to be compatible with any Intel based Mac or Windows PC running XP or Vista and is also able to stream games to the OnLive MicroConsole connected to a television.

It was announced that EA, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Epic, Atari, Codemasters, Warner Bros. and Eidos have signed up to have their games available on the service.The service is currently in closed beta with plans to release at the end of the 2009

Gamespot link: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6206620.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;1

so what do you think about it?
good idea? Bad Idea? Will it succeed? Discuss!
 
"Computed, rendered and stored online"? What? How the hell am I supposed to pirate a game that's stored on some server thousands of kilometers from where I live? I swear, if that shit catches on, I'm going to commit seppuku.
 
i'm pretty sure this will stay with us for a while, at least as a niche market.

still, i doubt this will go truly mainstream anytime soon. our internet connections aren't quite mature enough in most cases and the traffic alone will cost the game distribution system provider a fuckton if they try to use high res textures and a lot of content...
 
Basically your computer would be playing a video streamed from over the net. About 700 MB a hour at the minimum setting. That's just for single player.

Plus there is going to be some real controller lag. Something happen on the server -> video streamed -> Player reacts and move character -> Control information sent -> Server receives player movement -> video streamed -> Player moves on screen.

So yer, you need to be close to the server and need better than 1.5 Mbit connection.
 
strongly depends on what you're playing really.

Fallout, KOTOR, etc would not be adversely effected by the tiny bit of lag.
but FPS? gl with that.

i even imagine that quickpaced RTS games might get frustrating for our Korean friends if they'd implement it in this system.
 
SuAside said:
strongly depends on what you're playing really.

Fallout, KOTOR, etc would not be adversely effected by the tiny bit of lag.
but FPS? gl with that.
Click to expand...

How many companies do you think will expect to make much money with turn-based games, 10-year old ones at that. They'll look to distribute new stuff with lots of gfx candy. So, therefore:

Kilus said:
So yer, you need to be close to the server and need better than 1.5 Mbit connection.
Click to expand...

Pretty much not viable until (if) they invent something faster than optic cable.
 
Hang on, is this based on AMD Fusion Render Cloud? Now that I think about it, this form of service-based gaming does have one substantial benefit for the consumer - low hardware requirements. With this technology, any dolt with a $500 box and broadband Internet connection can play any game imaginable with all the visual bells and whistles normally reserved for high-end machines. And since the render cloud on the server end can be arbitrarily powerful, developers and artists can now more than ever push the limits of graphical complexity. Who knows, we may soon even take our first steps towards photorealistic games.

While I'm at it, won't it be ironic if these server-rendered games achieve such massive acceptance that the whole CPU vs. GPU debate becomes meaningless, with AMD unexpectedly coming out on top of both Intel and NVIDIA? Only time will tell, I guess.
 
I think it'd be more likely that sales plummet all around for hardware manufacturers if this catches on.

Anyway, it's a nice idea, but seems like a long shot.
Probably wont be available in Europe before the apocalypse in 2012 anyway.
 
What's the use besides "limitating piracy" ? I mean is there any advantage for the customers, like, at all ?

Seems not.


Doomed to failure imo.
 
MrBumble said:
What's the use besides "limitating piracy" ? I mean is there any advantage for the customers, like, at all ?
Click to expand...
Didn't I just bring up a pretty substantial advantage?
 
This service sounds interesting. It will be neat to see how hardware companies respond. They seem to be dependent on gaming where games constantly require newer hardware to be bought.
 
Ausdoerrt said:
How many companies do you think will expect to make much money with turn-based games, 10-year old ones at that. They'll look to distribute new stuff with lots of gfx candy.
Click to expand...
it was just two games at random inspired by Kilus' avatar and this forum.

there's plenty of platforms on which this could work. even with the current infrastructure.

of course, if you want a multiplayer FPS with all graphic bells and whistles, you'll need to invest in a lot of high speed & especially low latency connections... this is pretty long term, i think.
 
Ausdoerrt said:
SuAside said:
strongly depends on what you're playing really.

Fallout, KOTOR, etc would not be adversely effected by the tiny bit of lag.
but FPS? gl with that.
Click to expand...

How many companies do you think will expect to make much money with turn-based games, 10-year old ones at that. They'll look to distribute new stuff with lots of gfx candy. So, therefore:

Kilus said:
So yer, you need to be close to the server and need better than 1.5 Mbit connection.
Click to expand...

Pretty much not viable until (if) they invent something faster than optic cable.
Click to expand...
http://www.thelocal.se/10810/20080331/
This is a little faster. So the technology is there, but far far away.
 
If this thing will become popular, the irony is, there will probably be some new race for broadband speed, instead of the current intel and nvidia vs amd.
 
M-26-7 said:
http://www.thelocal.se/10810/20080331/
This is a little faster. So the technology is there, but far far away.
Click to expand...
you don't even need faster than optic cable tbfh.

low latency 100/100mbps full duplex should be enough to do quite a bit of pre-processing and such off site.

you of course have to change how we think about processing. stuff like enemy AI could be shipped off entirely to off site, whereas the last stages of actual processing of the image for instance would have to be done locally.

(of course, this is then no longer the 'streaming video' principle)
 
If they aren't joking about the capabilities and resources they have uncovered, I am truly scared. If OnLive has the ability to create this amount of processing power, then someone else "The U.S. government, ect." has technology from fucking Mars and isn't telling anyone.


Spy satellites that can monitor the entire earth at once down to the size of a cockroach and see through walls, and have supercomputers that process the information to see objects like weapons, drugs, porn, and hear conversations, and flag anything relative to the Echelon project of the 1980's. If OnLive is possible, this is child's play for military R&D.

And why hasn't anyone cured cancer yet? DNA decoding of individuals would take seconds since the genome is already mapped. What about 3D GUIs? Why aren't these things surfacing up?

So it's either,

1.OnLive is full of shit and will fuck up the economy with it's lies. The future is scary.

2.OnLive discovered new computing techniques in a garage by themselves and the future is scary.

3.Someone else has already discovered these techniques and OnLive is the first to monopolize them. The future is scary.

4.It's a giant conspiracy and will end in a government controlled nihilistic distopia with the loss of free flowing information that the internet and personal computers have given us in the 20th century, and we should all commit suicide now, or become a cyborg and mow down the middle and lower class with miniguns for profit.
 
one big question remains for me:

How is it possible that a single computer can handle many players at once?
i mean okay...let's say that they have 1000 PC's...still there will be a lot of gamers that want to play a game such as Crysis for example. How can a single PC handle 2 or 3 or even more players at once?
 
Serge 13 said:
one big question remains for me:

How is it possible that a single computer can handle many players at once?
i mean okay...let's say that they have 1000 PC's...still there will be a lot of gamers that want to play a game such as Crysis for example. How can a single PC handle 2 or 3 or even more players at once?
Click to expand...
you shouldn't think in the terms of PCs.

it's servers we're talking about and that's a whole different ballgame. think of a terminal server or something. many sessions running side by side on a single rig.

much like a single world of warcraft game server can host a location with a few hundred of players in it. (but then it only has to transmit coordinates and so on, no video)

but the principle remains the same.

hell, your own pc can play a movie, play an mp3 and play Fallout at the same time, right? you just can't take advantage of that since it's hardly practical, but to a lesser extent, your own pc also does a lot of different things at once.
 
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