New OnLive service could turn the video game world upside down

[newbie2]

Perlman, a serial entrepreneur whose startup credits include WebTV and Mova, says his Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has developed a data compression technology and an accompanying online game service that allows game computation to be done in distant servers, rather than on game consoles or high-end computers. So rather than buying games at stores, gamers could play them across the network — without downloading them.
http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/23/steve-perlmans-onlive-could-turn-the-video-game-world-upside-down/
:p

[psam3]

And yet another online service I couldn't take advantage of because my phone company is still living in the 90's](*,)

[Ubuntiac]

This is the opportunity we've been waiting for!

With a simple Linux client we can be playing the AAA game titles on Linux within months! Yes I understand that they're not native and *a* windows box is still in use here, however would you rather have windows on 1000's of gaming PC's, or just a few servers feeding game data to Linux clients?

To get big studio's to invest in making native builds, we need to show them that gamers use Linux. To get gamers using Linux they need to be able to play AAA games on Linux. This gives us the bootstrap to break the catch 22! Better yet we don't need to convince 50 huge game studio's to support us... just one entrepreneurial startup!

If you care at all about Linux adoption or gaming, contact OnLive right now here (http://www.onlive.com/contact.html) and ask for a Linux client!

Remember, sell them on what they'll get, rather than just demanding they give you what you want. They have a mac port promised, so emphasise similarities there. Remind them that World of Goo in a few days had Linux sales make up over 40% of their TOTAL sales. Let them know that we're a hungry market. Remind them we spend more on tech than most demographics. Remind them we're the uber-geeks, and as such, very close to the gamer demographic. Most of all let them know you want a linux client, and soon!

This can be the decisive blow that removes Windows market dominance. Let's take action now (http://www.onlive.com/contact.html)!

[billgoldberg]

This is the opportunity we've been waiting for!

With a simple Linux client we can be playing the AAA game titles on Linux within months! Yes I understand that they're not native and *a* windows box is still in use here, however would you rather have windows on 1000's of gaming PC's, or just a few servers feeding game data to Linux clients?

To get big studio's to invest in making native builds, we need to show them that gamers use Linux. To get gamers using Linux they need to be able to play AAA games on Linux. This gives us the bootstrap to break the catch 22! Better yet we don't need to convince 50 huge game studio's to support us... just one entrepreneurial startup!

If you care at all about Linux adoption or gaming, contact OnLive right now here (http://www.onlive.com/contact.html) and ask for a Linux client!

Remember, sell them on what they'll get, rather than just demanding they give you what you want. They have a mac port promised, so emphasise similarities there. Remind them that World of Goo in a few days had Linux sales make up over 40% of their TOTAL sales. Let them know that we're a hungry market. Remind them we spend more on tech than most demographics. Remind them we're the uber-geeks, and as such, very close to the gamer demographic. Most of all let them know you want a linux client, and soon!

This can be the decisive blow that removes Windows market dominance. Let's take action now (http://www.onlive.com/contact.html)!

Someone sure is excited.

I think it will fail, and pretty badly too.

[Naiki Muliaina]

Someone sure is excited.

I think it will fail, and pretty badly too.

This time round it might fail, but i do think this is a fantastic use of cloud computing. I think when the time is right this sort of thing will take off big time.

[bgerlich]

Too bad it looks a tad too much like vapourware (for my taste). The company was established 1.5 years ago, they were supposed to do "data and networking storage". They got some capital from Warner Brothers, which makes me think that they were supposed to provide movie streaming or some similar service.

Fast forward to 2009, they claim to have a product of this "online gaming" already in beta, although they provide no tech demos, or even a snippet of live action gameplay. They are supposed to ship a consumer ready product in winter 2009, including a "microconsole" to plug in straight to TV yet they seem to be hiring electronics designers/developers.

Plus there are a whole lot of technical problems of the proposed model of "cloud gaming" - starting with providing video streams compressed with a real time codec, that don't require a powerful machine to decompress, provide high resolution image and work with consumer available internet access solutions.

Their entire webpage is a gigantic infomercial, throwing slogans and newspeak left and right (examples:"(...)lies directly at the nexus of several key trends, all of which are reshaping the way we think about and use digital media(...)" "(...)OnLive spent seven years in stealth development before officially unveiling in March 2009", with a lot of nice photos of the execs but no solid info what-so-ever.

I really want to be wrong and see true cross-platform gaming in action, but I doubt OnLive will deliver.

[Ryanor]

duna about this linux talk never used it but the onlive service sounds very interesting hopefully developers back it and the get decent servers so it will be as they say it should be. havent watched the gamespot coverage of the press conference (http://uk.gamespot.com/shows/on-the-spot/) yet where they properly explain it and have live demos of games gonna watch it when i get home from work. but ye sounds cool when it comes out ill proberly give it a go, i have faith :P

[Nickedynick]

I've just noticed that the PC and Mac clients are "via browser plug-in" - does this mean that there's potentially no porting necessary?

I'd love this product to take off, and while it's very much early days at the moment, the potential for a huge shift in the games market is definitely there.

[3rdalbum]

There will be lag.

Even if there wasn't, there's no way they'd be able to scale the power of their servers to meet demand. One server per gamer, and they'd constantly need to put more powerful GPUs into the servers to keep up with new games.

[pwnst*r]

There will be lag.

Even if there wasn't, there's no way they'd be able to scale the power of their servers to meet demand. One server per gamer, and they'd constantly need to put more powerful GPUs into the servers to keep up with new games.

we have a winner.

[chez moi]

if they release a client the linux gaming problem will be instantaneously solved :D

they claim and have demoed 80 ms lag which is acceptable

[dof]

Too bad it looks a tad too much like vapourware (for my taste). The company was established 1.5 years ago, they were supposed to do "data and networking storage". They got some capital from Warner Brothers, which makes me think that they were supposed to provide movie streaming or some similar service.

Fast forward to 2009, they claim to have a product of this "online gaming" already in beta, although they provide no tech demos, or even a snippet of live action gameplay. They are supposed to ship a consumer ready product in winter 2009, including a "microconsole" to plug in straight to TV yet they seem to be hiring electronics designers/developers.

Plus there are a whole lot of technical problems of the proposed model of "cloud gaming" - starting with providing video streams compressed with a real time codec, that don't require a powerful machine to decompress, provide high resolution image and work with consumer available internet access solutions.

Their entire webpage is a gigantic infomercial, throwing slogans and newspeak left and right (examples:"(...)lies directly at the nexus of several key trends, all of which are reshaping the way we think about and use digital media(...)" "(...)OnLive spent seven years in stealth development before officially unveiling in March 2009", with a lot of nice photos of the execs but no solid info what-so-ever.

I really want to be wrong and see true cross-platform gaming in action, but I doubt OnLive will deliver.

"

Sound cool? Come try it out for yourself at: Booth #5128 North Hall at the Game Developers Conference.

"

Anybody's been there? Anybody tried it?
http://www.gdconf.com/
Does the damn thing exist? :popcorn:

[Polygon]

as i posted in the other topic about this:



i can't believe users of a linux forum are actually for this console!

this is the epitome of drm. where you have NO ownership over the games at all. none!

you buy a box. a box! all of the games you buy are on the internet. you don't even own the HARDWARE to even play the games. The only thing you get is the visual feed. What happens if this company goes out of business? you don't have a internet connection? you stop paying their monthly fees? all of your games are 'gone'. If you can even count them as games, rather then just a digital stream

even if this DID work, which i highly doubt due to a number of reasons, such as the sheer power and number of servers that are needed to render X amount of games seperately and stream the contents to each paying player, and the lag/latency issues involved, i would still not use it. Why? Cause this is EXACTLY what game developers what. They want you, as the consumer, to have no ownership at all over the game you buy. They think that this is the answer to game piracy, to make it so the consumers don't even get to touch the game.

Not to mention this completely ruins any kind of modularity to games.....gameplay mods, custom maps, etc etc are all going to be hard if not impossible to play on this system

Sure, services like steam are kinda like this, but the files are on your hard drive. Your computer renders the game. Even if you get 'banned', you can still play the game, they can't delete the game files from your hard drive. Here, if you do something wrong (or even stop paying them money), everything, your saves, progress, screenshots, videos, are gone in a instant. Even if you are disconnected from the internet, this completely stops you from playing your games

I hope this fails. This is the horror story of every opponent of DRM and cloud computing......

[Tomosaur]

Polygon makes sense - you have zero rights with this. It is the equivalent to somebody selling you a car and then only letting you drive it with a remote control, watching the whole thing on a monitor.

Ok, not quite - but you get the idea. You don't own a copy of the game. I BET their licensing will allow them to 'amend' your rights as and when they see fit without consulting you.

While this sounds excellent from a technical standpoint - if you look at it from a consumer point of view it is a horrible idea. You have no rights, no ownership, nothing. You can't just stop playing games for a while and then come back later - you will have to keep paying, even if you're not playing, to ensure your saves are kept / online stats / whatever.

This could be great for 'one-time' usages like watching movies or something, but as soon as you need to maintain the state of something with this thing - all kinds of potholes start to appear.

[swoll1980]

Someone sure is excited.

I think it will fail, and pretty badly too.

The name SEGA TV comes to mind for some reason.

[K.Mandla]

I think it will fail, and pretty badly too.
I think billgoldberg is right. Just about anybody can put together a meager online company, make a lot of promises, get a little press, watch their stock go up, and never really show anything for it.

+1 for vaporware.

[init1]

as i posted in the other topic about this:
i can't believe users of a linux forum are actually for this console!

this is the epitome of drm. where you have NO ownership over the games at all. none!

you buy a box. a box! all of the games you buy are on the internet. you don't even own the HARDWARE to even play the games. The only thing you get is the visual feed. What happens if this company goes out of business? you don't have a internet connection? you stop paying their monthly fees? all of your games are 'gone'. If you can even count them as games, rather then just a digital stream

even if this DID work, which i highly doubt due to a number of reasons, such as the sheer power and number of servers that are needed to render X amount of games seperately and stream the contents to each paying player, and the lag/latency issues involved, i would still not use it. Why? Cause this is EXACTLY what game developers what. They want you, as the consumer, to have no ownership at all over the game you buy. They think that this is the answer to game piracy, to make it so the consumers don't even get to touch the game.

Not to mention this completely ruins any kind of modularity to games.....gameplay mods, custom maps, etc etc are all going to be hard if not impossible to play on this system

Sure, services like steam are kinda like this, but the files are on your hard drive. Your computer renders the game. Even if you get 'banned', you can still play the game, they can't delete the game files from your hard drive. Here, if you do something wrong (or even stop paying them money), everything, your saves, progress, screenshots, videos, are gone in a instant. Even if you are disconnected from the internet, this completely stops you from playing your games

I hope this fails. This is the horror story of every opponent of DRM and cloud computing......
Eh, I don't see what the big deal is. Yes, you don't actually own the game, or even the hardware that runs it, but the end result is the same. You still end up playing the game whether its stored locally or if it's on a server.

[Firestem4]

Eh, I don't see what the big deal is. Yes, you don't actually own the game, or even the hardware that runs it, but the end result is the same. You still end up playing the game whether its stored locally or if it's on a server.

The big deal is this is another form of elusive Digital Rights Management schemes to protect the interests of corporations at the expense of our rights.

What happens if the company goes under? What happens if you decide to stop paying for the subscription? What if you have to change service providers and the OnLive service is too much for it?

So what then? If you paid for this premium service, You bought all of your games through it, and you don't have any access to it because of various reasons. You have no access to anything you purchased through their service.

You aren't entitled to a physical copy. Anything and everything is done in the cloud and you don't own squat.

This for a number of reasons is why i don't believe in Cloud Computing. And OnLive takes the cake. Its Cloud-Computing+DRM to the max.

[init1]

as i posted in the other topic about this:


The big deal is this is another form of elusive Digital Rights Management schemes to protect the interests of corporations at the expense of our rights.

What happens if the company goes under? What happens if you decide to stop paying for the subscription? What if you have to change service providers and the OnLive service is too much for it?

So what then? If you paid for this premium service, You bought all of your games through it, and you don't have any access to it because of various reasons. You have no access to anything you purchased through their service.

You aren't entitled to a physical copy. Anything and everything is done in the cloud and you don't own squat.

This for a number of reasons is why i don't believe in Cloud Computing. And OnLive takes the cake. Its Cloud-Computing+DRM to the max.
Eh, if the service works, then I don't need a physical copy. Of course, the idea that if the company fails, you loose everything is a bit worrying.

[Firestem4]

Eh, if the service works, then I don't need a physical copy. Of course, the idea that if the company fails, you loose everything is a bit worrying.

Thats the biggest issue.

I am a major opponent to DRM. While I believe that Creators have a right to protect their content, the way they are doing it is purely ridiculous. I'd go on but I'm pretty sure we know the whole schlep.

[Ubuntiac]

At the latest Game Development COnference (the largest of it's kind) the closing talk about the future of gaming focused solely on this technology.

There are definately people with money and stakes in gaming who believe this is the direction we're going.

[Mazza558]

It'd be a great thing if physical games were sold with this technology. It'd mean system requirements would be thrown out of the window for anyone who couldn't meet them. Anyone who could should be able to run the game locally, and for everyone else, they connect to a remote server to play - but keep their save-files locally. That way, if the company supplying servers goes bust, the consumer can still play the game (they have the physical game).

[LowSky]

the American Market for streaming games isn't there, because the data feeds that would make this viable aren't up to speed, especially in rurla, and even many suburban markets. even the Cell phone market is way behind when its compared to Europe and the Asian (Japan & South Korea)markets.

Also you have "brand Loyalty" Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo will still build gaming machines, because the infastructure is already there, the streaming system might work great for low end gaming like many Wii satyle games, but try streaming a game like Grand Theft Auto or Fallout in full High Definition. the amount of data would be stagering, and many people will get annoyed from practised of data capping from ther IPs (ex: Comcast).

[Polygon]

At the latest Game Development COnference (the largest of it's kind) the closing talk about the future of gaming focused solely on this technology.

There are definately people with money and stakes in gaming who believe this is the direction we're going.

which is why us, the consumers, need to refuse to use this kind of technology NOW. This is just the first step, but if they are successful, we shall see this technology start to creep into other areas.

spread the word.

[puppy]

sorry guys but look at how Second Life struggles with drawing polygons etc - I just don't believe it - my feelings on this is that these guys are just looking for some fool to give them venture capital which they can then spend on Ferraris and fast women :twisted:

[Therion]

Call me when I can play mainstream titles at 1600 x 1200 with full AA and AF at 60FPS+ smoothly and for less than the cost of owning the title.

Bonus Point awarded for my ISP not placing a little "courtesy call" to discuss upgrading my plan when my bandwidth suddenly goes ballistic from playing TESIV: Oblivion online.

[Polygon]

sorry guys but look at how Second Life struggles with drawing polygons etc - I just don't believe it - my feelings on this is that these guys are just looking for some fool to give them venture capital which they can then spend on Ferraris and fast women :twisted:

second life is a bit different. with second life, all of the stuff, polygons, textures, sounds, lightmaps, etc are stored on the server, and the server sends the resources to YOUR computer and your computer does the rendering, which is why its so slow. this online thing is supposedly going to do all the rendering for you and and just send you the video feed.

[billgoldberg]

They talked about it on Tekzilla:

- they have a beta/alpha
- the results were acceptable, but not great (some lagging every now and then, not because of the internet stream, but because their server hardware was getting hammered).
- needs a constant 5mbps/sec for 720p or 1mbps/sec for non-hd connection to their servers, meaning that anyone with caps won't be able to use it.

[Kareeser]

Given the state of Canadian broadband at this point in time AND in the future, there's actually an increasingly negative* chance that this will work in Canada.

* By this, I mean that with Bell imposing usage-based billing and adding deep-packet inspection boxes to slow down traffic further, we'll never get past 5 Mbits...

[TheLions]

isn't Quake live already doing that?

[Polygon]

isn't Quake live already doing that?

what quake life does is it just downloads a plugin to your computer, and then it downloads all the content to your computer, and you can play it in a browser. it doesn't do any rendering on the server, its all on your computer


They talked about it on Tekzilla:

- they have a beta/alpha
- the results were acceptable, but not great (some lagging every now and then, not because of the internet stream, but because their server hardware was getting hammered).
- needs a constant 5mbps/sec for 720p or 1mbps/sec for non-hd connection to their servers, meaning that anyone with caps won't be able to use it.



and thats exactly why it will never work. if a limited alpha/beta, with very few testers, and it lags cuase their servers get hammered, there is no way that it will work if a LOT more gamers start trying to use it.