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OnLive Begins Beta Testing

Posted by Soulskill on from the fact-or-fiction dept.

Steve Perlman, CEO of OnLive, has announced that beta testing is now underway for the cloud gaming service that aims to take the processing burden for cutting-edge games off a player's computer and use remote servers instead. Reaction to this service and competitor GaiKai has been interest tempered with skepticism, but users can now sign up to test it themselves and see if the reality matches the hype. There will be hardware and connectivity restrictions to start: "When you sign up for OnLive Beta, you tell us some general information about your ISP, your computer configuration and your location. We use this information to organize Beta testers into test groups so that our engineering team can focus at different times on testing different situations. If you are a potential fit for a particular test group, we'll send you an invitation email, asking you to run a detailed Performance Test on your network connection and your computer configuration."

4 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. world ? by Spaham · · Score: 4, Informative

    somehow they assume that the whole world lives in the United States...

    1. Re:world ? by RemoWilliams84 · · Score: 4, Informative

      They should, however, be picking beta testers at the edge of that distance, on streets with lots of contention, with crappy PCs, with ropey old DSL modems, etc., so that they can iron out problems.

      You also don't start your beta test with those crappy situations, especially when it is a completely new service. That's why you often start with an alpha or a small closed beta.

      It's much easier to find the problems when you start with a small set of potential problems and work your way down to those users running a 28k modem on windows 95.

      --
      "I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
  2. Re:Linux by wizardforce · · Score: 3, Informative

    quoting Onlive's beta sign-up page:

    and have a broadband-connected PC running Windows Vista/XP, or an Intel-based Mac.

    so not right now.

    --
    Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
  3. Re:Stupid idea by RalphSleigh · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is much that can be done with a clever client to hide and compensate for latency, see:

    http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Latency_Compensating_Methods_in_Client/Server_In-game_Protocol_Design_and_Optimization

    --
    Come as you are, do what you must, be who you will.