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OnLive Remote Gaming Service Launches In June
adeelarshad82 writes "After eight years of development, remote gaming service OnLive is scheduled to roll out on June 17 for Windows and Mac. The company also announced its service pricing: users will need to pay $14.95 per month, which will allow them access to the service. However, the company did not disclose the price to rent or purchase games. 'It is partnering in this launch with publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The games will also include new releases like Mass Effect 2, Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed II, as well as a bunch of other titles. Perlman anticipates anywhere from a dozen to 25 titles to be available at launch time, and more after that, depending on how negotiations with other publishers proceed.'"
Did you read the article? The difference is steam allows you to download games to your own computer, whereas this service allows you to play a game remotely off of their computer. The benefit is you dont need a kickass top of the line computer (just a fast internet connection) to have your performance match that of other players. So you are paying them to get computer upgrades, instead of doing it yourself. Is it worth it? thats a different issue. But the model is very different from Steam
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What reviews of service? Stop spreading your garbage FUD. There were no reviews allowed due to the NDA for beta users.
The only review I ever read was done by a guy who wasn't authorized to use the service, using a friend's account, and played from twice the recommended distance to one of the game servers.
Half the time the servers refused to let him on because his lag was too high. And yet despite being 2000 miles away and being constantly warned of poor performance and lag by the servers, he *still* had a positive experience with several of the games.
Ars is citing the PC perspective article. That was the stupidest article to be citing, because the guy who wrote it wasn't authorized to use the beta, and was 2000 miles (twice the allowed 1000 mile maximum distance) from a game server. The service constantly warned him about huge lag issues and sometimes wouldn't even let him log on.
The author of the ars article, Ben Kuchera, purposely never mentioned this and made some hand-waving comments about how he'd round up some beta users who had negative comments about the service. Seriously, he never did. The entire ars article was totally unprofessional, and the PC Per article was repeatedly debunked as being worthless.
The fact that you're still spreading this FUD speaks to how you've already pre-judged the service and aren't interested in doing actual research or waiting for an unbiased and accurate review to find out what it might be like.
What reviews of service? Stop spreading your garbage FUD. There were no reviews allowed due to the NDA for beta users.
The only review I ever read was done by a guy who wasn't authorized to use the service, using a friend's account, and played from twice the recommended distance to one of the game servers.
Half the time the servers refused to let him on because his lag was too high. And yet despite being 2000 miles away and being constantly warned of poor performance and lag by the servers, he *still* had a positive experience with several of the games.
These beta testers disagree with you. Not FUD, Fact.
Dude, are you seriously...? Your description of lag is utterly idiotic. You obviously don't have a clue what you're talking about. With onlive you're basically streaming *video* and uploading your controller or keyboard inputs. Have you never watched a video before? Have you ever netflixed before? As for sending inputs it's the same as playing any game online.
It's not as simple as just 'streaming video'. Video is already complete and is just waiting to be sent. This is a game which needs to react and respond to your input. Your data needs to be sent to their server, which needs to process it, generate the game's response and send that back to you. Since turning your character makes the entire POV of the game move you've got to redraw everything at a full screen resolution high enough to make it a quality gaming experience. It's simply gonna suck.
Taking into consideration the amount of CPU & GPU cycles the games listed in the article take, there will definitely be lag and stuttering and crappy frame rates and all the other stuff you get when your desktop computer doesn't have enough horsepower to play your game of choice.
Better update your resume because OnLive will be DOA before you know it. I sure hope they aren't trying to get people to buy annual subscriptions.
Instead of you having to upgrade your computer every few years, and having to live with a sub-par gaming machine towards the end of its effective life cycle, onlive's servers will be continually upgraded to keep up with the games.
You are assuming that the onlive experience will be better than a sub-par gaming machine. It won't be.
A $600 desktop will easily be able to run crysis at a higher resolution and a higher frame rate, without the input lag.
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It is not the same as playing other games online, the local client has many tricks to make lag less noticeable, this device will not be able to do that.
If you have a 50ms ping time, you will have 50ms between button press and action taking place. Lots of fun to play an fps that way, and forget about competing against folks with real computers.