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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.'"
I just don't see this succeeding, especially after seeing the leaked preview article. The problem is that on top of the cost of the service, you have to have a good net connection. While it uses like 1mbps for the stream, you need more like a 10mbps connection to keep the latency low. Remember that you don't just have to take ping time in to account with data transfer, but the time it takes to transfer all the data. Ok well good connections cost more money and thus aren't so much the domain of the budget user which is their target user. I mean I've got a connection with low ping times and plenty of bandwidth, however I won't be buying since I also have a video card.
Another problem is that because of the compression on the video stream, you are not going to get the highest quality video, no matter what the settings on the host computer are. Part of their selling point is that you get the max quality of new video cards on your current system. No, not really. Looking at the gameplay vids you get more like mid to lowish quality video. Fine, but that isn't nearly so expensive. $100 will get you a video card that will look as good or better than what was shown, and that is not nearly such a barrier for entry.
Yet another problem is that their service requires you to be near one of their data centers, so that pings are low. Fair enough, latency can kill this, but that means their potential user base is less than it would be otherwise. There will be users who want the service and can't have it because their ping is too high. Some may even be near a data center physically, but too far Internet wise.
Finally there's the ever present lag issue. While the test showed some kinds of games to be playable, the lag is there and was noticeable in relation to a native system.
I just don't see this as having a big enough market. If they truly could deliver a gaming experience the same as owning a $1500-2000 system over low bandwidth net connections, sure. However they can't. They can (almost) deliver the experience of owning a $500 system with a $100 graphics card added on over a moderate bandwidth net connection to some areas.
Has anyone heard how much this will eat into broadband cap?
and what internet speed is needed to play?
Their is one thing I know, I would not want to be stuck with a game that I cannot play till the start of a new month because I decided to watch a few youtube videos.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Lets say you've got $1000 bucks to spend. Internet connection we'll say is ~$30 a month. Thats for decent gaming speeds @ home. In scenario A, you grab a $200 computer and your total billing becomes $45 a month - so ~18 months of gaming.In the other scenario, 18 months of internet connectivity is $540. That leaves you $460 for a new Rig. Not a whole lot to deck out your machine.
Reversely, if you buy an 800$ machine, expecting it to last you 3 years, thats $800 + $540 so $1340 overall. If you buy a $200 machine, expecting to play for 3 years, thats $200 + 1620 so 1820 overall. Saving about 500 bucks. The only factors you as a user have to think about its how long you'll go between upgrades.
This OnLive System appears to work well for those who want to game during summer vacation but Buckle down during the school year - in other words: Short spurts of gaming.
This is so going to go down in flames. I give it 6 months.
Any idea what kind of software they are using to relay the "real time" video from their servers to your computer? I'd love to be able to have my weak laptop connect up to my powerhouse gaming machine for same gaming on the couch, but programs like VNC are waaaay too slow to do this.
If these companies are achieving moderate detail over the internet, how can I accomplish this on my LAN?
None of that income goes to the primary market. People do not buy more "new" games because they've sold more used games. The budget rationale of human beings is not so rational. In addition the ones who buy used games are looking for good deals and cheaper-than-retail prices. Since Gamestop can *always* undercut retail no matter what retail is priced at, game publishers lose a huge chunk of profit to Gamestop. Again, this is why publishers are willing to price extremely popular games like Bioshock at $5 on Steam, but not at retail.
Game publishers have agonized over their sales data and research for a very long time. It's a phenomenon that has been pushing more and more of them into participating into a service like Steam, despite it being run, controlled, and ultimately monetized by a competitor.
You keep saying that and I'd really like to see where you get this information from, i.e. [citation needed].
Buying video games is clearly discretionary (purely entertainment), which means people are going to make such purchases from discretionary income. Selling things second-hand gives people more discretionary spending ability. It seems highly unlikely that at least some portion of this wouldn't go back into buying new games. After all, if they have games to sell, they must have bought them new at some point, right?
Gabe Newell seems to think that pricing isn't all that important. This is in regards to piracy, but it seems reasonable it would hold true for new games, as well: he's certainly not going to be discussing the second-hand market here. Video here (statement at 5:25).
Also, there seems to be an element of circular logic here: games have to be sold at high retail price because many people aren't willing to pay that and instead buy it second-hand (at a lower price). Presumably this leads to publishers increasing the retail price to make up for the "losses" from the second-hand market, leading even more people to resort to the second-hand market. Nice self-fulfilling prophecy.
I don't think the cheap Steam sales demonstrate any kind of willingness on the part of publishers to lower their prices, given how new-release titles are still just as expensive on Steam (which, to the best of my knowledge, effectively prohibits re-sale). This only seems to happen for products that are effectively obsolete, and as a way to increase exposure for new products (e.g. Bioshock as you mentioned: what better way to get people interested in Bioshock 2 than to have them play Bioshock 1 just before its release?). This is more about the cost structure of digital distribution vs. retail distribution than anything else, i.e. it's actually feasible to sell a game for $5 and make money on it on Steam, whereas packaging and shipping a product and putting it on retail shelves for $5 just isn't going to happen. Retailers who have a large stock paid way more than $5 for it already and won't want to take a loss, and the margins on selling product at that price point would be too small for most publishers to want to bother with.