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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.'"
The reviews on performance were mediocre to bad ... and some of those 'partners' don't exactly have the best customer service track record ... and only $14.95 a month you say?
I wonder how long before one of those partners throws a tantrum and pulls the plug in one (or all) of its servers when it doesn't get what it wants?
Zero control over my purchases? Zero re-sale value when I'm tired of a game? Zero incentive for publishers to discount their titles? Zero bandwidth & gaming ability remaining once I hit my cap? Zero ability to take my games with me once the company goes belly-up (and boy, will it ever...)? All for the low, low price of $15/mo? Sign me up!
So I'm paying $15 a month so that I don't need to have a fancy computer to play all the latest games. Except I'm still paying for the games.
So, say a $1000 computer will last me about four years. I'd save about $280 using this service, but I'd have to get all my games through them, I'd only be able to play when my Internet works (wait, are they Ubisoft in disguise?), and the quality of my experience isn't guaranteed to be as good as playing on a copy running off my own machine.
You know what? I'll *pay* that $280, and gladly.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
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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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.
The business model is flawed from square-one. This is going to sink into bankruptcy very, very quickly. The overhead is pretty significant and profit is required rapidly to keep it afloat. The problem is that there is very little incentive for anyone to sign up. They are competing with consoles AND pc games, yet they only offer pc games. People that are inclined to play PC games already have hardware that can handle it. Those who are not inclined, are on consoles. If their hardware isn't state-of-the-art, they play older games and save for newer hardware. $14.95 a month is so steep, it is only really the type of subscription fee that could be paid by someone who has enough money to buy a computer serious enough to play contemporary games.
This will join cue-cat, divx, and broadcast.com in the tomb of ideas that suckered investors yet were non-movers in the marketplace.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I can't wait for this newest bubble to burst. Thin clients haven't really been embraced for office apps where 95% of the functionality can run in the browser and it will work reasonably well. How can you expect to compete with native apps on PCs where performance is cheaply had so long as you don't need to run at the highest settings...or on consoles which look almost as good? The problem for game companies is that many folks have realized that they can play year old games on cheap new hardware to great effect...after the game is reduced to 50%.
I don't see the market niche. Hardcore gamers won't touch it. Casual gamers will baulk at the $15/month by in BEFORE you get the privilege to buy/rent a game. So, who will want this unless the games are steeply discounted? $180/year could be well spent on local hardware upgrades.
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.
This is so going to go down in flames. I give it 6 months.
I'm probably missing something here, but why would I want to pay $15 for the privledge of buying software from OnLive?
Not a WOW player, would WOW be playable on a ipad using this service? WOW players are used to subscription services, whats a extra $14.95 a month if you can play WOW in the bath.
The reason why people aren't "doing actual research" is because OnLive doesn't allow it. They are being very locked down about the process. As such people have to get what they can get. If OnLive doesn't like it they are more than welcome to stop being dicks and open the service up to review services.
However, I suspect they know it isn't that great and are hoping to catch as many people as possible on launch day based on hype.
Don't like it? Then go tell OnLive (or the relevant person, if you work for them) to let some real reviews happen. Allow review sites in without NDAs, let them test games in their way. Until that happens, expect more of this.
Also appreciate that people are starting from the technical knowledge of why this is likely to be crap (as I outlined in my post) and then finding that the only real information out there not from the company's PR department backs up that assertion.
At least not in the same way your computer is. All video on your computer is sent losslessly, 4:4:4 to your monitor. Full colour resolution per pixel, no blocking of any kind, etc. Gives a very sharp image. This? Not so much. You aren't going to get great quality 720p video, even with the highest end codecs like H.264. It'll be ok, but plenty of artifacts (and that's at 30fps not 60). However they can't do H.264, even if they had infinite compression power, it takes a heavy hitter of a system to decompress, or a videocard that can help the process. So they did their own thing. Well guess what? You can have detail, low bandwidth, or low CPU usage but not all 3.
Looking at screenshots taken from the service, you do lose a good deal of detail. The textures get smeared, the colours are less distinct, etc. All the typical stuff anyone who's played with video compression is familiar with.
So you aren't getting the same experience as you would with a card on the system doing 1280x720, unless you maybe turned the detail down a good bit. There's no solution except to use more bandwidth, or more CPU power decoding (and even that has limits, more bandwidth is the only truly scalable solution). For 720p in Blu-Ray quality you are looking at probably 7mbps minimum, maybe more.
but can't find their pants to go to the store and buy them.
Thank GOD for steam!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
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?
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.
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
A typical high end machine will last you 4 years minimum. At $15 a month for 4 years that's $720. You'd be better off just spending the $720 up front on a high end machine or games console.
The end result of using this service for 4 years then cancelling is that you loose all your games and can not resell them.