Slashdot Mirror
Cloud Gaming Service OnLive Set For Launch
Steve Perlman's long-anticipated cloud gaming service, OnLive, officially launches today, finally ready to be put to the test by skeptical and hopeful gamers around the US. After granting some early sign-ups a free year to try out the service, OnLive also announced the list of 23 games that will available from the start, including Mass Effect 2, UT 3, Assassin's Creed 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and F.E.A.R. 2. Perlman spoke at length with Gamasutra about the beta, latency, and potential partnerships with other broadband providers. Future OnLive competitor Gaikai recently announced it's targeting 2011 for its own launch.
From their beta signup page:
The OnLive Game Service (the "Service") Fee will be waived for the first 12 months from the date you activate your OnLive Account. During these 12 months, your access to the Service will include free demos and community features, such as member Profiles, Friending, Chat, Spectating and Brag Clip(TM) videos, but will not include any games, content or other services that are offered for purchase, and which must be purchased separately.
Sounds like you're going to need to pay to test their stuff. At least they're up front about it?
I don't think anyone with a gaming system will be interested, but everyone else may be. Some games like RPGs can be played acceptably with a little lag, and I wouldn't mind being able to see some nice graphics on my Eee PC when I'm away from home.
Will it work well with an FPS? Doubtful. Before anyone says "Hey! I used to frag in Quake with a 300 ping and it was plenty playable!" -- I used to too. But that was 300ms of network latency, not input latency - very big difference. Lag compensation makes a world of difference, and that's impossible when you're just piping video.
Well for one, they plan on transferring 2D video data probably at around 24 FPS. They are trying to get as low latencies as possible by having several servers around the country and are only selling to people near those servers.
Their target is not hardcore PC gamers. Also this system will never work with twitch gaming, like unreal tournament. However for less latency critical games, and for more casual gamers who aren't looking for a large hardware commitment, this fills a niche. I'm personally not interested in their service, but I'm interested to see how it turns out.
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
I don't think anyone with a gaming system will be interested, but everyone else may be. Some games like RPGs can be played acceptably with a little lag, and I wouldn't mind being able to see some nice graphics on my Eee PC when I'm away from home.
Will it work well with an FPS? Doubtful. Before anyone says "Hey! I used to frag in Quake with a 300 ping and it was plenty playable!" -- I used to too. But that was 300ms of network latency, not input latency - very big difference. Lag compensation makes a world of difference, and that's impossible when you're just piping video.
(it's june 17th now, so the NDA is over) I've been hardcore fragging on unreal tournament 3 and haven't had any latency issues. Try it before you knock it honestly, it's a lot better than I was hoping for and almost as good as I was dreaming for...
You do not own games you pay full price for! and you have to keep paying on live to use them!
So you are better off useing your own system and buying the games that can be used with out having to pay a fee JUST TO PLAY! also no INPUT LAG AND NO NEED FOR a 5MEG plus full time data stream.
It's true that hardcore gamers are going to have systems capable of running these games well, locally. By which logic, their target audience shouldn't be hardcore gamers, but the more casual gamers looking for slightly prettier graphics than their box can handle.
However, look at that list of games. Those aren't games targeted at the casual audience. Those are the very games that are going to be picked up almost exclusively by the same gamers who already have capable systems. MMORPGs, maybe some find-and-click games, that's what they should be offering, not lightning-paced FPS'es, 60+ hour RPG's, and combo/timing intensive action games.
This is why I think OnLive is going to flop. Their game selection is targeting the wrong audience.