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OnLive CEO On Post-Launch Status, Game Licenses
CNET has a lengthy interview with OnLive CEO Steve Perlman about how the service is shaping up almost a month after launch. Demand seems to have outstripped their expectations, and it required some quick server expansion to compensate. He also addresses a common concern among gamers — that the licenses for games could expire in three years. Perlman says, "It's less of an issue about the licenses evaporating, and more of an issue of whether or not we continue to maintain the operating systems and the graphics cards to run those games. If a game is tied to a particular Nvidia or ATI card, or if it's relying on a particular version of Windows with different drivers, we can't be sure that those will continue to be available as our servers age and need to be replaced. If it's a popular game that can't run on old hardware anymore, the publishers can do an upgrade for the game. Also, servers usually do last longer than three years, so chances are we'll keep running them. But we have a legal obligation to disclose what might happen. I think the probability of us pulling a game in three years is on the order of 0.1 percent. It's also highly unlikely that a game server will evaporate after three years, but we have to allow for that possibility." He also goes into future plans for expanding OnLive, both in terms of the content they offer and the devices they may support. The Digital Foundry blog followed up the latency tests we discussed with a full review, if you'd like an unbiased opinion of the service.
No no, the problem is exactly the licenses evaporating, or rather people's accounts being closed and a user subsequently losing out on all their purchased games. I think a simple, extremely reasonable solution would be to allow users to download and play the game locally if they wish a la Steam. Give them both the option to play in the cloud (much more convenient) and locally (sense of security and ownership) and you have an award winning service that destroys your Valve-hosted competitor.
Got it just because I was curious about how well it'd work. I'd hooked up my Playstation 2 to my computer through a TV card before, and the experience is similar -- there's latency there, but I don't really notice it during gameplay. I've only tried Dirt 2.
I wish they'd tweak their pricing scheme, though... a monthly fee + per-game charges is a hard sell. The aspect that appealed to me was the idea of being able to rent and try out games from a largish game library, but GameFly beats their rental pricing easily at the moment. When they get their TV "console" gear out there, and if they can make it work nicely with wireless, I think they'll find their primary audience.
Is anyone else really sick of hearing about this dead horse that they're trying to flog?
Latency claims - false.
Framerate claims - false.
Image quality claims - false.
"Blockbuster" games claims - false.
Bandwidth required - 2.5 Gb / hour (so the average UK broadband customer would exceed their monthly allowance in less than 10-15 hours a month).
Overall system capability to handle powerful games - looking false already but there's nothing on the system to really tax them yet.
Pricing - slightly more than just buying the damn game from a shop (and "owning" it forever), and actually cheaper to run it on your own PC even if you take into account the graphics card investment necessary to run those games (but, come on, my laptop cost no more than usual and comes with a card that can laugh at most of those games in bigger resolutions - are there still systems out there that can't do Half-life 2 at 60fps or equivalent?).
It was a nice idea, but it was derided for making exactly those claims that turned out to be false. Some people may buy it but I'd be doubtful they'd keep it for very long. Probably because they don't know how to load / run Steam. If you'd pitched it at casual gamers, it would have sold millions and you could run be running every grannies Wii-style games for them, but you aimed it at fast-paced, FPS-gamers and the like, requiring huge investment in CPU, RAM, graphics cards and latency reduction. World of Goo is on their store lists - that will *work* perfectly in such a setup - low CPU/GPU demand, no latency issues, easily compressible graphics. Saying it could run "any" game was just silly. If you'd pitched it as a "no-maintenance Wii replacement" without the hassle of sticky fingers, scratched disks, special hardware, constant upgrades, etc. then you could have recouped your investment by now. As it is, most people are laughing at you. Give it up now, before the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own claims.
Lot's of people, including me, called it as soon as it was announced. It is an absolute failure, we've got screenshots that look horrible, latency issues, games that are so bad you can't see crosshairs.. I mean this is just a disaster. They should close from embarrassment and try and pretend the whole thing never happened. If they wanted to target turn based strategy games or something they might have something.. but their service simply can't service the market they want and the market they want doesn't really benefit from their service.
""It's less of an issue about the licenses evaporating, and more of an issue of whether or not we continue to maintain the operating systems and the graphics cards to run those games."
Whatever... I have a copy of the really old Unreal Tournament that works great on windows 7 with a modern video card. his "issue" is a non issue and is used as a red herring to justify killing customers licenses.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I registered a long time ago for a beta but they never sent me one. I'm kind of sad because I was looking forward to trying this concept. But, knowing what is going on now, and what they are doing, I don't think that I care too much about OnLive anymore. Perhaps in the future we can see something come out of this that functions like it should but with the way computers and networks are currently engineered, there is no affordable way at least in my opinion to service what they want while maintaining the integrity of the games and performance. Fortunately you don't have to spend over $2000 for a really good gaming rig these days. Even a $900 custom built computer will run virtually any PC game at their highest settings and you can easily expand with an SLI card, RAM, and perhaps even solid state disks. Perhaps by 2016, PCs will be even more affordable than they are today :)
Will gamers who use OnLive ever represent such a large chunk of a typical ISPs' customer base as to make a massively expensive upgrade in capacity worthwhile financially?
Yesterday , BP made it right. Some of you don't believe. some of you are still angry; and that's ok. I'm xmorg, and ill be here as long as it takes to make this right.
The biggest issue with this service is the price. Computers are pretty damn cheap these days, even the GPUs. Sure the enthusiast market will have it's $300 video cards but that is like saying every car needs a v12. Most people get by just fine with a v6.
To then charge, near?, full price on top of a subscription for a service that already requires you to have a computer, ISP connection, and all the rest is downright asking for failure. I'm sure their startup costs are substantial but only the really really stupid people who again already have a computer and an internet connection are going to pay full price for such a service. And most of those really really stupid people have already been sold video cards, games, and consoles by the Best Buy drones.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Sooooooo! So. We're Dejobaan Games, a small indie (redundant?) studio responsible for a game called AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity. If you've used OnLive, you've probably seen the damned thing listed at the top of their games selection because they sort alphabetically. Our next game will probably be called something annoying like !!!00000LoL and be even higher on the list.
:)
I digress.
I like OnLive; I like the guys I've met that work for OnLive; I'm also the Hair Club President. I want them to succeed, because the more ways for folks to get games, the better. Here's our guarantee: If you pick Aaaaa! up on OnLive, and they stop carrying our game in 3 years, we'll give you an offline copy. I'm not sure if folks are having tech issues, but honestly, the licensing issue is really easy for us to fix.
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
And I have a copy of Wipeout XL that worked fine on a 233MHz Windows 95 PC but refused to install on Windows 98 or above, and any CPU speed higher would make the game accelerate way past playability. MS likes to tout compatibility but the reality is that it's pretty sporadic that a particular game/program will work the same across various hardware/OS combinations.
How long will comcast like this? Till nodes max out? Till uses hit there download cap real fast?
having a direct link to ISP like AT&T and comcast is nice it's the cable lines / nodes that are the real small link points. Dsl is better at that point but AT&T will have to up all Dsl uses to there max line speed for people to be able to use this and trun on fast path for U-Verse users.
We have:
A) Games the same price, or more expensive then owning your own.
B) Loosing all games if your account is cancelled
C) a monthly fee
D) game that can only be played on t a time. I can be playing fallout while me son plays my copy os SCII, for example.
E) No resell/give away of games. I'll often give games to people whose budget doesn't really allow for them.
F) Graphics are inconsistan/poor.
G) You can't upgrade the performance.
That's too many negatives.
Here is what think they could do to counter the negatives:
a monthly fee and you can play whatever you want.
If it was 15 bucks and I could play what ever I want? sweet. Or free with advertising. Advertising they could control really well since you can't DVR a game. 30 seconds just before entering a game would be fine. obviously not interrupting the game.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The hardware / driver part is a issue and virtualising video cards is likely some kind of pass though to real card.
for 1 thing old drivers can't run new cards and the new ones some times brake older games / slow them down.
Comcast, AT&T and Cox **LOVE** this service / the idea of this service.
Get rid of net neutrality.
Sell different levels / quality of internet services (add this as a "Gamers pack")
Profit!
ISP then Subsidize OnLive so it can charge lower fees, OnLive profits.
Game companies release exclusive titles / blockbusters on OnLive, thereby reducing piracy in the industry, game companies profit.
Basically it's about control, and the ISP's will keep this service running. They only want big businesses to run games (I.E. *NO* home servers hosting or running a game). Think of how much Cox would love it if they could force Activision to pay a fee to let consumers connect to WoW? Or how AT&T would need money from EA Games to allow people to connect to the latest Battlefield game? This service stinks, but it's where the big ISP's want things to go. They also want in on the ground floor with OnLive (and subsidizing them) so they have more control over it than Steam.
You still have to buy the games
Plus you have to pay $15 a month
"Your" game might at some point become completely unplayable
They don't even want to talk about what might happen if a license is revoked
So, cheaper? No
"Better" graphics? No
More game selection? No
More convenient? Barely
Trading, borrowing, etc. etc.? No
Unforseen consequences? Yes
1/6 for the consumer is far short of an improvement, I'm not sure cloud computing is the "future" of gaming, whether it prevents piracy or not.
However, technology moves quickly, and bandwidth (and perhaps latency to a certain degree) will certainly be less and less of an issue. And the pricing could be adjusted in the future. I personally would like to see a higher subscription fee where I can play any game (more like rent than purchase, and up to X games each month or so perhaps), and then the alternative, which is a very low or non-existent subscription fee, and a fairly cheap price for each game. It needs to be noticeably cheaper than the physical thing!
Maybe the pricing model I'm suggesting is unrealistic. It certainly seems that way now, but you never know where the market might end up in the future. I would certainly be willing to only "rent" games (I can only play them for as long as I pay the flat subscription fee), as long as it was markedly cheaper than buying them at a store.
Clever signature text goes here.
The summary says the link is an unbiased review, but I pulled this gem from the review:
OnLive is piracy-proof because no game code ever leaves the datacentres housing their servers - great for the publishers and developers, but perhaps not so appealing to the customer.
That is very loaded/biased language. I think I'll use this as an example in my next class (as a good example of biased language).
Latency, frame rate issues, licensing, lag, etc etc etc. So what? If I had a laptop with a crap Intel graphics card that can't play the game I want with the physical disc or Steam, OnLive is great. Don't play the game or play the game that looks a bit worse than "it should", I'll play the game. OnLive isn't for the hardcore gamer (like me with my desktop), but for the casual gamer (like my sister with her college laptop). Don't like it? Fine, just leave the "subpar" gaming for the rest of the world, the majority in this case.