OnLive To Launch In UK This Autumn

arcticstoat writes "Cloud-based gaming platform OnLive has announced plans to launch in the UK this Autumn, with Onlive.co.uk opening for OnLive player tag registration on 7 June. OnLive runs games on remote servers and streams them back to subscribers, but until now it's only been available in some areas of the US."

Comments

This has to fail

[Rik Sweeney]

The only reason being that if it starts doing well it'll slowly become the new DRM.

Re:This has to fail

[Inda]

How can it not fail?

My packets take 50ms and five hops just leaving my ISP's network.

How will everyone cope with the laaaaaaaaaaag?

Re:This has to fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Slowly?

This is a publisher's wet dream; they'll let OnLive solve all the problems, then jump on it.
Services like Steam are already halfway there.

Re:This has to fail

[Canazza]

Any serious gamer won't be wowed by this, Digital Downloads are here to stay as the replacement for brick-and-mortar. If On-live does get popular it will be as an alternative to rental, or game demos. Interactive Streaming video cannot compare to playing locally on your PC, even if the graphics aren't maxed out. Look at the Wii, it trounced its opposition with gameplay over graphics, and the only benifit I can see from On-Live is that you get the best graphical quality while sacrificing everything else, which isn't what gamers want any more.

Beyond that, I'm certain that all this takes alot of cash to set up, and I wonder how good the return on investment is.

With On-live, it does seem like one of those things that will have very very fine margins. If they don't invest enough, the product will be crap, and no-one will use it. Invest alot and you'll get a wonderful product that's not making any money. I wonder if there is a balance out there, and if anyone really cares.

Re:This has to fail

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Are you against Netflix streaming, too?

Re:This has to fail

[citizenr]

Any serious gamer won't be wowed by this

That is the problem, Serious gamers are 30% of the market _now_, and casual gaming is taking over (think farmville). We used to laugh at FPS games with a gamepad ... until COD4 set record XBOX sales and market turned away from Us serious gamers and started catering to handicapped drolling 13 year old couch potatoes with pads.

Re:This has to fail

[Anonymous Coward]

This will appeal to the casual Wii/iPad level users, not 360/PS3 and PC types. That's a pretty big market. There's no need to write it off just because you personally are worried about it.

Rental media is our future, pay per play across the board. It's going to take a while to get their, but the writing is on the wall in very large letters.

Re:This has to fail

[Stormthirst]

Do you mean this from a DRM point or a technical point?

DRM: Well, apart from the fact that Blockbuster went bust, people still want to be able to rent movies. Not everyone wants a massive DVD/Blu-ray collection cluttering up their houses, and most people are turning away from $15 theatre tickets in favour of $8 per month for Netflix. The cost is incomparable. It is also conceivable that not everyone wants to pirate the stuff they want to watch.

Technical: The difference is the lag time. Netflix can do a lot of buffering, but with games it's interactive - how do you buffer when you don't know what is coming up?

Either way, your comparison isn't one.

Re:This has to fail

[Anonymous Coward]

We stopped laughing at FPS on gamepad in 1997 when Goldeneye 64 was better than any PC FPS before or since.

Re:This has to fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital Downloads?

How can a download not be digital?

Consumer lingo is getting out of hand

Re:This has to fail

[icebraining]

Yeah, but the casual gaming crowd that plays Farmville and similar doesn't need to render them on a GPU farm, any smartphone GPU is enough.

Re:This has to fail

[Anonymous Coward]

We stopped laughing at FPS on gamepad

Speak for yourself.
Nothing comes close to the mouse/keyboard combo for FPS or RTS.

Of course, fighting and sports games are better on the gamepad.
Then there's more specialized controllers like sticks and wheels for flight and racing games (though a pad usually beats the keyboard in these).

As an avid PC gamer, I have a gamepad for certain games.
But when it comes to FPS, you'll have to pry my mouse from my cold, dead hands.

Re:This has to fail

[Anonymous Coward]

hahaha, you're hilarious.

Re:This has to fail

[BenevolentP]

Yes, Serious Gamer, it's US smart foamy mouthed PC gamers versus THEM, the gamepad-wielding idiots!

Really, "Serious gamers" who "laugh at FPS games with a gamepad"... what do serious gamers actually do? I mean I play a lot, own hundreds of games, all consoles, a capable PC (though I rarely play on that platform anymore). But I still don't know what to do to become a serious gamer.

Re:This has to fail

[Shrike82]

As a poster below mentioned, casual gamers are taking over. OnLive theoretically eliminates a huge proportion of cheaters, something that sounds pretty attractive to any sort of gamer, but probably even more so to someone who just wants to jump into a game and have a bit of a laugh after work.

Re:This has to fail

[KarrdeSW]

Ever watch analog tv and recorded it on a VCR?

Re:This has to fail

[KarrdeSW]

Technical: The difference is the lag time. Netflix can do a lot of buffering, but with games it's interactive - how do you buffer when you don't know what is coming up?

Maybe the reason this works is because our button mashing is just becoming that predictable? ;P

Re:This has to fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally "serious gamer" means a gamer who is highly skilled at gaming. Logically, someone who is highly skilled is going to use the best controller for a particular game type and a gamepad is not the controller for FPS games. No matter how much you play an FPS with a gamepad, you will never be able to come close to competing against someone using a mouse, even a noob.

Re:This has to fail

[Canazza]

I class "Serious Gamer" as someone who has Video Games as their primary hobby. Regardless of skill and/or amount of games owned.

Re:This has to fail

[MogNuts]

Thought that too. That's why I was thrilled when Homefront was released on it. Imagine! Cheating just isn't possible!

Except it is.

Homefront has a kill-cam that even shows the path where the bullet that killed you comes from and zooms out and shows the path. I was on the largest map and it shows an individual kill me from across the *entire* map, through walls and through picket fences, with a *SMG*. This simply isn't possible.

1) There is no way to see me
2) SMG's just don't have that range
3) You can't even see me from that distance
4) It can't go even through all that material to kill me

Hence cheating, even on this supposed un-cheatable system.

I gave up on Homefront MP on OnLive because they don't police cheaters or even have the option at all to report anything. I don't blame them though--why would they--it just doesn't even seem possible.

This just demonstrates that no matter what, people will find a way to cheat, and the ONLY solution is active and constant cheat monitoring and cheat prevention (like security) as a process and lifelong policy, rather than a supposed one-off solution.

Re:This has to fail

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Oh come on, that's a completely different answer from the topic we're on. He's saying that On-Live is the new DRM, he isn't talking at all about the streaming quality. He's talking about no longer 'owning' the game. You're not getting a different scenario with Netflix. So why is his comment about On-Live streaming becoming the new 'DRM' a +5 Insightful when we're so happy about Netflix streaming?

I would thoroughly dislike

[Smirker]

I notice the difference between playing FPS games with wired and wireless mice. I would not react well to anything like this -- especially while I'm busy downloading my err.. creative commons.. music and movies.

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people either don't know or care, would land in similar ping times as others, or just plain wouldn't use it (the tiny hardcore-gamer group that would hate it for other reasons). That leaves them with a considerable number of potential customers who'd like a Steam-esque experience on their TV, without the cost and various problems of a console. That's not to say I think they'll succeed, just that they might yet have a workable product.

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[mwvdlee]

Not everybody is a hardcore twitch-gamer. Obviously this technology isn't yet suitable for all types of games and gamers, but I can definitely see this working for many games and it should be possible for most game types to adjust to a small lag.

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[TheRaven64]

I notice the difference between playing FPS games with wired and wireless mice

Seriously? The delay for a wireless mouse is under 1ms. It takes something on the order of 20-50ms for a typical update to be delivered to the screen. Even if you could perceive an extra 1ms of latency in the control input, it's dwarfed by the latency of screen updates to such an extent that it's not practical to perceive it - the framerate jitter within one second is going to be larger than the increased latency by at least one order of magnitude. Or are you another one of these people who claims that they can tell the difference between USB and PS/2 mice, because the buffering in the USB controller adds a fraction of a millisecond delay?

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[kevinmenzel]

20-50msecs? Not all of us ditched our CRTs for crappy LCD panels...

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[Luckyo]

Small lag, yes. HUGE lag that this causes - no.

Have you ever tried walking when submerged in the water up to the knees? Remote playing is a somewhat similar experience.

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[Luckyo]

Even "crappy" panels had a response time within realm of 10ms. Good TN panels are 1-2ms nowadays.

And it's often not so much about image getting there as the game actually reacting to your action. On the screen, you see the result of reaction, not reaction itself.

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[TheRaven64]

20ms latency is 50 frames per second, assuming that the game loop takes no time to run (typically, the rendering loop is a frame behind). That's pretty reasonable for most first-person shooters.

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[Anonymous Coward]

Or are you another one of these people who claims that they can tell the difference between USB and PS/2 mice, because the buffering in the USB controller adds a fraction of a millisecond delay?

I think it's safe to say that, yes, he is most likely one of those people.

NB: USB mice with the Fatal1ty branding and oxygen-free cables are immune to the effect

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[Anonymous Coward]

The color change response time affects ghosting quality between frames. What the manufacturers like to keep quiet is the display latency: There is an additional latency of writing to the LCD's frame buffer memory and some random delay from there to being actually sent to the LCD pixels for real. The latencies here are quite large for most monitors for a huge number of LCD's this latency is typically 30-50ms (or even a lot worse!) on top of whatever latency your GPU/rendering pipeline is suffering.

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[Luckyo]

This latency remains unchanged, and adds on top of live's latency.

Finally, as mentioned before, human mind compensates for this, because the thing mind is wired to take into account is not only the eye's information, but also the logical construct on how the world changes in relation to your action. That is only limited by latency of keyboard/mouse press in relation to game reacting and is measured in less then a millisecond. The reaction seen on your monitor can be slightly late, but it's not late enough for mind not to be able to compensate as long as the proper reaction is timely.

Not so on onlive, where game is constantly about 50-100ms late which is what gives it the image of "walking while submerged in water".

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[Luckyo]

And finally, where do you get buffer latency times of tens of milliseconds? Buffers, especially display buffers are designed to be on the low end of latency, so unless you're buying a 10-year old LCD, you're can cut zeros off that number.

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[Lunix Nutcase]

I notice the difference between playing FPS games with wired and wireless mice.

No you don't. What you have is a case of confirmation bias. In a proper double-blind test you wouldn't notice the difference as the difference is well below a human's response threshold.

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[Lunix Nutcase]

I'm pretty sure he's talking about the amount of time it takes the game loop to update the current frame on screen. You don't actually think game frames are rendered instantly, do you? The "latency" inherent in the game loops dwarfs the latency difference between wired and wireless mice which even at worst is a millisecond or two unless you have some weird source of interference between your mouse and base station.

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[drinkypoo]

For the typical wireless mouse you can have quite a bit more latency. Most bluetooth mice add a ton. Logitech and others have lower-latency wireless stuff, though. You have to realize that twitch gamers are affected by having a couple extra processing stages in their television. The brain really is capable of making use of that information. After a few thousand hours of playing a single FPS (I don't think I have more than a few hundred into any myself but even I've seen this happen) your brain gets trained to make minute motions based on minuscule stimuli. Training works.

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[Lunix Nutcase]

For the typical wireless mouse you can have quite a bit more latency.

And by "quite a bit more" you mean in general 1-2 ms, right? If you are getting more latency then that you have some sort of issues with your system or you have interference effecting the mouse talking to the base station or you bought a really cheap ass mouse.

You have to realize that twitch gamers are affected by having a couple extra processing stages in their television.

No, they've just conditioned themselves to believe that they are affected by that. Just as audiophiles believe that not having $4000 interconnects in their HiFi means they will get dramatically worse sound quality. Or videophiles who think that $200 dollar Monster HDMI cables provide "crisper" picture and sound. I've done double-blind tests on twitch gamers and their claims are just as nonsense as the audio/videophiles.

Re:I would thoroughly dislike

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a cute out of hand rejection, but unfortunately it doesn't hold up in the real world. There's very, very wide variations in responsiveness of wireless mice, even these days. You've probably been lucky enough to only use relatively good ones, but I assure you that if you used a bad one you'd notice it, even just mousing around on the desktop.

For example, I have a logitech MX3200 mouse, which is wireless, and a logitech G5, which is wired. The 3200 was released before the wave of low-latency wireless mice took off, so it's a bit slow compared to the G5, but is well within the range of what could possibly be explained by confirmation bias. You'd be hard pressed to notice the difference just mousing around the desktop.

More recently, I had the opportunity to try one of the microsoft bluetrack wireless mice. Now, this mouse is fairly recent, built well after the whole low-latency RF thing took off, so I was fully expecting it to be snappy. I couldn't have been more wrong. I was truly shocked at how slow it was, it was nauseating even just navigating around the desktop, and I didn't even bother trying to play a game with it. I have absolutely no doubt that I would be able to pick it out in a blind ABX test.

So, in closing, while I admire your skepticism, I would encourage you to do some experimenting yourself. You may be surprised by the results.

Re:First!

[RivenAleem]

I would have been first but I stream /. using OnLive, which results in fractionally larger latency :(

Swaps some problems for some more

[drunkahol]

Basically you're solving a load of issues like game patching, licensing, piracy etc for some other ones; mainly latency related.

I think it's a great idea. Publishers could set up rental periods, pay per play, outright purchases etc. Players will always be connecting to the latest patched version of the game. AI engines and game physics could be improved throughout the lifecycle.

My biggest concern is the client end. I'd prefer to see a local render engine capable of displaying the entire scene. The current solution renders the entire lot on the OnLive servers and then just sends you the screen image updates - is that right? I'd have thought that sending scene and POV updates would have compressed better. Then players could buy whichever capability render client they want/afford.

At the end of the day, this isn't for low latency gaming just yet. But that's purely down the nature of the internet.

Cheers

D

Re:Swaps some problems for some more

[mwvdlee]

Local rendering would mean by far the largest part of a game measured in memory, processor resources and storage would have to be local. And more hardware cost as well. Basically there wouldn't be much benefit to having part of the game online. Besides, I think the bandwidth of all that scene data for each frame is much greater than the bandwidth of a video frame but perhaps somebody more experienced with this matter knows for sure?

Re:Swaps some problems for some more

[drunkahol]

Thing about scene data is that it gets sent once. You then perform transforms on the models, textures & maps etc. I'm figuring that although there will be an initial load phase for complex scenes, textures and the like, there wont actually be an enormous amount of traffic from that point on.

Although graphics rendering is the largest part of a game at the moment, physics and AI are being pushed harder and harder. There are also games out there with huge AI & Physics requirements that are extremely modest in terms of graphics rendering. If I prefer 2D games to 3D shooters, could I not opt for a very basic graphics module?

Sure, this does mean graphics processing and graphics memory at the local end, but this is scaleable no? Android tablets are playing pretty good 3D games at the moment with very little in the way of classic 3D hardware.

This kind of stuff could be included as a modular part of cable set top boxes for example. User then buys the graphics module that suits their needs and the cable company provide low latency connection to their own hosted games servers.

Re:Swaps some problems for some more

[Smirker]

AI engines and game physics could be improved throughout the lifecycle.

e.g. Black Ops.

Re:Swaps some problems for some more

[Kielistic]

Thing about scene data is that it gets sent once. You then perform transforms on the models, textures & maps etc. I'm figuring that although there will be an initial load phase for complex scenes, textures and the like, there wont actually be an enormous amount of traffic from that point on.

And people complain about long load times from slow(ish) harddrives (and abhor the load times from optical media)! Imagine if every load period had to come from the internet. You're talking about giving up the last couple decades of progress for the only purpose of giving the, already asshole, publishers more power to be assholes.

US only?

[d4fseeker]

Since when is it only available in the US? It works very well for non-FPS games in Luxembourg, Europe with like 100ms lag total and slight but not critical delays in shooters like FEAR. Last time I checked (a few months back) the Onlive client communicated with a server farm in the UK.

Re:US only?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a trial data centre in the UK (Cardiff maybe), but thats being decomissioned. The new 'permanent' one is somewhere else in Europe, forget where exactly. Presumably it was more 'central' to their target market.

Re:First!

[Canazza]

actually, it's orders of magnitude greater. Especially if you live far from the data centre.

Beta around for a while

[wjh31]

My attention was drawn a little while ago to the beta of this being around in the uk I downloaded it, and gave it a go and was pleased with the results, but wouldnt use it myself. Pro: The video quality was very good, and i had no latency issues, i tried out a racing game and an action game, both fast paced and i had no issue with input latency. It's clearly a fantastic way for those with lower end graphics cards to play games, You can also pay less than full price for games in exchange for access for a limited period, i.e rental for games you might only play through once. Con: You have to buy your games again to use within OnLive, which can then only be used in onlive. So you may have to pay again fro games you already own, and if you ever leave onlive youd have to buy again to regain access. Bandwidth. The video resolution was good but used every byte of my 10Mbps connection, rendering it unusable for anyone else, or if others used it i'd see a reduction in quality. Note the implications of 4.5+GB/hr for those with caps When my provider throttled me to 2.5Mbps, quality was noticably reduced (though latency was still good) and eventually onlive game up, stating i had insufficient speed. This is a fantastic concept, but as others have highlighted it effectively becomes another form of DRM, but allows gaming on non-gaming machines at good cost

Re:Beta around for a while

[MogNuts]

I second this. Don't listen to all these BS /.'ers saying this and that. I bet you 90% haven't even used it. I never listen to armchair quarterbacks. Seriously people, you don't even have to buy any games. Make an account, play 30 min of gameplay for any of their games for free, see for yourself people.*

Anyway, I personally used it. I thought the whole latency problem would be big too. Honestly, at the end of the day, it works pretty damn good. For 90% of gamers, as long as you're not playing twitch FPS MP (like say Homefront MP) it's totally acceptable.

There are a few downsides though, just keep it mind:

a) Don't even bother to play it on a Wi-Fi connection. Or I found even through a wired connection on a router. Just can't handle it. Straight CAT5 directly connected to your cable modem, or don't bother.

b) FPS's do get a little annoying for even SP. But that's only with a sensitive gaming mouse. Break out the controller and it's totally acceptable.

c) If you're used to breathtaking graphics and turning all your settings up on high for the PC--and if this truly does matter to you--don't bother. It plays everything at med or low at 720p resolution. It will never compare to playing BF:BC2 MP at max settings, 1920x1080 resolution, with 8X MSAA. Think of it this way. If you're not satisfied with console graphics, you won't like this.

* Yes I know I should like a paid schill--but look at my UID and my previous posts over the years.

Re:First!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll give you "order of magnitude" but not orders. Keyboard/mouse latency is generally in the area of 8-10ms. If you live anywhere within OnLive's coverage area and have 800ms latency to their data centers, you''ve got problems that can't be blamed on OnLive.

Service that relies on UK broadband?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked, UK broadband speeds were pretty dire unless you live next door to the exchange. Add to that the bandwidth caps and throttling that is commonplace during peak hours and I think I can safely say this will not take off.

Re:Service that relies on UK broadband?

[Anonymous Coward]

Caps are going to be the key, definitely. I also hear the company is now not charging a subscription fee, the entire model is based around purchase price, so this limits the possibility of them paying the ISP for preferential rules on exceeding caps/bandwidth delivery. This with latency renders the whole thing "wait and see" in my book, I won't rule it out but I'm not getting my hopes up.

If an OnLive exclusive game ever comes out

[tepples]

Netflix streaming is fine as long as studios don't start releasing movies exclusively to streaming and not to DVD. The problem would come should someone ever come out with a Netflix exclusive or OnLive exclusive.

December 1963

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at your name, what was it about Frankie Valli (or however you want to spell it) that made you choose that name for a troll/FP account? Weird.

Erm, I'm in the UK...

[b0dge]

...and I just registered and played Assassin's Creed II for a couple of minutes. Is it autumn already?

Just launching? :O

[malign]

I've been using it in the uk for 6 months or so using virgin as my isp. Works brilliantly.
Never bought anything though, just use it to trial things to see if they're worth buying!

Microsoft lawsuit imminent

[Anonymous Coward]

With this service having a very similar name to Microsoft's Xbox Live service, remember what happened to Lindows, and MikeRoweSoft?

It's not a question of If but When!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._Lindows
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft

Nuff' said!

What abouts mods?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about mods? I doubt you will be able to make them with games exclusively on OnLive, if such a thing happens. You also can't play if you have no internet, or if they don't.

Piracy? That's unfortunate (to some people), but don't make me (I mean people who exclusively put their games on OnLive as a form of DRM) use this garbage just to 'stop' (I doubt it'll stop leaks) a few pirates who, at most, cause a potential loss of potential profit. Ridiculous.

Re:What abouts mods?

[slim]

The target audience for this doesn't give a toss about mods, just as Xbox/PS3 gamers don't care about mods.

However there's no technical reason why a remotely hosted game couldn't support user-generated content.

Re:What abouts mods?

[spire3661]

Mods are for the most part dead. Why provide tools for amateur mods when they can make professional ones, call them 'map packs' and charge $15 for a pack of 4 maps.

Re:This has to fail - i didn't notice the lag

[fons]

Have you ever tried OnLive? It's incredibly good.
They do some very smart encoding of the video signal + they work together with ISP's so they have servers within the ISP's network.

We had a demo at the Telco operator I work at. We were super sceptical about real world preformance and our jaws dropped when we saw what OnLive could deliver. Pretty damn good. Not good enough for hard core gamers. But good enough for a casual user like me and 70% of the market.

Only bottleneck for the moment is their catalogue IMO.

Re:This has to fail - i didn't notice the lag

[Anonymous Coward]

It really depends on the number of servers between OnLive and myself. Currently it's unplayable in Europe but when they have servers in the UK - who knows. It is good enough to try out some new games, at least, without having to download and install them. It certainly has a niche. If the performance gets good enough it might even be a real alternative to having your own games on your machine.

I'd be okay with this if they also gave you a copy

[Anonymous Coward]

Most gamers have fairly decent PCs that are capable of handling these games.

I do enjoy watching people play but what I can't get over is the idea that this company could go out of business and I'm left with nothing. Or the service goes down, or my internet connection goes down.

They should let me purchase a physical copy of the game and authorize it to run on their servers.

Re:I'd be okay with this if they also gave you a c

[slim]

They should price it like a rental. There are loads of games I'd like to play for half an hour to see what the fuss is about, then never touch again.

I'm supposedly a "gamer" and I've never owned a PC that was capable of playing the high-end games of the time with all options turned on. Even when my desktop supposedly met the minimum spec, I'd get random BSODs and freezes during games; I spent hours messing with BIOS settings and DirectX drivers without success, scattershot money at hardware solutions and although I'm assured it's not like that any more, they said much the same thing at the time.

I'm sure I'm not alone.

Also, I'll be interested to see whether they come up with games that do things that the typical consumer *can't* afford the hardware to achieve locally.

Re:This has to fail - i didn't notice the lag

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you won't be able to play those games offline, even single player, so that's a pretty big negative right there. What about some other possible issues?

Will the OnLive service provide the absolute maximum settings for all games, even new ones? Does the service provide 100% uptime? How fast of a connection does it require to stream 1080p video? How bad are the video compression artefacts? How much bandwidth will you have left for other applications running simultaneously? How quickly will it hit the bandwidth caps that all of the ISPs seem to be putting into place?