OnLive's Epic Plan For a New Type of Video Game

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OnLive's Epic Plan For a New Type of Video Game

Posted by timothy on Monday February 4, 2013 @05:03AM from the it's-everywhere dept.

An anonymous reader writes "OnLive's had a tough twelve months any way you look at it, but as a new profile of the cloud game streaming service points out, throughout it all, service never dropped, and the number of platforms it's on keeps growing. Up next is the tiny Ouya console, but in a wide-ranging interview, OnLive's general manager talks up plans to bring MMOs to the service, and even a whole new type of video game, one that will run on many servers, not just one PC: 'Look at how CGI has changed cinema over the last few years — you can do CGI essentially realtime. It could completely change what a video game looks like. That leads us to new technologies. Then game designers say, "What could I really do with a computing platform that is so powerful but also available across so many devices?" You're no longer constrained by computing power — that has tremendous opportunity.'"

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Not constrained by mog007 · 2013-02-04 05:08 · Score: 2

Yeah, OnLive isn't constrained by computing power, but they're still constrained by bandwidth.
Is there a big enough market for their service in the few areas that are able to use their service?

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1. Re:Not constrained by h4rr4r · 2013-02-04 05:19 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Forget constrained by bandwidth, the real problem is latency. Unless they can put a data center in every city they plan to service they can basically forget about it.
2. Re:Not constrained by wolfhead · 2013-02-04 05:19 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I live in a major city and have a pretty fast connection, I tried OnLive a bit last year and felt the video stream was still way too compressed. Why have real-time rendering in a game if the stream of it is going to be filled with artifacts and a capped frame rate?
3. Re:Not constrained by robthebloke · 2013-02-04 05:19 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  But if you're not constrained by computing power, you could do all of your 3D rendering using a real time ray-tracer written in Java Script!
4. Re:Not constrained by gl4ss · 2013-02-04 05:21 · Score: 2
  
  if he can't make the finances work by renting one pc for a guy.. how the fuck is he planning on making the finances work by renting some guy five pc's worth of hw??
  where it would have an unique angle would be on massive real time action, with all pc's meshed on a fast connection between each other up and no chance of cheating.
  nobody fucking cares about his pr shilling. get some meat on the story. "You can do CGI essentially realtime." NO SHIT SHERLOCK - I'm doing CGI realtime right now on this pc in background! sure, it's some shitty old gold box rpg game but realtime cgi none the less.
  
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  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
5. Re:Not constrained by SpeedBump0619 · 2013-02-04 05:38 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Don't think so small. You could write a real-time ray-tracer using LOGO and turtle graphics. Talk about geek cred!
6. Re:Not constrained by vlm · 2013-02-04 05:47 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  if he can't make the finances work by renting one pc for a guy.
  This is the best question about their whole business model. The stereotypical gamer is supposed to be a lumbering herd animal, right? Everyone plays the same game at the same time together online? So you can't make money off over subscription. So instead of the user directly financing a gaming PC, they'll intermediate themselves in between that transaction by providing .... Um...
  I can't see the health club model working either, where you get people to sign up for new years resolution and then never see them again.
  So when you strip away the tech angle, what is their business model exactly?
  
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  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
7. Re:Not constrained by CastrTroy · 2013-02-04 05:50 · Score: 2
  
  Yeah, I never really thought about it like that, but it's probably one of the reasons it won't work that well. Most people willing to pay monthly to play games probably will want to play multiple hours a day. Which means that they'll be usually a large portion of the machine's resources. Very few people are going to play a monthly fee and then only play games for a couple hours a week.
  
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  Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
8. Re:Not constrained by heson · 2013-02-04 06:03 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Correct, and they aim for the wrong type of latency demanding games. To survive they must go for games that can handle bad latency. OnLive has a huge potential but only if they stop selling an impossible product and start going for achievable goals.
  Guess: They have sold a lie to investors and are stuck in it.
9. Re:Not constrained by Luckyo · 2013-02-04 07:34 · Score: 2
  
  Turn based-anything comes to mind. Turn based strategy for example.
  But that's pretty much it. Anything real time is dead on that latency.
10. Re:Not constrained by Dins · 2013-02-04 07:50 · Score: 2
  
  An MMO could handle the latency issue better than most other types of games, but it would still suck. Back when I used to play MMOs, my ping was routinely 200ms. It only really got annoying when it was above 500ms. But then the rendering was all done locally and only my position and commands were sent to and from the server, so the game seemed somewhat responsive even when latency was going on behind the scenes.
  Absolutely forget any sort of FPS.
11. Re:Not constrained by Luckyo · 2013-02-04 08:29 · Score: 2
  
  There is a reason why people don't play football while wearing 10kg shoes on each foot. By your argument, that doesn't matter as long as all parties wear 10kg shoes.
  Has it ever occurred to you that benefit has NOTHING to do with enjoyment if no one is enjoying it due to retarded lack of responsiveness due to latency?
12. Re:Not constrained by TranquilVoid · 2013-02-04 13:47 · Score: 2
  
  Exactly. Local games 'cheat' by moving your character or performing your action immediately, without waiting for the server to say it's okay. You can't do that when rendering is done on the server.
History by WilyCoder · 2013-02-04 05:10 · Score: 4, Funny

That's funny, I read the title as "OnLive's Epic Plan For a New Way To Screw Its Employees"
I had forgotten about them. by medv4380 · 2013-02-04 05:19 · Score: 2

This is defiantly going to be Epic. Probably not in the way they are thinking though. We're in the middle of the Next Great Video game crash, and all we're missing is an Epic Fail like ET. Someone, unexpected, needs to roll snake eyes already.
Re:Latency by 0123456 · 2013-02-04 05:28 · Score: 2

There is just no way to ever solve the latency problem.
You could put a server in every house with a direct connection to a monitor, then you only get one frame latency.
Re:Please remind me again by Adrian+Lopez · 2013-02-04 05:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

No need to pull around consoles everywhere you go, just plug your laptop in and play.
Or you could just, you know, get the PC version of the game and install it on your laptop?

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"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Re:Bridge for Sale by hairyfeet · 2013-02-04 07:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

Uhhh...what EXACTLY is there to understand? The guy said that movie quality CGI is possible in real time and looking at the football stadium full of computers required to render "The Lord Of The Rings" which is over 16 years old shows that to be total bullshit.
I mean sure if you had infinite money to build a high rise filled with nothing but tesla cards sure it would be POSSIBLE, but it sure as hell ain't gonna be done by this company or any other and actually make a cent in profit as the cost of all those machines (plus power and cooling) will be more than they could ever make selling the service.
So sorry but he is full of shit unless you count "movie CGI" to be on the level of the first Tron from 1982, anything made in the early 90s or later is just gonna take more horse than is possible for this company to muster.

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NVIDIA's Grid by killdashnine · 2013-02-04 07:44 · Score: 2

With NVIDIA entering this market, how relevant is OnLive?
realtime CGI? by hierophanta · 2013-02-04 08:30 · Score: 2

you can do CGI essentially realtime
So, wth have video games been doing thus far?