OnLive Gaming Service Gets Lukewarm Approval 198
Vigile writes "When the OnLive cloud-based gaming service was first announced back in March of 2009, it was met with equal parts excitement and controversy. While the idea of playing games on just about any kind of hardware thanks to remote rendering and streaming video was interesting, the larger issue remained of how OnLive planned to solve the latency problem. With the closed beta currently underway, PC Perspective put the OnLive gaming service to the test by comparing the user experiences of the OnLive-based games to the experiences with the same locally installed titles. The end result appears to be that while slower input-dependent games like Burnout: Paradise worked pretty well, games that require a fast twitch-based input scheme like UT3 did not."
I just gotta saaaaaayy the waaaaayyy I feeeeeeel. (Score:2, Insightful)
What is it with all this 'cloud' stuff?
I've got half a terabyte of storage, a pretty good graphics card with shader support and a nippy CPU.
When there are raytracing cards with inbuilt physics, I'll enjoy a slightly more realistic gaming experience on my local machine, thanks.
Until then, I'll have to go with pretty realistic and the only significant cause of latency being my old neurons.
GOML.
Correction: for "excitement and controversy" (Score:4, Insightful)
Read: "excitement (from clueless arts majors masquerading as tech journalists) and hilarity (from anyone with even a remote shred of knowledge of the technologies involved)".
Look, this tech may - may - be workable for SimWarConquer, but for anything that's reaction based? No. Not going to happen. There is no technobabble solution to latency, and anyone who tells you otherwise wants your credit card number.
concern about patches... hmpf (Score:3, Insightful)
I recently bought a PS3 with some games. When I started it I was welcomed with "You need to install the latest PS3 firmware now!". So I had to wait for it to install and reboot. Then I inserted a game and wanted to play, but I was welcomed with "Updates have been found for this game and need to be installed". Which is pretty much identical to the PC, but there you often have the option to install the patch.
Re:Yet another infomation-free summary... (Score:3, Insightful)
The game has to be specifically written to deal with it, but it can be done.
Just the same, I think that this service will be a monumental failure. I just dont see how they will recover the costs, because they can't make it too expensive or the end user can save money by buying a machine that doesnt require their service. Those that already have such a machine (mostly everybody) wont even consider paying the extra costs.
Re:Where what people are? (Score:3, Insightful)
Less than 200 miles from Chicago. You'll be fine.
In fact you're already on their coverage maps. I'd be astonished if they didn't expand from the three datacentres used for the Beta.
Re:Correction: for "excitement and controversy" (Score:3, Insightful)
Mmm. Two out of three games were reported as playable, with noticeable latency compared to a local version, one being "right on the edge" of playability. The best experience came from a game that's largely about learning the track, which makes it not a reaction game per se.
Notice that this was while playing over a wired-to-the-wall connected (who still uses those?) and with a low 85ms ping to the server.
I'm also assuming that there was a certain degree of tolerance for a novel experience. Once people are actually paying for a metered service, how much latency and input wackiness are they going to be willing to tolerate? I'm thinking a lot less than for a free or flat rate subscription service.
It'll work tolerably well for some games, some of the time, barring server or transport snafus, ISPs "shaping" the traffic (coming to an ISP near you in 3... 2... 1...) or the service dying under the weight of its own success. Whether that'll be enough to support their business model is dubious at best, since the instant the quality drops, so does their revenue.
Sounds like a realistic test to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Because guess what? In the real world, people live all over. Onlive isn't going to be able to say "Just move closer to one of our data centers," at least not if they want to pitch themselves as the "cheaper than buying a graphics card" option. Sounds to me like they've been controlling who gets in to the beta to try and create an overly rosy impression. This guy was a more realistic test, a person who doesn't happen to be near their few locations.
That's just the reality of this. If it is to work well I can't only work well for a few people in a few locations.
Also the more revealing part was just how bad things look, just how much the compression degrades the image quality. The difference between the local and remote screenshots is almost the difference between SD and HD. While the Onlive stuff is 720p, technically, a ton of the detail is getting lost. That's just what you are going to get when you try and jam HD video in to a 1mbps stream. Only problem is that detracts from one of the supposed reasons to get the service. The lower the resolution and image quality, the lower end graphics card that could handle it on a local system. So Onlive isn't giving you the same experience as a $400-$600 graphics card, it is giving you maybe the same experience as a $50-100 graphics card. Well then, makes it much less worth while.
So initial results seem to show that the doubters were right:
1) Latency will be an issue. If you don't happen to live near their datacenters, your latency may make playing difficult to impossible.
2) Quality will suffer. They don't have some magic voodoo compression that makes everything look perfect, their compression is like everyone else's and trying to do 720p @ 60fps equals a good deal of detail loss.
3) Even if you have a good net connection, if there are problems or congestion, the service will be unusable, meaning you can't play your games whenever you want.
Makes it not so attractive as they hyped it to be, especially against powerful $100 graphics cards (the low-mid range of graphics is great these days) and $200 game consoles.
Re:1 MB/sec... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well yes, some people can. However in general you need to live in an area with good access anyhow. Also, you are going to need to have a good deal better than what you want minimum. If you want to sustain 1mbps without a problem, you probalby need a 10mbps line. The more headroom you've got, the easier it is to maintain what you need.
That is not to say it is problem free, even good connections will drop sometimes or have problems. Also, of course, better connections tend to cost more money. Not a huge deal, but it does create something of a problem when you are marketing to the cheap crowd. The people who won't spend $100 on a graphic card or $200 on a console may also be the people who buy the bargain cable package which is usually pretty slow.
So sure, it can be done. My connection is 12/1.5 mbps and I almost always get my full speed since it is business class (and have never gotten less than about 80%). Thus even if I drop a packet now and again, I need to sustain less than 10% speed to maintain the requisite 1mbps. More, my connection is pretty low latency. I see 40-50ms to many sites that are in nearby states and on providers peered with my provider.
However, as you probalby guessed, this is not the cheap connection. I pay a good bit for quality Internet and I'm happy to do so. However, I'm also happy to buy a good GPU and have games run well on my system. I've no interest in their service, though I've got the kind of connection you'd want for it.
Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
1. All game publishers will be paid for every hour of game played. This increases their income,
This will decrease their income. One of the great things about gaming is the entertainment hours/dollar value. I can spend $50 on a game, and get hundreds of hours of entertainment out of it. Unless we're looking at less than $.25/hr it's simply not price competitive with local gaming.
2. Instead of there being 3 console platforms + PC, there will be just one platform : the PCs in the cloud gaming data centers.
And what incentive do the console makers have to just go away?
3. The overall costs of gaming will be lower.
Gaming is cheap as shit anyway. And when has renting ever been cheaper than owning?
I'll stop here. It's not going to happen. There's always going to be a market for local games.
Re:Sounds like a realistic test to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Because guess what? In the real world, people live all over. Onlive isn't going to be able to say "Just move closer to one of our data centers," at least not if they want to pitch themselves as the "cheaper than buying a graphics card" option. Sounds to me like they've been controlling who gets in to the beta to try and create an overly rosy impression. This guy was a more realistic test, a person who doesn't happen to be near their few locations.
That's just the reality of this. If it is to work well I can't only work well for a few people in a few locations.
Imagine a movie-listings website for the greater New York City area. Now imagine some from Wyoming complaining that the theater in Cheyenne isn't listed on that site. The response that person would get is the same that your objection gets:
If you don't live with our covered-area, feel free to use another service. We have plenty of customers within our area and we have decided not to cover yours.
Not every business on the planet expects to serve every customer one the planet, and yet somehow they can still turn profits.
Makes it not so attractive as they hyped it to be, especially against powerful $100 graphics cards (the low-mid range of graphics is great these days) and $200 game consoles.
I think one of us has missed something. Either you're right, and OnLive expects this to kill all other gaming everywhere, or I'm right in that this is a supplemental service to gaming that adds a remote component for those customers that want it and can access it.
Re:As expected (Score:4, Insightful)
Trust? In what way, beyond what you would give *any* online merchant to whom you provide your credit card info?
It's like with honest politician: I trust them to stay bought....
Something i value with my games is to take an old savegame and try something new. If i don't "own" the game but just purchased a service, the game or the savegame may disappear.
If e.g. Amazon takes my money and won't deliver my copy of Mass Effect 2, i have a good chance to get my money back. But if i purchase OnLive to play Mass Effect 2 and they remove the game from their list, my "invested" time and some of my money is gone. If this happens 1-2 years after the purchase, there is nothing i can do that will have any effect.
Someone taking my credit card credentials and using them fraudulently is a known process i know how to handle.
CU, Martin