BT Gets Exclusive Rights To OnLive In the UK 128
arcticstoat writes "UK telecoms firm BT has signed a deal with cloud-gaming firm OnLive, which gives BT exclusive UK rights to bundle the OnLive Game Service with its broadband packages. Although OnLive will also offer its service directly in the UK, BT (and PlusNet, which is also owned by BT) will be the only ISP allowed to offer the service. UK gamers will need a connection that can cope with the bandwidth demands too, which is a concern when so many UK homes don't have access to fast broadband. Speaking to Thinq, BT's Les King said that we're looking at 1.5Mb/sec for standard definition gaming, and 5Mb/sec for full 1080p HD resolution gaming. This will effectively rule out the use of the HD service in areas of the country that can only get a 2Mb/sec connection. BT plans to start trials of the system in the UK later this year, and plans to launch the service in 2011 or 2012."
It's ADSL though (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's ADSL though (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm firmly in the don't think it's gonna work very well camp because of the extra latency introduced over local processing but I don't get your point about ADSL.
In theory shouldn't ADSL be fine because most of the bandwidth will be consumed by sending the video stream to the client? You're only sending user input back to onlive ( you don't send the video back to onlive too ) so an asynchronous lop sided channel like ADSL should be fine. Or am I missing the point and it's not the A in ADSL that you're concerned about but the overall unpredictability and continuous variation in the ADSL service that you are concerned about?
Re:cue the skeptics (Score:5, Insightful)
The critics will be silent when (1) they can try out the service for themselves, at home, on their own connections, and (2) it doesn't suck. Until then, there will be healthy skepticism.
I'm also skeptical of how profitable the service could be, even if there was zero lag. There must be a high ratio of "subscribers" to "servers" in order to pay for the servers and make a profit. 10:1, 20:1, that sort of thing. But demand for a game is not constant [steampowered.com]. Players mostly play at the same time - in the evening (local time). This is the time when the contention ratio matters. If 9 out 10 players cannot play because all the servers are busy, then they are going to wish they'd saved their subscription money and spent it on PC upgrades.
All online services have peak usage periods, but Amazon and Google do not have a big problem with them because users can be served by any data centre anywhere in the world if necessary. In peak time, if your web page takes 50ms longer to load, you don't even notice. That's what the "cloud" is supposed to do. But OnLive can't do that. All its data centres have to be geographically close to you.
Re:cue the skeptics (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that electrons travel a fuckton slower than the speed of light through a wire. 66% through standard coaxial.
Further, the issue is latency. In an average multiplayer game with a dedicated server and a good connection, I can still have a ping of 200 ms, which is noticeable. And that's without the server needing to render the entire scene, saturating my bandwidth. So, for a SINGLE PLAYER GAME, I'm using a good chunk of my bandwidth, looking at possibilities of 200 ms latencies, less if I'm lucky, more if I'm not, and if my network spazzes out and drops for a minute, or any router along the way fucks up and needs to reroute, I get fucked over.
How the fuck can anyone think this is a good idea? It's like Ubisoft's DRM, but somehow even MORE retarded.
Re:cue the skeptics (Score:1, Insightful)
It's a huge difference, because when you play on a LAN there is no input lag. 20-40 ms isn't so bad when it's applied only to positions, collision detection and so on, but when it is applied to your mouse the effect is very, very noticeable. It's pretty much impossible to aim in an FPS even with just a frame or two of lag.
That's the main problem with OnLive. Of course, it only applies to reaction-intensive games.
Re:It's ADSL though (Score:4, Insightful)
Fixed that for you. You still win .3 of an Internets though for being man enough to very nearly admit to posting technobabble bullshit.
Re:"the skeptics" (Score:3, Insightful)
The "point" to OnLive is to move the game to a server that they can control so you can't "pirate" the game. It has NOTHING to do with what they're claiming it to be.