onlive

The Wikileaks war is escalating and it's threatening to go all "War Games" on us. 4Chan's forces, the Anonymous group, are DDoS-ing the heck out of sites like PayPayl, MasterCard, and anyone who bows to "government pressure." Meanwhile, secret forces of, uh, governments, are DDoS-ing Anonymous right back. And who's caught in the middle? The poor, innocent routers. Also, SpaceX successfully takes off, and scientists tee off on NASA's arsenic microbe. Ouch. --Molly

Addressing one of the many criticisms leveled at its cloud-gaming service, OnLive today announced beta support for using its service over a wireless network connection.

According to the OnLive Wi-Fi FAQ, you simply need to get your system online via your wireless connection, log in to OnLive, and then select the Wi-Fi Beta option. I can't try this myself at the moment, unfortunately, as the various wireless networks in the CNET New York office aren't fast enough. OnLive recommends a sustained 3Mbps wireless connection; the best I can get here is just under 1.5Mbps. Hopefully I'll … Read more

It seems AT&T and AMD aren't the only big tech companies to see promise in cloud-based video gaming. Forthcoming cloud-gaming service Gaikai announced investments Tuesday morning from Intel's investment arm, Intel Capital, and content service provider Limelight Networks. Terms of the respective investments remain undisclosed, but according to Gaikai's press release, "Gaikai will launch in the summer of 2010, with servers powered by Intel's six-core processors and Intel solid-state drives, running through the key nodes of the Limelight network."

We have not yet had hands-on experience with Gaikai, but based on its … Read more

You may recall a post from a few weeks ago where Dan Ackerman and I reported on our experiences with OnLive, the cloud-gaming service that launched on June 17. We both had good things to say about OnLive. We were impressed that it lets you play PC games on computers not normally meant for gaming, Macs included. We were also pleasantly surprised by the connection speed and the in-game responsiveness, two things about which many people remain skeptical.

Though OnLive made a strong first impression, we still have lots of questions about its ability to handle an increased user load, the future of its MicroConsole set-top box, video quality and other topics. And what ever happened with Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2? Steve Perlman, OnLive's CEO, answers these questions and others in the lengthy interview that follows.

Rich: What are some of the challenges you've faced since the launch?

Steve: We got hit with a far bigger wave of people wanting to get on than we expected. We're running at our fall projected subscriber numbers, so adjusting was a bit of a challenge. We were hoping to have a gradual ramp because it takes time to get servers deployed, but we managed to catch up. It was a little uneven in some regions of the country. We were able to bring in some people a little sooner than others just because we didn't have servers everywhere. We still have spot shortages here and there. Dell's been a terrific partner, they make most of our servers for us, and we've been able to keep up. OnLive has been up and running 24/7 since our launch date. We haven't had any downtime, and people seem to be happy with it.

Some things like when you bring up your brag clip list, those 10-second gameplay clips people can make and upload to OnLive, we just never expected to have that many so it takes a couple of seconds before you see them on the screen. That doesn't affect your gameplay at all, but it's a user interface that we have a fix rolling out for.

Rich: Most journalists have reported on a smooth OnLive gaming experience, but in our post commenters were still skeptical about OnLive's ability to handle player load, whether it's with current users or as membership scales up. Is that simply a matter of adding more servers?… Read more

The much-hyped OnLive PC gaming service has soft-launched to a limited preview audience, and we've spent the past several days putting the streaming service through its paces. OnLive allows nearly any laptop or desktop to play high-end PC games, by offloading the CPU and GPU-intensive tasks of actually running the game software to a remote render farm, then beaming the gameplay back to you as a streaming video.

As unlikely as that scenario sounds, in practice the system actually works quite well, at least at these initial stages. The game selection is decent, the hardware requirements are very flexible, and the overall image quality and gameplay experience runs from acceptable to very good. The big question mark in OnLive's future is how well the system will scale for a mass audience.

For high-end PC gamers, OnLive won't replace your turbocharged, water-cooled quad-GPU gaming rig, and the insane screen resolutions it can pump out (OnLive is currently limited to 1,280x720 pixels), but for casual gamers who are interested in sampling the latest PC games, there's a lot of promise here.

Dan: My first hands-on experience with OnLive at the 2009 Game Developers Conference was a mixed bag. The online gaming service felt like an overly ambitious idea that was sluggish in execution, with plenty of unanswered questions about its technology and business model.

The final version of OnLive is finally, well, live, and Rich Brown and I have spent the past several days testing it across a wide range of laptop and desktop computers, with overall very satisfying results.

The main interface is very widgetlike, almost easier to navigate with a game pad than a mouse. One of OnLive's only onerous requirements is a hard-wired Internet connection, and the software wouldn't even install on a Wi-Fi network (OnLive says good-quality Wi-Fi connections can theoretically work, and may be implemented in the future).

The built-in game store offers recent games such as Splinter Cell: Conviction and Borderlands, alongside a handful of casual games, including World of Goo. Demos give you time-limited access to the full games, and paid access options vary by game, but generally offer three-to-five-day access for a few dollars, or the full game at its current retail price (up to $59.99). … Read more

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif.--Streaming-game service OnLive, which launches in two weeks, gave attendees at D: All Things Digital a look at both its initial service as well as some things that might be possible down the road.

OnLive CEO Steve Perlman said that, although gaming is its first application, the service is really aimed to tap the power of cloud computing.

"If we can make gaming work, we can make anything work," said Perlman, a WebTV founder who also spent time at Apple and Microsoft.

In addition to playing games on televisions or computers that couldn't … Read more

Patent wars reignite, the Internet is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and multitasking may be coming to the iPhone. It's an epic sort of show today. Also, PS3 gets in the game with a motion-controller, and employees like us knowingly violate IT policies like crazy people.

Apple’s iPhone 4.0 software to deliver multitasking support http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/11/apples_iphone_4_0_software_to_deliver_multitasking_support.html

Verizon to have 4G phone by mid-2011 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703791704575114130970301388.html?mod=googlenews_wsj… Read more

Update 10:35 a.m. PST: This story has new details regarding where the OnLive service will be available and why it was delayed.

SAN FRANCISCO--OnLive, a streaming video game service that, if properly implemented, could threaten traditional console makers like Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, announced Wednesday that it will launch on June 17.

In a speech at the Game Developers Conference here, OnLive CEO Steve Perlman said that the service will go live in the 48 contiguous United States during the E3 video game conference in Los Angeles, and, at an initial price of $14.95 a month, will offer consumers the ability to rent or purchase AAA games from the likes of Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, 2K Games, THQ, and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

For OnLive to officially announce its launch date at GDC is appropriate, given that the service was first unveiled at the conference a year ago. At the time, gamers wanting to play full-scale console games were excited by the service's potential for obviating consoles like the Xbox, PlayStation 3, and Wii. According to OnLive, the service will work on most PCs or Macs via a browser plug-in, or on high-definition TVs via what the company is calling a MicroConsole adapter.

At GDC last year, OnLive said it expected its service to open to the public the coming winter. On stage Wednesday, Perlman admitted that the company is late, but said that since it's still winter right now, they will only be about three months late, and that the delays were partly based on wanting to make the service better than had been planned last year. … Read more

The FAA has asked Boeing to prove that its new connected airplane isn't so connected it can connect hackers. We also discuss why folks think women aren't as good at math when all the women we know are great at math. And we hash over some Apple tablet rumors. I mean, how could we not? We also have special guest host Clayton Morris from Fox News, and Ryan Shrout from PC Perspective.

OnLive responds to bad press, more beta testers … Read more