Comments on: OnLive could threaten Xbox, PS3, and Wii

A new digital distribution system promises high-quality streaming of first-run major publisher video games to many Macs and PCs. It could endanger the existing console model.

[shootthecops]

Find: linux

term not found :C

[aMUSICsite]

Find: Mac

Term found :) I'm sure Linux will be supported soon enough, if it works...

p.s.
"more profitable distribution model " I guess that means we end up paying more for the games in the long run...

[codynews]

Considering the system is just sending pixel data to your computer, I don't see why Linux (even with it's patheticly small market share) wouldn't be supported.

[ma-tarnold]

"More profitable distribution model" would mean - I think - that they aren't paying for the cost of making game disks, so on and so forth. If everything is digital than there's no need to make it tangible, and that removes a huge cost (think of it like an e-book with Kindle). So while no one can say whether or not the user will pay more until their prices are released, hypothetically we still pay less - the distributors just pay less as well. It's just a matter of proportionally who pays less (user or distributor) than the way things are now.

[itami931]

Digital copies of games has already been done. Look into Steam. You would think that not having to pay for the game cases, discs, shipping and other things would make the game cheaper but not really.

This is a terrible TERRIBLE idea and is only good news for those with a mac.

[the_skine]

ma-tarnold: Lowering costs of manufacturing and distribution of media has rarely, if ever, effected price. For example:

-CDs vs cassettes vs vinyl
-DVDs vs VHS tapes
-Disc-based video games vs cartridges

With all of these, the price for the consumer has either been unchanged, or increased (vinyl prices may be $2-3 more than CDs now, but it's become a enthusiast medium in the last two decades).

[jeffbuffalo]

So many gullible people ...

Rather than being cheaper, delivering gameplay via internet streaming is far more costly to the publisher than a DVD or Blu-Ray. For a game publisher to provide 30 hours of High Definition gaming to the consumer

DVD or Blu-Ray: $1 (print and ship to retail)
Streaming game: $30 (conservatively based on current hosting costs and QoS requirement)

This is an investor scam at best. There's a sucker born every day.

[paul.saulnier]

I can't see this being sustainable yet. The high amount of HD video streaming for avid gamers will cause quite a hit on the alotted internet bandwidth, perhaps pushing many over their monthly quota. All the ISPs in my area offer a maximum cap of 60 GB. Plus, this is a major nuisance if your connection occasionally cuts out. Cool idea though.

[Lerianis3]

Yeah, that's the big hurdle for these type of services: the bandwidth caps. Personally, I wouldn't want to do this. I buy a game FLAT OUT and then I don't want to be paying anything else for that game.
Streaming? Only works if the games are in a package and cost less than 5 dollars a month.

[paulsecic]

WEB TV sucked. I had trouble with iit from day one.

[Hoolock]

If this does take off as a service (which i hope it does) ISP's will be forced to up the infrastructure to deal with it and offer higher caps, ultimatley if the market is there they have to cater to it. This service will likely put allot of people out of work and consoles will die if it does take off but as for the possibilities of what this can do, they are endless. There will be no game box, disc, instruction or cover charges to any developer who chooses to join the service and sell thier games there. Meaning developers will make a hell of a lot more money and charge less for games. There will be no pereodic updates of £300-£400 consoles that you will have to buy as you will only need the one box. All games will be playable as there will be no own titles that only belong to certain console companys (Halo for everyone). Every game you ever play will run at full spec and everyone will be united under one online service for easy game invites etc. This will obviously move to allow film and television downloads using thier new encryption capability and will cost me no more than i pay now with my XboxLive subscription of £40 a year and the usual £35 a game. There are very few negatives to this product and i really cant wait to start playing every title on the same system, no longer wishing my PC could run crysis.

[bulljustin]

The current administration is pushing to get the US to equal Japanese broadband penetration. This kind of service highlights the need for those infrastructure upgrades. As long as they ensure their equipment and their communication channels don't get clogged and overrun, this should take off. In a very real sense, this is just the next evolutionary step from World of Warcraft and XBox Live. The potential upsides are too great for the developers to allow them to be strong-armed by the console manufacturers into not using this service. I doubt it will dethrone the consoles, however, as their competition tends to drive innovation. It very well could cause the consoles to put more effort into their own online systems, maybe even renting the console to the user instead of forcing them to buy it outright.

[Rolker]

I think that this service idea is amazing. Just to think that you won't need to upgrade you PC / console every once in a while is great.
But I'm afraid that the bandwidth limit is a problem. You need a fast, reliable internet connection for this service to work properly, and I'm skeptic that a 5M connection is enough for HD.
Another problem is the resolution offered. They are talking about 760p, but most PC games support 1080p and beyond. So, until they can match that, I think that their graphics quality is a limitation.
And of course, the price - if you need to pay a subscription fee of ~20$/month, it can sum up to more than 240$ a year + whatever you'll need to pay for each title you play. And this title won't be really yours - meaning, you won't be able to sell it as second hand, and I'm not sure what will happen to your game lbrary if the company crashes.
But, this is probably the future. Steam popularized the game digital distributions area, and people are getting used to the idea of having a digital copy of their games, and not a DVD.
And the possibility of playing whatever game you want on a standard PC is just mind blowing. But time will tell if they will be able to deliver what they are promising (and I hope this will be true also outside the US - which is a huge market...).

[selfkill]

Maybe it's a problem for US residents but it won't be for Europe, Japan, et al.

[conielo]

Everyone's internet doesn't have a cap.... I live in Finland and here there is no such thing.

[A_Z]

In theory this is an interesting idea. In practise it would be a monstrous mistake. Who can honestly say they've never had a problem with their internet or cable provider? With such a load on the infrastructure I think it would be taking a huge risk moving everything on-line. And not forgetting that while this may be feasible in certain countries such as the US and Japan, what about the many users who may not have access to a reliable broadband service? Not every country in Europe can boast a healthy broadband infrastructure and what about users in the rest of the world?

[sonymaster101]

agreed. well, my main question is, how can they say there will be " no noticeable lag". you can't even ping most websites and get any less than 100 ms. Add a video stream to that, and it could double. most people don't have an internet connection fast enough to sustain the DL speeds required to stream hd video, even if it is only crappy 720p. I can only see this working for those select few who have fat, uncapped pipes for an internet connection. but, chances are if they have that, they'll have a beast of a PC that can play any game thrown at it without breaking a sweat. Now, my question is if they have developed a video stream that supports 720p and can STREAM though a broadband (1.5 Mbps) how come they haven't licensed it out for other uses? It just seems so unreal of a concept I don't even know how they can claim it will work. They would have to have thousands and thousands of servers to even support under 100,000 clients, not to mention you would have to constantly be upgrading the servers and adding new ones. I'm sure most of you guys have seen the demo video, but there is one thing they didn't explain in that. In the demo, the server running everything was probably in the room behind them, and even if he wasn't playing directly off the server itself, the client PC was likely connected to the server on a gigabit Ethernet network, which equals virtually zero lag.

The only way to have video that doesn't lose quality wh3en compressed is to not compress it. thus, the games played on their service wont look anywhere near what they would if run on the client side. If I spent 500 bucks, I could easily upgrade my PC to be able to play games at resolutions HIGHER than 1080p, without the quality loss of compressed video.

Plus, I bet all those **** ISPs will love the sudden explosion of traffic on their networks.

[deanbvfx]

WOW.
If this system pick's up and has enough support form studio's ( which it does appear to have a fair few big ones) then it could herald a new era of gaming.
This is what Cloud Computing was built for. :D
My only issue is the last console to do this kind of thing never happened - the aptly named Phantom.
Still if they can sell the console block thing for the $100 they were touting it'd be well worth the purchase.
And this would be great for netbook's.

[Playos]

Netbooks would have a hard time handling this... a full speed gpu may not be required but some good horse power is required just for rendering HD video. Don't forget the compression of the video signal as well so you'd need more power for decompression. Maybe in a few years with the next generation of atom.

[yomommathefirst]

Won't work, And here is why.
Need a fast internet connection And reliable.
The controller looks terribly uncomfortable.
You don't own the game, they just stream it to you,
No DLC/MODS.
They would need Billions of dollars to be able to support hundreds of thousands(Or millions) People playing games at once, Or better yet Playing crysis at 60 FPS on HD.

How many super computers do these people have, And how could they have Made this technology without it getting leaked? For 7 Years at that

Price, which hasn't been announced.

No exclusives From other platforms, and only games from publishers that want to use this.

And Also, Bandwith...

[rnaoncfixd]

1. You don't think that by the time this winter rolls around and everything starts to convert to digital cable and everything that the average person won't be able to have at least 1.5 Mbs to play in standard definition? Also, don't more aggressive/hardcore gamers that play online have 5 Mbs or more streaming in anyways?

2. From what it seemed like, you don't have to stick with that controller (if you are playing on your computer at least). What makes you think that a third party isn't going to make a controller that is comfortable?

3. Fine, I don't own the game. Just like how I don't technically own SPORE, or any other game that uses Securom. I still get to play the game, right? It's still fun, right? Disks get scratched up, lost, or stolen. Also, I can stream the same game on any computer I want, no real install times or anything.

4. You don't know that. They haven't revealed their entire business plan/model for it yet. It's possible that the developers could work with OnLive so that it could happen.

5. Isn't that what the betas are doing to test the system? Let a little bit of people do it at a time, instead of just everyone on at the same time, causing crashes of sorts like a certain bad Apple I know.

6. Not super computers, "High Performance game servers". It isn't hard to keep quiet when the big 3 are so much louder.

7. Price is just s subscription fee and any other bits of hardware should you choose to. If you were smart, you'd just use your HDTV as your computer monitor and goof off with any 3rd party controllers that are compatible with your computer.
Even if the price is 30, 40, or 50$ a month, with as many games as you can play in that time span, it's much cheaper than buying one new game at 60$ a month.

8. It's still much to early to tell if they are even going to get exclusives within their own. We're talking about developers being able to do technically anything they want because their not having to rely on user's systems. They can release at a faster distribution rate at a cheaper cost. They can fix system bugs instead of asking people to download and install patches. Everything is fully at their end to which they have nearly unlimited restrictions.

9. See number 1.

[ewsachse]

@rnaoncfixd

1. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The digital TV (DTV) conversion is for the over the air (OTA) signal. It has absolutely nothing to do with cable companies. Besides, TV has absolutely nothing to do with internet access. Sure a cable company or telephone company may provide TV and internet service, but the two technologies are separate. Also, aggressive/hardcore gamers typically want to own their own equipment, while here they are just paying for access to servers running the games.

2. The primary controller included with a system is the default controller, so it is what people use to judge all the games.

3. Ever try using Steam on the PC?

4. You do not know that either.

5. Closed beta. This sounds more like a ponzi scheme run by Bernie Madoff.

6. "High performance game server" = "super computer". It is just semantics.

7. People who can afford a $800 to $2000 HDTV really do not flinch at the low cost of a gaming console. Only super hard core gamers play more than 1 or 2 games a month, and they like to actually own their games and equipment.

8. Sure I would really like to see that stuff stream properly. The internet in the US can barely handle streaming of fixed video in SD, let alone HD. Interactive video in HD? Not going to happen with the current state of the internet in the US. The situation is even worse in Europe, so they cannot even consider that market.

9. See #1.

[jinkster]

This has BS written all over it.

1. How many instances of Crysis could possible run on one computer? Supercomputers are Heavy on the CPU side, but Crysis requires lots of GPU power.

2. This sounds like trying to go back to the days of a central location where all the CPU power resides. This model doesn't work with games. You mean that one computer running 10 instances of Crysis can run it better than 10 computers each running one instance of Crysis? Aside from GPU power and bandwidth, they need to compress and send the video data on the same sever. LOL....OK.

3. Games require inputs from the user to be detected and acted on in very small amounts of time, even having a 30-40 ms lag would be extremely noticible in a game like Crysis. For simple, non-lag type games with would be ok though.

4. In this day and age of the internet, NOTHING this good stayes under wraps for long.

5. Its almost April 1st.

6. Compression technology is pretty mature now. For someone to say that they have come up with a 200:1 compression scheme that can be done in 1 ms, why make a video game system for this to make you money? This could be the foundation for SO MANY software products...

[rnaoncfixd]

@ ewsachse

1. Meh
2. Meh
3. Yup
4. So all around assumption. YIPEE!
5. Open beta's coming out soon
6. Meh
7. Meh
8. Meh
9. See number Meh.

I understand the counter points, I just wanted to support a new idea that I've been waiting to hear. Oh well, there go my dreams, crashing on flight Oceana 815.

[Renegade Knight]

@rnaoncfixd

Good point on Spore. That's why I regret having bought it. It's why I won't buy another game that does that kind of crap. I've used up most of my installs. Of those one computer died. One needs reformated and will be losing that install. The last needs service which of course will wipe the hard drive as SOP. That's 3 installs dead. They upped me to two more but that's not going to last since I can't even get back to where I was and I already know those will be refomated leaving me with none. I can't even dump the game since I already know it's not worth the hassle. This path is not worth repeating. Anytime you can avoid online activation you will be saving yourself hassle.

[tbonehauer]

the real problem with the controller is the L-I-V-E buttons. Many people were unhappy when Sony first came to town with their square, circle, triangle, x control setup...L-I-V-E is just stupid...whats wrong with A, B, X, and Y. They make sense if you place them so that its:
Y
X B
A

with that setup the X and Y buttons are like the X and Y axis and the A and B are set up the way they have been since NES...so people are used to that. L-I-V-E is a bad idea.

[Tod Smith]

This is literally a pipe dream! It's Sony's Cell business model to the MAX.

Have 3 Mbps DSL here. This means Wii quality games on my PC. Cable doesn't guarantee the bandwidth for lag free anything.

Show me fiber to the curb and I will believe this!

Models Similar:

1. Cell (SOLD)
2. Phantom (Dead)
3. VOD (Jury Still Out)

[Shaun822]

I keep hoping we will get fiber to the curb where I live but comcast has a gigantic monopoly in my area so the chances of FiOS are slim to none.

[8301]

I'm sorry, but someone's going to have to help me out on the claims that the service has no lag.

As I understand it, the service sends video to your display. You then send feedback via the controller to the service. This is fine if you live close to the OnLive servers, but what if you don't? If the data takes, say, a quarter of a second to go one way, that means that, not including reaction time, there will be a half-second delay between the server giving you information and you acting on it. This applies to "offline" play as well as multiplayer.

Isn't that worse than the current model, where the only delay in the player's actions is reaction time and lag only surfaces when players on other consoles are involved? Just saying.

Other than that, I like the concept, and love the dedicated media controls on the controller.

[Lerianis3]

The lag isn't really an issue, considering that the human eye can only process 60fps (there are SOME variation from person to person, but that's the baseline). Now, a half-second delay would only lower this to...... 30fps.... still more than good enough for most people.

[deanbvfx]

@Lerianis3

a half second delay would be 2fps. not 30fps.
a sixthy delay would be 60fps. so in that 60th of a second your mouse sends signal to PC, it moves your polygons your Gfx card renders it out, its shown on your screen. rinse and repeat.
This way its you move mouse, goes to pc, signal sent to their servers, their servers figure out polygons, stream the footage back, your PC still has to then on top of this decode the 720p footage too. then rinse and repeat.
I get an internal lag of 5ms, which thats as fast as my display is, if i start lagging at 80fps it get's close to unplayable. 20-40 is my average and thats the stage where its only my mouse signals being sent to servers, not me streaming footage back.
Kudos to them if they figure out how to minimize the lag.

[zidanetribal21]

@deanbvfx

I think you're unit conversions are incorrect.
[(60 frames)/(1 second)] * (0.5 second) = 30 frames

[jinkster]

@zidanetribal21

2 FPS is correct.

1 FPS = 1000 milliseconds

2 FPS = 500 milliseconds

0.5 = 500 milliseconds

[MajorSlax]

@ posters above

it doesn't matter if it's 2FPS or 30FPS.

30FPS is fine if it means one frame every 30th of a second. Nevertheless, if you get a 0.5 second lag, followed by 30 frames at the speed of 60FPS, that is technically 30FPS (hey you got 30 frames in one second, right ?), but you definitely see the lag, and that's the potential problem. Instead of considering FPS, consider continuous lag time. Regarding that, each person will have hos own standards. Personally, I consider having a .5 second lag every hour or so a maximum, more than that and I'll change platform. If Onlive together with my ISP can provide that, awesome, I'm interested. Otherwise, gimme my games on DVD or downloaded on Steam back.

[ciaran54]

the fps will not be minimized much, its just that the 30-60fps will be 1/2 second late

[askermana271275]

Is there a link to the site anywhere.

[aMUSICsite]

All the news posts seemed to not bother with linking to the site, but found it was www.onlive.com

[askermana271275]

What is the countdown on there website for.

[QMT]

Good luck dealing with latency.
When the end user has to send controller inputs all the way back to wherever, and wait for a video frame to come all the way back form wherever, lag is going to happen. Period.

[rapier1]

Yeah, unless they figured out a clever way to go faster than the speed of light lag issues will be a significant bottle neck. They can't even use a CDN for something like this because the content isn't static. They'll need to have a significant number of geographically distributed server farms to handle this. I'm also wondering how scalable this is going to be. They can oversubscribe to a certain degree but probably not more than 5 to 1.

[NewsReader_]

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on the latency/lag issues. The game play will have to conform to these limitations most likely. My problem with this is scale. XBOX Live can support 100's of 1000's of simultaneous players. The hardware required to do anyhting close to this in a hosted model is going to be astronomical.

Could be a threat as networks get faster though. Microsoft, Sony, and Nitendo will have plenty of time to adapt however.

[Lerianis3]

The hardware costs ARE prohibitive, to be blunt. In our homes, in order to get 60fps in... Crysis... you need a FREAKLOAD of high-end hardware, or are going to have to be lowering the video settings big time (lowest quality settings in Crysis, anyone!).

[3rdalbum]

This is a pipe dream. A narrow pipe dream.

[Playos]

I think technically it's a broad pipe dream... since we'd need full FiOS roll out

[Wookiee-1138]

I'll stick with Steam for the time being, Thanks.

[86lg4b4c]

ok,they lost my interest when he said "founder of web tv".fail

[Ukendthed]

I think you fail.
Steve Perlman was founder of WebTv.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Perlman

[86lg4b4c]

hey,ukendthed,thats what i said,he failed and so did you in getting my comment.now we now who failed you

[ddhboy]

I'm saying this won't pick up. You'd be hard pressed to find gamers willing to pay full price for a game and not actually own the software to run it, but have it piped to them via cloud computing. Especially if you're using this on say a laptop and you go out of the country or someplace you don't get an internet connection.

[Lerianis3]

You hit the nail on the head with the 'what if you are overseas, want to play this, and don't have an internet connection' issue. Until broadband is ubiquitous in the world, with NO interference by governments........ this won't work.

[blusky08]

Most average people rarely leave the country--maybe once per year if lucky.

[ddhboy]

Yes but will most average people accept paying an access fee for OnLive and then pay full price for a game that they don't technically own? And what happens when they don't want OnLive anymore? That's right, they loose their entire video game library. I doubt that this will catch on. Hell, Steam has a much better shot of doing something similar for an additional fee and succeeded because at least on steam you'd still get a copy of the game.

[Y_Less]

"In addition, McGarvey said publishers are eager for the kind of raw data that OnLive can provide about players' usage of the games, including whether they like or dislike games, how much they play, how they play and so on. That data is hard for publishers to collect with traditional consoles, he argued. "

Steam?

"Another social feature in the Xbox Live mold is what are called "brag clips." These are essentially 15-second replays of game action that players can share with friends if they want to show off their prowess. This is possible, Perlman said, because OnLive is continually recording the last 15 seconds of action. "

Fraps?

"Clearly, OnLive has set an ambitious goal: dethroning the console makers as the game industry's kings. "

There is HUGE debate over this point, go on Google and you can find loads of top sites arguing one way or the other well over the PC/Console issue. There is no way you can claim this with no evidence at all.

I can't see how this is better than existing models and can see A LOT of reasons why it's worse! It's never going to take off unless they can get a server in every city, town, village and hamlet in the world to alleviate lag. It doesn't matter HOW compressed the data is - size and lag are pretty much unrelated. I could get a 1GBPs satellite connection - massive throughput and massive lag, or a direct but small connection, small on both.

[hysonmb]

If this actually works as advertised, I'll be (1) shocked, (2) in line to buy one.

People said that Xbox Live would never work, streaming video from Hulu would fail, there was no way you'd get an HD video stream from Netflix... never count them out until they've had a chance to show themselves. The people who put this thing together have knowledge well beyond what most of us posting here can claim about hosted services. If you look at the model, all they are sending you is video and all you're sending them is inputs from the controller. They're in beta now and happy with the performance. One would think that they would be forward thinking enough to be preparing now for the possible influx of gamers when they launch. If it comes in at a low price point, a lot of people will buy it just to try it out.

I am as skeptical as anyone else, but, I'm not one to give reasons as to why something won't work when it is working. Bill Gates talked about digital distribution for the next Xbox years ago. The only difference would be that you'd download and play locally in that case. I have high hopes for this service and hope they can pull it off.

[BlueSuedeShoes]

I have a 20Mbs line from Verizon and I still can't get HD streams from Netflix. I don't think the technology is there to replace the console just yet. I'd say consoles have at least one more generation before something like this becomes a realistic replacement.

[dreidogg]

I have a 20MB connection via Verizon FiOS as well and I have no problems receiving HD streams form Netflix.

[hysonmb]

I have a 8MB connection from Comcast and watch HD video from Netflix on my 360 which is connected with a wireless bridge. If you can't get an HD stream with a 20MB connection you'll need to get Verizon to fix whatever problem you're having.

[Renegade Knight]

So far we have spent our free and bonus points on content. No plans on paying real money for digital crap that will die when the xbox dies. When that happens at least I can sell the games and get something back.

[kelmon]

Wonderful idea and I wish them the best of luck with it! Fingers crossed that the service works in practice as well as it does on paper.

[qbte]

Actually, I don't even think this works on paper.

[gsekse]

Neat idea, but high capacity bandwidth to the average user is limited. Hell, the ISP's are griping about pier to pier bandwidth loads now. It's like the streaming movie thing, it only works when you have a download area to stage the file prior to viewing due to streaming speeds changing or stopping momentarily.

The infrastructure needs vast upgrades to deal with this level. Presently, there isn't much of a business plan to pay for such an upgrade. If something comes along that makes people want to pay an extra $20 month for a faster internet, then maybe...

For now, there is still a significant dialup crowd, let alone higher bandwidth stuff.

Another example of someone building something in the hopes that "They will come".

[Alienange]

Prepare yourselves for the most epic fail in gaming history. What will happen to that full game purchase when OnLive goes under? This service is money out the window and I hope gamers aren't so gullible as to fall for this kind of ridiculous gaming system.

[Wild Eep]

I think it's important to consider that OnLive should (theoretically) last as long as the company exists. If the company goes under, it will do it early, and if it doesn't, everyone's happy, and no one should loose their games until they've been way outdated.

[teknogeez]

Seems like a good idea. Shouldn't think lag would matter too much - street fighter seems to run fine on MMORPG, and I don't think you're likely to get a game with more exact timing required... With games developing the way they are, the average video quality of a game is going up faster than the rate of internet connection speed. There would need to be a somewhat large jump in your average internet connection speed to support something like this, which is not a problem IF the demand is there.

Games are going to go this way eventually, they already are - You can't play a full version of an Xbox Arcade game without being online. Whether this is to become a leading name or the next big thing is irrelevant - what will happen is that the hosting of things that we currently buy in shops will become more and more digitialised. This encompasses all media, and it is much easier to maintain security and distribution for something which can only be used from one place. With this will come new ways to hack things - there are ways to connect to Xbox live, and play online without paying any subscription, using local software on your pc to emulate the xbox live server connection.

I can see this, or an idea like it, taking off big time.... eventually. For the meantime though, I can see people getting pissed off with this, and it never really getting a big enough player base to be cheap enough to warrant.

[NiGHTS4EVA]

this thing probably plays like killzone 2 with the input lag =p

[dodgeman007]

lag will just depend on the game your playing and not everyone plays games online....