OnLive, the future of gaming?

[Frames]

First, read this to understand a brief description:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/965/965535p1.html

Personally I think this is an amazing idea and has a lot of potential to really change the video game industry, however i do think that there will be no support from the Big Three, who have typically relied on proprietary hardware and software to generate revenue as well as develop an individual fanbase.

What do you think?

 

[Crimson King]

It'll fail miserably.

First off, you are STREAMING games, and no matter what they say, it will cause lag. It looks like the game is even played remotely and you just get the play back, hence why they keep saying "If you can run 720P video, you can use this."

It's meant to compete against a lot of companies, which could make or break it. Steam corners the PC Game buying, along with a few others, and Gametap is the only established PC Game rental service (and it took them years to amass their licenses and such). People will bad PCs may get this, but it has to be seen. Also, why buy a game when you can just rent it for 5 days and beat it?

It's a novel concept with some interesting ideas, but it sounds like a lot of other ideas that crashed and burned.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

If it is done well, it may kill PC gaming.

Why would anyone buy a PC gaming computer ever again if there is an alternative that is clearly cheaper than several thousand dollar computer setups?

There are a lot of people itching to play Crysis on max settings who lack the computer to do it.

 

[Crimson King]

If it is done well, it may kill PC gaming.

Why would anyone buy a PC gaming computer ever again if there is an alternative that is clearly cheaper than several thousand dollar computer setups?

There are a lot of people itching to play Crysis on max settings who lack the computer to do it.

No, it won't. There are LOTS more people who spend a lot of money annually to have the best gaming computer to play games at the highest setting. I see the games playing pretty fluidly, but I do not see the maxing out all settings while doing it. At most, it'll put a dent in the amount of gamers who build custom computers.

This service will allow people on it to play with other PC gamers online, right?

 

[Jam Stunna]

I don't see this system itself upending the videogame industry, but I think it's the first shot in the war between physical distribution and digital distribution in the videogame market.

Games are still too big, streaming is still too sketchy and gamers are still too used to the idea of buying actual consoles and games. But as the technology progresses, this will be the natural evolution of the industry. It's already happened with music, the movie industry is going in that direction too, and we're seeing the beginning of it with games now. DLC and downloading games is just the first step down a road that will eventually lead to things like this being the norm.

I think this will do moderately well, but the Big Three don't have anything to worry about yet. I'm interested to see how the Big Three respond to this though: will they act like the music industry and ignore the future, or will they see this as the next big thing and try to co-opt it instead?

 

[The Halloween Captain]

I don't see this system itself upending the videogame industry, but I think it's the first shot in the war between physical distribution and digital distribution in the videogame market.

Games are still too big, streaming is still too sketchy and gamers are still too used to the idea of buying actual consoles and games. But as the technology progresses, this will be the natural evolution of the industry. It's already happened with music, the movie industry is going in that direction too, and we're seeing the beginning of it with games now. DLC and downloading games is just the first step down a road that will eventually lead to things like this being the norm.

I think this will do moderately well, but the Big Three don't have anything to worry about yet. I'm interested to see how the Big Three respond to this though: will they act like the music industry and ignore the future, or will they see this as the next big thing and try to co-opt it instead?

Nintendo has incredible brand loyalty from it's fanbase, no PC 1st party games, and utilizes a control system that has yet to be adopted for PCs.

Microsoft and Sony often share titles with the PC, and have a control system that is inferior to the mouse for FPS's, which means Microsoft especially may have some issues. Or it might be a big boon, seeing how important PC's are to Microsoft, although not Xbox.

The biggest concern with this technology is whether or not it can attract a new market. If the market it targets is a big enough new group of users to sustain the company, then it can procede to overthrow PC gaming through incremental improvement until it reaches eventual superiority to the original PC gaming industry.

However, it can only disrupt the PC gaming market if it becomes something the market decides it needs. There is no way to analyze it's future affects and profitability unless it targets existing markets, which it might not be.

I couldn't sleep last night, so I read up on "disruption technologies" - inferior technologies that create a new market where there was none before, and then procede with incremental improvements until they overtake incumbent markets.

 

[Jam Stunna]

Yeah, I was thinking about the Wii after I wrote that, and that the hardware is necessary due to it's functionality. However, beyond that, I don't see it as being too big of a jump from downloading games via the Wii, PS3 or 360 to streaming them. I don't know if the technology is really ready yet (I guess OnLive will answer that question), but someday it will be, and the Big Three will have some decisions to make.

 

[Crimson King]

I don't see this system itself upending the videogame industry, but I think it's the first shot in the war between physical distribution and digital distribution in the videogame market.

Games are still too big, streaming is still too sketchy and gamers are still too used to the idea of buying actual consoles and games. But as the technology progresses, this will be the natural evolution of the industry. It's already happened with music, the movie industry is going in that direction too, and we're seeing the beginning of it with games now. DLC and downloading games is just the first step down a road that will eventually lead to things like this being the norm.

I think this will do moderately well, but the Big Three don't have anything to worry about yet. I'm interested to see how the Big Three respond to this though: will they act like the music industry and ignore the future, or will they see this as the next big thing and try to co-opt it instead?

A. Steam has been out since 2002. It has been the forerunner of digital distribution. I think all big titles for PC has gone through that. It has also spurred MANY variations like EA's version as well as Gametap.

B. The downloads are said to be really small, I believe. They mentioned porting PS3 titles, which if they do, that's huge games that they will have to compress. Example? MSG4 was like 16GB alone.

 

[Ryuker]

A. Steam has been out since 2002. It has been the forerunner of digital distribution. I think all big titles for PC has gone through that. It has also spurred MANY variations like EA's version as well as Gametap.

B. The downloads are said to be really small, I believe. They mentioned porting PS3 titles, which if they do, that's huge games that they will have to compress. Example? MSG4 was like 16GB alone.

Correct me if Im wrong but I thought the game wasn't sent to you just the image. So they only compress the image you see. Doesn't matter how big the game is then.

Man if this works it's gonna change a lot. If the lag somehow is non existent then MELEE has to get on this somehow.

Presentation on gamespot:
http://www.gamespot.com/shows/on-the-spot/?series=on-the-spot&event=on_the_spot20090324

 

[Crimson King]

Correct me if Im wrong but I thought the game wasn't sent to you just the image. So they only compress the image you see. Doesn't matter how big the game is then.

Man if this works it's gonna change a lot. If the lag somehow is non existent then MELEE has to get on this somehow.

Presentation on gamespot:
http://www.gamespot.com/shows/on-the-spot/?series=on-the-spot&event=on_the_spot20090324

Eh, they said they will have trouble with PS3 titles because tehy are so massive.

This will change nothing. All it will do is give people who can't afford a 360/PS3 or a good computer a way to play those games. Sadly, that market is shrinking annually already. There will be a market, but it will be VERY small.

 

[GenesisJLS]

Eh, they said they will have trouble with PS3 titles because tehy are so massive.

This will change nothing. All it will do is give people who can't afford a 360/PS3 or a good computer a way to play those games. Sadly, that market is shrinking annually already. There will be a market, but it will be VERY small.

Yo Crimson, I don't think so, I watched an interview on game trailers, and one of the engineers basically said that the problem is with the PS3 libraries.

Onlive will succeed if there is only a negligible amount of lag. I'm going to sign up for the service once it's unveiled. Also, Quake Live is doing something similar to this as well, and honestly I can't tell the difference between it installed on my local machine or streaming from their servers.

 

[Spire]

I really don't like the idea of streaming games. I'm buy CD's rather than downloading [in any fashion], so I would prefer to do the same with gaming. You can't even stream Netflix movies in good quality on the 360, so why would games work [near] flawlessly?

 

[POKE40]

Some Problems:
1)

But since everything is housed online

So no wifi. No games.

2)

Paid subscription service

So wait not only you have to buy the system. You have to have a paid subscription service since the system is entirely online. It will be mandatory to have the paid subscription.
This means the longer you have the system. The more you have to pay.

So we are playing off the company's servers. What happens if by chance, the servers crash? Well no games for you. I would wait at least a month before getting this...

It's like buying an cheap xbox 360 pro with no hard drive

Another problem games might run to is lag.
Sure 60fps.
But what happens when everything is online and by chance this company is up where SONY and M$ is? A lot of people will be on their servers, which can result lag.

Also note that the games you bought are going to be played off their servers. So its like having the game but not having the game.

They are going to get absoluetly no support from the Big 3. Guarentee.



Correct me if I'm wrong please.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

It will be dead-on-arrival. This entire business model may make sense on corporate stationery, but to the typical consumer, it really offers nothing of value.

However, instead of simply rehashing what has been said, I want to point out the real intent behind this system: DRM. I read an article about this concept, but I had no idea it would be attempted so soon. Basically, the only truly effective DRM would be to have the game hosted on the server and to simply exchange video and hardware inputs (even then, pirates would find a way). For the time being, though, this system is being advertised as a "miraculous alternative to buying an expensive gaming computer". Anyone notice that EA was one of the first ones to jump on board? EA wants control over its products. It is still unhappy with its defeat regarding Spore's DRM.

The bottom line is that there is no real value here. By the time you can afford a worthwhile Internet connection and a pile of solid gaming peripherals, you have forfeited most of the savings involved in just buying a new computer. Plus, many people, like me, want to actually own games we pay for. OnLive is a glorified rental shop! What makes it silly is that you have to play your games with hopeless amounts of lag.

 

[evileric]

I'm too comfortable with my console though, so I may not support this

 

[derek.haines]

It's a big promise, the idea of being able to boot games directly in any browser on any high-speed internet connected computer, and play them at high graphical settings. I can't see the support being there enough to make it a viable option, though.

Odds are, it would end up something like Netflix's streaming service: An option, but not a viable [legal] alternative to the possession of physical movies [games, in this case] due to limited provided content. As I believe its already been stated, there would of course be no first-party support whatsoever from the Big Three, leaving only select 3rd party games. This would create a relatively small and shallow pool of content for consumers, which would draw in some casual players but ultimately bore more dedicated gamers.

This isn't even to mention the fact that the games would likely have no user-created content whatsoever, long a hallmark of PC gaming. Someday? Maybe. But not this coming console generation, and certainly not until there's cheaply available, bandwidth-cap-free high speed internet available on a widespread basis.

 

[Superstar]

High graphical settings, but not high framerate. because of delay.

The only upside is what someone else mentioned. You can play Crysis on your netbook.

The monthly payment thing is what really puts me off. That and I'd rather play on my own computer. I can play TF2 at about 180 FPS, Portal at 250 [I have to turn on VSynch to make it not break]. I can run up to Crysis at mid, so I don't really think I need this in the least.

 

[SolidLegend]

I think this will work, as I have seen it in action. Problem is, not man people have 1.5mbps+ connection. Usually when you get that sort of speed connection, there's not gonna be a big bandwidth quota, and this thing is gonna be a big bandwidth sucker. Unless you have paid a lot, and you have got unlimited bandwidth and you have the required internet speed AND you're willing to pay subscription as well, this thing will be all good for you.
In my opinions, this is gonna cost a ridiculously a lot. As a 14 year old, I don't think my Mum will come to a agreement on me getting this thing.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

I can't stop laughing at this. News sites everywhere are heralding OnLive as "the future of gaming" and "the death of consoles"...

Personally, I will never submit myself to a system where I own nothing. I will not pay to play a game without owning the disc (or my own copy of the install file at the very least).

 

[Crimson King]

I can't stop laughing at this. News sites everywhere are heralding OnLive as "the future of gaming" and "the death of consoles"...

Personally, I will never submit myself to a system where I own nothing. I will not pay to play a game without owning the disc (or my own copy of the install file at the very least).

That's just it. With Gametap, a TOTALLY subscription service, I am technically renting the games. Because of this, I cannot mod the games nor can I play them offline, BUT for the fee per month ($12 for about 1,000 games) I can't complain. With this, it'll be even worse. In the early days of Gametap, they streamed the games to your computer, so as you got further in the game, it would actually lag. With this, they are going even further because they aren't streaming content, just the emulation of the game.

This is why I support Steam. You buy the game, you can play it online, offline, whatever, once you download it. With this, what happens when you lose internet? I know when Gustave hit, I have stable internet for a while, but when we went to other people's houses who didn't have a generator or had Charter, and I brought my laptop, I couldn't play Gametap.

They have A LOT of kinks to work out.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

A console killer is an inferior technology marketed to a non-gaming cround which overtakes superior consoles by being more accessible and/or cheaper than the alternatives (NES and Wii, while both consoles themselves, killed their competition).

A console killer is not a superior technology marketed specifically to a group that prefers consoles to computer games, nor is it merely an upgrade of existing services.

Zeebo, even among the gamers on smashboards, is turning out to be more popular than this, in spite of Zeebo clearly being the inferior product. Zeebo also has more in common with the console killer described above than OnLive. Thus, Zeebo is most likely the real console killer, and Onlive is most likely a false console killer embraced by those who think tech makes a console sell.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

There have been a dozen failed set-top boxes that were designed to only stream high quality video. In other words, they didn't even have to encode on the fly and respond to your controller inputs; they just had to get the bloody video over to your machine for a large enough buffer to start enjoying the movie.

It's just TOO EARLY. The Internet is not ready for this. ISPs are not ready for this. Consumers are not ready for this.

Bankruptcy by 2011.

And I happen to agree with this: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gdc-why-onlive-cant-possibly-work-article

 

[The Halloween Captain]

Now I am curious as to what type of computers they are using, and when this will be running.

I mean, they made some very bold claims; I'm going to look up what hardware they claim they'll be using for this service.

EDIT: I can't find much about their hardware, but more importantly, when is this service going to become available?

I find it odd that the video on this company's webpage lags when I try to view it.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

Beta lands in "summer" of this year.

Final product lands "winter" of this year.

And yeah, I have lag in the simplest non-video places on the Internet. I've never seen a site/service magically perfect my connection.

Speaking of which, that will be the ultimate OnLive john when I tell them it sucks: "Oh, well, you just have a lousy connection. Upgrade to 100 Mbps, and you can be awesome like us."

Typical 21st century corporate-customer relationship: "It's not us. It's you."

 

[The Halloween Captain]

Beta lands in "summer" of this year.

Final product lands "winter" of this year.

And yeah, I have lag in the simplest non-video places on the Internet. I've never seen a site/service magically perfect my connection.

Speaking of which, that will be the ultimate OnLive john when I tell them it sucks: "Oh, well, you just have a lousy connection. Upgrade to 100 Mbps, and you can be awesome like us."

Typical 21st century corporate-customer relationship: "It's not us. It's you."

I'm actually thinking of signing up for the beta test. I've never beta-tested anything before though, and I have no idea what my connection speed will be like over the summer.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

I wanna sign up for the beta simple on the premise that it is likely free for a while, but I'll laugh in their faces when they want to start charging me.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

I wanna sign up for the beta simple on the premise that it is likely free for a while, but I'll laugh in their faces when they want to start charging me.

Agreed .

 

[Deleted member]

It's not quite time to do this yet! We're gonna have to wait a few years, until more people have Internet and decent computers.

Anyway, I never did like this kind of stuff. When I buy something, I want it in my hand, I want the material object. Downloading a song off of the Internet isn't the same as buying a record.

 

[Red Exodus]

This sounds a lot like the Phantom. Everybody knows what happened to the Phantom right?

 

[Superstar]

It's not just internet "speed", it's real internet speed that's the problem.

Your bandwidth speed can be 100mbps for all I care. This isn't going to work well w/o something like fiber optics [which uses light, I assume most know], and even then it might only be maybe 40FPS at BEST.

I hear that's better than what consoles do though, but this is PC.

EDIT: I agree with article.

 

[Crimson King]

I signed up for the beta. The thing with beta testing that a lot of people don't realize - the game will not be done; almost, but not quite. Out of the 10 games I beta tested (all were online), I think two are still around, one being for free, and the other being part of a package now.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

BUT CK! ONLIVE IS THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE!



I want to also point out that generally when someone preemptively calls his/her invention a "revolution", it usually has several aspects not based in reality. Many revolutions were not really known as revolutions until after they caught on. Sure, it's easy to visualize a world where OnLive is commonplace and widely known, but it is equally easy to visualize the world where OnLive crashes and burns within its first year because the monthly fee needed to recover costs and become profitable proves impractical.

 

[Crimson King]

BUT CK! ONLIVE IS THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE!



I want to also point out that generally when someone preemptively calls his/her invention a "revolution", it usually has several aspects not based in reality. Many revolutions were not really known as revolutions until after they caught on. Sure, it's easy to visualize a world where OnLive is commonplace and widely known, but it is equally easy to visualize the world where OnLive crashes and burns within its first year because the monthly fee needed to recover costs and become profitable proves impractical.

Like the Wii? Sorry, couldn't resist, but yeah, this is marketing 101. Push your product as the ultimate thing to topple consoles AND PC gaming, without much explanation. The monthly fee AND the cost to rent/buy games is such a joke. With services like Steam and Gametap, ie successes, they offer options. Gametap, which HAS hit hard times recently, offers the option to buy games to own forever. This ability to choose is what the market wants.

 

[toon_marth]

If this works, I will miss the good ol days. If it doesn't...yay. I don't like this. I sure hope it doesn't become the only gaming option around.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

If OnLive showed up only having been in development for about a year with a current debt of only a million bux, they'd have a shot at offering a real decent price... but am I reading this correctly? 7 years of development and roughly 250 million dollars invested already? How can they not charge something stupid like $5 per hour of gameplay? The server costs are going to be astronomical running high end games.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

Why would anyone invest in any gaming company other than Nintendo?

Nintendo is the only major company that doesn't lose money on it's gaming devision. I can't imagine how OnLive raised $250 million from investors, considering that any good investor should know that both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 required years to simply stop losing money quarterly and the consoles only have five year average life-spans.

Video games are not profitable at the high end.

 

[Superstar]

^ See Valve. Or PC Gaming

I don't think the companies lose money on gaming divisions, or don't in the long run. Otherwise they wouldn't take such a venture. It'd be economic stupidity. MAYBE Sony loses money, though. I have heard that they lose money per console, but that's not all they do. Selling dev kits, games, licensing, etc.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

^ See Valve. Or PC Gaming

I don't think the companies lose money on gaming divisions, or don't in the long run. Otherwise they wouldn't take such a venture. It'd be economic stupidity. MAYBE Sony loses money, though. I have heard that they lose money per console, but that's not all they do. Selling dev kits, games, licensing, etc.

The PS3 needs a very long "long run" to be profitable. It is still the most expensive system, and Sony refuses to lower the price because it is barely profitable as is.

The Xbox 360 has been a sinkhole since it came out. Microsoft threw billions of dollars into the Xbox, and I think the first time the division received a profit of (a couple million) for a quarter was last quarter (I might be wrong, but the point is, the xbox brand is expensive and unprofitable, and has been for it's entire existance). Hardware is not profitable, and it is in fact an economic stupidity, as you have correctly pointed out.

NoA president (whose name I can't spell) was quoted in the New York Times a couple days ago saying that a game needs to sell a million copies on the wii to be profitable. Even if he was only talking about triple-A titles, the Wii is the cheapest system to develope on. Thus, a console with supposedly 2-4X the developement cost must sell games quite a bit better for developers and publishers to come out in the black.

I will say that it is much easier to be a developer or a publisher than a hardware manufacturer. A high end manufacturer is simply doomed to lose money in all but the longest run, where they might be able to break even in time for the next console.

 

[Crimson King]

An article posted today said that Wii games have to break 1 million units sold to make money, as you said. What you omitted: out of their 400+ game library - 16 are above 1 mill, and 9 are Nintendo made. People don't invest, because while it takes more to break even with the PS3 and 360, people actually buy games for it.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

An article posted today said that Wii games have to break 1 million units sold to make money, as you said. What you omitted: out of their 400+ game library - 16 are above 1 mill, and 9 are Nintendo made. People don't invest, because while it takes more to break even with the PS3 and 360, people actually buy games for it.

I'm actually surprised you didn't notice.

Those figures are wrong. Maybe they only take into account the NPD or something, but there figures were blatanly incorrect. Heck, VGchartz puts the number at 47 wii games, and while I can't tell at a glance, it looks like well over half are third party.

http://vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?name=&console=Wii&publisher=&sort=Total

EDIT: Although I do conceed that the Xbox 360 has incredibly high, record breaking attach rates. I could never figure out quite why, or even how for that matter. To achieve the game-to-player ratio of the Xbox 360, the average Xbox user would have to have spent between $400 and $500 on non-used games to date.