OnLive Cloud-Based Gaming: Is This The End Of High-End PCs?

[cangelini]

We've been hearing about OnLive's cloud-based service for more than a year now. The company claims it can offer the latest games on demand, without a need for meaty hardware requirements on the client end. Could this really be the end of high-end PCs?

OnLive Cloud-Based Gaming: Is This The End Of High-End PCs? : Read more

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Nice article! Great for gaming on the go for low end PCs and notebooks, but the gaming PC remains king!

 

[lashton]

i singed up for this and still have not been accepted, also i would prefer my local PC to play don't trust online companies

 

[Ragnar-Kon]

I know for me it isn't the end of high-end machines.
Reason? Well...
1. My internet isn't all that fast (1.6mb/s down, which is the fastest available in my area), which is far from their required 5mb down.
2. I actually enjoy shopping for parts and putting together a PC. I often spend hours on Newegg searching for parts, even if I have no plans on buying them.
3. I rather not pay to "rent" a game. If it is game I enjoy, I'll buy it.

Do I think this service will help people who don't know how to build their own computer, and who are willing to fork out the cash for fees and fast internet? Yes I do.
Is this service right for me? No.

 

[aznpwned]

It's the calm before the cloud computing storm.

With the big companies pushing towards the cloud such as Apple, Microsoft, and Google (Cloud Video Editing). Cloud computing is only going to become more prominent. It's just not "there" yet.

Don't get me wrong, i'm all for locally based computing, but cloud computing is only going to grow bigger.

 

[maxiim]

Somewhere I heard that thing service is a POS. So I'd say NO it is definitely not an end to high end gaming PCs.

 

[nforce4max]

Sure all is good till the network is down or suffers some high pings then all hits the fan. I much rather stick with the traditional rig when it comes to gaming and other things. Reliability is paramount when gaming.

 

[t53186]

Keep the cloud away from my PC. I need local control, not big brother control.

 

[JonnyDough]

OnLive Cloud-Based Gaming: Is This The End Of High-End PCs?

Answer: No. Especially not until we have better broadband speeds and availability here in the U.S. Nothing beats a LAN party. Nothin.

 

[JonnyDough]

Chris, I'm curious why you posted a picture of yourself. Do you love yourself that much? Its nice to try to get a connection with your readers, but in all honesty I don't care about you - I care about the tech. Posing yourself on here just seems kind of weird to me. I can already recognize you. Which is silly since I will most likely never know you unless I decide to run for president someday and decide to give you audience.

 

[vabeachboy0]

I was invited to beta, and it still has a a long way to go. I played dirt 2 on Onlive then i played the regular game there really is a big diffrence. Still too laggy for onlive ill stick to high end pc. High end pc gaming will never die.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]JonnyDough[/nom]Chris, I'm curious why you posted a picture of yourself. Do you love yourself that much? Its nice to try to get a connection with your readers, but in all honesty I don't care about you - I care about the tech. Posing yourself on here just seems kind of weird to me. I can already recognize you. Which is silly since I will most likely never know you unless I decide to run for president someday and decide to give you audience.[/citation]

Because it's an editorial. =)

 

[giovanni86]

No. On-live to me is a dead end service. The end of High end PC's not likely in my life time. I take what another said i like spending hours, days, weeks, months of my time researching parts for my new build even if i don't build my next PC for another 2 years. I think this will work for ppl who get bored with games easily and don't care on OWNING the game. No thanks not for me, but i am sure it will sucker in quite a crowd. Good for them.

 

[jaysbob]

but I enjoy having and upgrading hardware. I fiddle with my PC probably almost as much as I spend actually gaming on it. a cloud service takes out half the fun.

 

[godnodog]

Every1 keeps forgeting something, and that something has "the size of the world", wich is: What is the position of Nvidia, AMD and Intel,Sony and Nintendo, and at some level Microsoft with their XBox, and Asus...etc ? These guys are on the hardware busyness, and if cloud goes deep, the domestic market will shrink heavely, taking out of business a lot of companies.

I won´t be surprise if these giants would join forces and started doing something to stop, probably only partialy, cloud computing.

I, on the other hand, think this system, at least for gaming, is a fail system, only because it´s 100% online.

 

[zfsnoobman]

any chance you can tell us how much data you transfer every hour or so? Most people have internet bandwidth caps so it would be great if we could ballpark how much we use based on number of hours.

 

[gerand]

This isn't exactly new. Hasn't anyone heard of StreamMyGame?
http://www.streammygame.com/

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]zfsnoobman[/nom]any chance you can tell us how much data you transfer every hour or so? Most people have internet bandwidth caps so it would be great if we could ballpark how much we use based on number of hours.[/citation]

Well, let's do a little math.

They require 5 Mb/s for an HD stream. Let's say they allow 20% for overhead, so you might be using 4 Mb/s, which is 500 KB/s (note the difference between bits and bytes). That's 30 MB/min or 1.8 GB/hr. That's by no means scientific, but a ballpark figure making a big assumption about what the service actually needs for fluid game play.

 

[walt526]

I tried it the other day for less than 30 minutes before calling it quits. I definitely wouldn't pay for it at this point. It was too choppy and slow to respond to input. My internet connection wasn't the problem (have a 20Mbps connection that is consistently tests at that level, and I was the only on at the time) and my computer was well above the minimum specs.

 

[Wamphryi]

I doubt that Cloud will topple the High End PC as King. When Citrix Winframe and Terminal Services appeared around 1996 it was claimed that we would see an end to client PC's in the work place. That did not happen. The netbook was supposed to topple the PC and the Notebook and that didnt happen. Playstation 3 and XBox were supposed to kill off the PC as gaming platform. Again that didnt happen. The PC is too versatile to be toppled anytime soon. Not only does a PC game it does a whole lot of other things that are beyond the capabilities of any specialised piece of hardware or Internet service. Care to try video editing on your Xbox? It would be like telling everyone that they will trade their cars for a bus service or their houses for a tiny apartment in a huge block of units to be shared with many others. The PC is one of the few areas of life left where you can make something in your own image and people are not going to turn their backs on that. Cloud computing is awesome for the many people who have low resources and require access to services they normally wouldnt be able to afford. For people who have a choice however Cloud has a limited appeal.

 

[Tomtompiper]

A great man once said "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." This will allow Geeks like me to ditch MS (I only use it for Games) and run high end games on our Linux Distro's. This works, not well, but it is after all a young technology, and at the rate TV's are developing how long before they meet the minimum spec for this service. Crisis on your 50" LCD at 1080P anybody?

 

[feeddagoat]

If countries (like UK for one) can get faster connections and therefore wi-fi sorted then this is perfect for netbooks. Would be nice to compare this to consoles who ultimately are in the biggest danger. 20fps @ 720p isn't far off what consoles are doing atm. I can see the next gen race coming down to your standard consoles vs internet connections. We know hardware for consoles will improve but can broadband speeds and future demands of the cloud in general keep up? Onlive's fate isn't in its own hands as its shown it has a sound business model (if enough people uptake), Solves the "DRM issue" and tackles one of the biggest problems for gamers ie. hardware but Until internet connections speed up then top end gaming elite will still be the PC. This "arms" race suits me tho as we could do with faster broadband being put in place. With BT looking for the government to pay for fiber to cabnet rather than themselves, Onlive could become a big investor if its to look after its own interests. ATM we get up 8MB/s and even tho im less than a mile form the exchange, Im lucky to see more than 2MB/s on a very good day. If Onlive here encourages faster broadband then its been a success in my eyes, at least a success for trail blazing cloud computing on a larger scale.

 

[dragonfang18]

If more people buy this, then high end graphics cards would be cheaper, due to a drop in demand, however, graphics card makers may stop making graphics cards for no profits... Of course, this is just one of the many possibilities...

 

[Badgerman]

I bought Crysis online and had to install EA Game Mananger. I got a 5870 with DIRT2 and had to install Steam. These programs are crap. I will never purchase any game without the CD/DVD. Steam updates, I start crashing. I just did a clean install and my CVrysis, Dirt2, DreamKiller are gone cuz I won't put this crap software on my system.

 

[thegreathuntingdolphin]

2. I actually enjoy shopping for parts and putting together a PC. I often spend hours on Newegg searching for parts, even if I have no plans on buying them.

Well said.

As far as OnLive goes, it will win in the long run (well, maybe onlive won't but the technology will). However, I see it killing consoles more than anything. They could even come out with a "console": a small, weak-to-moderate pc with usb ports, easy connection to tvs, an easy to use linux OS, HDD, gigabit ethernet, and n wireless integrated (so basically just an customized OnLive htpc). That could kill consoles if you got the cloud service down. It would be dirt cheap (they could probably sell it for under $200). You pay an annual subscription like xbox live and get access to the service, friends, etc (like steam and xbox live combined). Boom!

It will be interesting to see where this tech will be in a few years when the next generation of consoles comes out. We aren't very far off from widespread fast internet. Cable companies are quickly rolling out their DOCSIS 3.0, AT&T has Uverse, and Verizon has FIOS.

If anything, I think OnLive will bring about a surge in PCs vs Consoles. OnLive might help increase the use of HTPCs. It might actually help bring about the first true hybrid gaming console HTPC.