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

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[citation][nom]calm12[/nom]This review is wrong on every count, your rigs absolutely are obsolete and so are consoles.[/citation]

I do hope that you're joking, since no server in the world has enough power to run and stream any game from the past ten years to the millions of gamers in the US, let alone around the world. Moreover, most gamers play their games at upwards of a res of 1080p. Do you think we'll settle for 720p?

Both your analogies are completely out of context since they don't involve running AND streaming games, most of which require at least two cores, and a high end graphics card to run at decent standards.

Despite all this, cloud computing may be the future, but it is hardly the present, as you so claim.
 
Its like a LAN Center, But broad casted over the Internet to clients in their homes who have below to well below system requirements for a particular game & thats the only real targeted area for this industry, which we will refer to as the "game hosting industry". I think the business plan was compelling on paper, But 20fps avg doesn't cut it for anyone, unless you've never owned a mid to high end gaming system & never have experienced a game running smoother then 30fps, especially if you were looking to become a PRO-Gamer. The article writer stated that it "looked smooth" well maybe to his eyes, But I can promise you, if you use to a high end system, you'll notice all day, & it'll drive you crazy. But as stated above, this service is hosted for people with low-income who can't afford a mid-high end gaming system. SteamPowered.com did a hardware survey & keep it up to date, it can be found here: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey. There are still lots of people out there that have bare, low end computers not suitable for any game play further than solitaire. For those people, I think this service would be great, But for people who have a mid-high end gaming machine, I wouldn't recommend this service. I would recommend you just purchase the game it self for local play. I mean, Would you want god to give you a fish to eat for a day or would you want god to teach you how to fish so your able to catch fish all day, for the abundance of the fish in the lake. I do give them props for the compelling business plan though, & I would highly recommend it if they were able to push more than 20 fps. I think 40-60fps at least, especially from a server cluster, especially if its complied in a load balanced configuration. The Only people I would recommend this service to are people that are on a tight budget, low income, & have a computer with well below minimal system spec's for that particular game, & are fiening to play the lastest games on the market just to experience what the games potential really is for when they purchase a high end gaming system some day.
 
I am running it on a wireless connection 10mg from charter. 2 netgear routers 2 comps running everything fine. I do have the high end machine and enjoy playing every game at 1080p 60+fps but the idea is great for gaming. I signed up 3 days ago and got my response to join the next day. I only see good things with this as think of it in a way you can try before you buy! With the demo's I can try new games I haven't played yet and see if I like them before I go out and buy them! Who wants to download a 4gb installable demo that you got to uninstall if you dont like and uninstall if you get the real game this way you dont install you down uninstall you just connect and play! I like it and am glad I signed up! who cares how good a demo looks im in it for what the game is!
 
I was in the beta test for the service and as a non-hardcore gamer I thought it wasnt a very good experience. It worked but the video quality was like watching an online video. Its hard to describe but it was more like watching a video then playing a game. I didnt like the fidelity.
Also this is marketed toward hardcore PC gamers right? I mean full priced games and a subscription service. Seems like PC Gamers arent the ones who need this, they most likely have a decent enough pc where this is an irrelevant service. Other gamers probably just play casual games like myself. Seems to me the real draw of the service is the library which steam does a better job at. I dont think the cloud processing is the future. I think the cloud as a datacenter is, where you can download games and store settings like steam.

The only way this service would work is with a netflix model of subscription and access to movies you dont have to then pay for.

Isnt the PC market segemented into 2 groups. The casual diner dash/Peggle playing crowd who dont care about the games this offers and the hard core crowd who already have a rig to play these games.

 
I'm surprised at all the complaints in both the article and the forums. I've had access to OnLive for two days and like it a lot. My machine is a crappy, cheap 4 year old HP containing an AMD 3500 single core with a 9600GT GPU and 2 GB of ram. I'm on a 15mb dl Comcast connection.

I own both GTA4 and Assassin's Creed on Steam, but my machine doesn't play them very well. They could be described as sluggish, while running on my setup. On OnLive I've played Assassin's Creed 2, Dirt, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Lego Harry Potter. They all seem to play extremely smoothly compared to the two games I own on Steam.

That being said, it would be nice if all the games had rentals. I can see renting more so than paying full price, unless OnLive completely got rid of their monthly fee. I also enjoy that I can start any of the games instantly. Steam sometimes takes quite a few hours to download.
 
well , i think is great for ppl with low pc's , but i dont think it will be a succes, not at all , in days when computers parts are getin powerfull as each day pass the quality will also improve , how it will improve an online service quality?? at 5mb down u need a strong conection , not all ppl will have that years to come,and not least, why should i pay for a game that runs on low fps , with low details , when i can get full quality on my pc,maybe with some few upgrades on 1-2 years..
 
I can't see them having enough customers to sustain the business. Since PS3 and 360 now have their motion devices, you now have all three consoles going after the casual gamer. It would make more sense to pick up one of these then to use the service.
 
I'm surprised to not hear anything about latency. I got accepted and played the F.E.A.R. 2 demo. I have cable Internet and there was an ever-so-slight delay responding to my commands. That's fine for playing Trine or a puzzle game, but not for any reputable shooter. I felt like I was playing on a console with my thumbs. Forget about the graphics, the response is more important to me. The cloud is not ready yet.
 
As others have mentioned, the bandwidth requirements will prohibit this in most cases.

The service requires roughly 2 gigabytes/hr. Let's say you're a modest gamer and game for 4 hrs a day on average. In one month, you will hit nearly 250 gigabytes. That's right at the cap for Comcast. That's without using your connection for anything else.

Throw in the latency issues and low-quality 720p limitations, and it really loses my interest.

I have a lowly Radeon 5770 which I bought last month. It plays every game I have tried at 1920x1200 with max settings. Playing games at 1280x720 would be like going back to 1998 for me. I remember playing the original Counter Strike and Half Life at 1152x864 and/or 1280x1024. No thanks.
 
I'm all for OnLive. I've spent $2300 on my rig, but I live with two other people. I intended to buy my bother a gaming laptop to help ease some tension. It'd save me a lot of money just to buy him some junk with a 720p screen and a GMA graphics. I've spent enough money already...
Would be nice if they started a couple servers in Canada though. Preferably a server in every city and major town (it has the potential to be big, so why not?).

Myself however, I'll stick to my 5830+5770, i7 920, 6GB RAM, 5TB of HDD space, and triple 2048x1152 monitors. :)

While my net connection may be 15/1, my cap is 100GB/month. 🙁
 
If I understand OnLive, there is no one time fee so you can play everything. So it becomes a case of if you want to play this, then give me a nickle, if you want to play that, then give me a dime if you want to play the other, I'll need another nickel. At the end of the year, I have absolutely nothing to show for it. No thanks, I work to hard for my money and I want tangibles. This would have been great years ago, although not feasible, when you were limited by hdd space, but now you can carry everything on your laptop and don't forget about the used game market. I can buy the game for at least half price have it always with no connection/crash worry,

One fee, play all games and it's wireless, give me a call.
 
Ok - I'm a "founding" member now. I tried out Borderlands, Just Cause 2, and Trine.

First, I get the "high" latency message every time I launch. I'm on the east coast, but I have a 2 mbps up / 16 mbps down cable connection. I acknowledged the message and continued. It didn't seem to affect things too much.

All of the games I played were playable. They still looked like highly compressed versions of the originals. The article's analogy of the "camcorder movie when you want the bluray" is not far off the mark. In the end, compared to playing local copies of the games, the OnLive versions reminded me of playing those games on low-end hardware.

For demoing a game and overall concept, though, I thought it was pretty cool. Would I pay $5 per month + some monthly fee (or whatever) per game? No. I'll stick with Steam, 0 latency, and much better graphics.
 
[citation][nom]gurboura[/nom]I think what everyone is missing, is you all are thinking too much about yourselves, and not the general public. This isn't aimed at people that throw down $1500+ a year on a computer. This is aimed at the people who drop $400-$600 every 4-5 years on a computer. Who don't keep ontop of technology because they don't want to, or can't afford it.[/citation]

Gurboura is right. Most of the people on this site are enthusiast. This service isn't aimed at them. It is aimed at the general gaming public that likes to spend a couple hundred dollars on a console every several years or the people that upgrade their stock PC's graphics card occasionally - ie people that want "good enough" and not excellent quality.
 
I just don't see the internet in the US being able to support this. Not to mention they could have problems with their service (which I'm sure is bound to happen) and then millions of people wouldn't even be able to play their games they paid for.
 
"I need another monthly recurring bill like I need a hole in my head."
Could not stop laughing after I read that.

I need another middle man in my gaming like I need a hole in my head.
Remember when you could just buy a game, install it and play it now you have to go through all these third partys to pinch money off you. And you get it in digital format meaning you cant sell your games ever. I know then you could just get the 5 day pass, but what if...#1 You really like it? Then you pay full price for it so they just made a extra 5-10 bucks off you. #2 You get the pass for 5 days then a couple months later you want to play it again so you get another pass then before you realize it you just spent 60 bucks on a game you don't own so now what? And if you do buy full access you cant sell it. #3 The worst case scenario would be someone steals your account now you have to rebuy everything. It would be fine if it was a option to get things in digital but its hard to find hard copys of games now and even if you do u have to sign up with some account just to play the game offline. Anyone else see a huge problem with this?
 
Seems to me the biggest problem is the necessity to have a wired connection. If you could play anywhere on a low end laptop that would seem like a great system, even if the graphics are not up to the level of a high end desktop. But if you have to have a wired connection, you might as well use a desktop and put a graphics card in it and play locally. I also like the one week rental plan. Then you could finish some games for a low price.
 
I got into beta and played dirt 2, borderland, Harry Potter. Overall, I think it has its uses. More in the sense that I can rent games for my nephews when they come over. Didnt seem like there was any lag on my end.

I have a 20mbp modem and it seemed like this service has alot of potential.
 
I just tried ONLINE last night and was surprised how well it did work.

if i a was publisher like EA I may look at this as a future opportunity.
They only sold 100,000 copy's of Crysis. Half the people that bought the game did not have the hardware to run it well. And EA claimed that pirating killed them. ONLINE dose not look great but it works. IF EA put the game on ONLINE exclusively im sure they would sell at least 100,000 and they don't have to payout sony or microsoft or nintendo.

I still don't know how Online can afford this unless they want to sell the service to a big named publisher in the future. Being able to renting super computers for only $60 a year there has to be a bigger picture.
 
I deeply understand the position of paid hardware reviewers, if this thing continues they're gonna lose their jobs eventually. It's difficult for us, hardware lovers, but there's a tendency to favor underpowered hardware nowadays... it's crazy but imagine those iPad users playing Crysis in medium settings.

I'm not in favor of cloud computing but at the end of the day RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.
 
I find it funny anyone who tries to defend this service get's thumbs down and anyone who says how it's crap get's a thumbs up. What a crock.
 
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