OnLive Denies It's Shutting Down, Won't Comment on Layoffs

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Doesn't surprise me. Although the idea is just amazing, no longer would you need powerful computers, you can play all games instantly through this service.. the lag was the killer.

I tried it, and although awesome, it sucked a LOT of bandwidth and there was always a lag with the input instantly killing all first person shooters, somewhat good for racing games.

I don't think this service is ready for todays internet. Maybe in 10 years we'll see all internet connections at the 100mpbs+ mark, maybe then we'll see some insane gaming sessions done on crappy small laptops.
 
Proof that "the cloud" still is not a plausible replacement for real hardware.

Even if this technology were perfected, I still can't see a ton of people using it.
 
[citation][nom]sacre[/nom]Doesn't surprise me. Although the idea is just amazing, no longer would you need powerful computers, you can play all games instantly through this service.. the lag was the killer.I tried it, and although awesome, it sucked a LOT of bandwidth and there was always a lag with the input instantly killing all first person shooters, somewhat good for racing games. I don't think this service is ready for todays internet. Maybe in 10 years we'll see all internet connections at the 100mpbs+ mark, maybe then we'll see some insane gaming sessions done on crappy small laptops.[/citation]

you need to live within 50 miles of one of the onlive datacenters to get the best...
raceing games are unplayable on a competitive level or the high end single player, because of lag
fps games are more manageable, but not online, single player fps games are ok though
where the service shines is with games that don't require precise down to the ms decisions.

if the internet was better and they had datacenters for all major cities at least, you would probably see pc game renting become far more popular, to the point it may take a chunk of piracy out.
 
[citation][nom]beardguy[/nom]Proof that "the cloud" still is not a plausible replacement for real hardware. Even if this technology were perfected, I still can't see a ton of people using it.[/citation]

Not until everyone has 20 mbps speed. OnLive is just ahead of its time and I forgot it existed until this news post...lol. I just vaguely recall some ads but nothing in the last year or so. Its too bad, hate to see good ideas fade, though I am sure PC hardware companies like Intel is all smiles....heh.
 
[citation][nom]beardguy[/nom]Proof that "the cloud" still is not a plausible replacement for real hardware. Even if this technology were perfected, I still can't see a ton of people using it.[/citation]

with videogames, no, its not there yet.
but lets say that someday your computer is just a hub to the internet and that's where everything happens. general computing could work as of today for the cloud, and input and lag aren't really a problem.
 
[citation][nom]beardguy[/nom]Proof that "the cloud" still is not a plausible replacement for real hardware. Even if this technology were perfected, I still can't see a ton of people using it.[/citation]
It's more so proof that the internet has too much latency for video game input, which is really the only reason that this failed.
Edit: also, the huge amounts of bandwidth it uses can be a problem for some people.
 
I hear you guys on the latency issues etc. that made OnLive just not plausible right now.

But I still see too many issues that will prevent the cloud from taking over even in the next 10 years. What happens if your internet connection goes out? What if your PC is literally a "dumb terminal" in the future not capable of running anything with it's own processing/gpu power? I mean you couldn't even cache your apps/games locally because your computer wouldn't be capable of handling it on it's own. There are no fail safes in place right now, it's not like you have a backup internet connection you can switch to, if it goes out you would be totally hosed.

I just don't see it happening anytime soon. MUCH more likely imo would be a local home "cloud server" that would cache and serve up the data. This local cloud server could always be syncing with the internet cloud and when the connection drops out, you would still be good to go.

Any technology that relies solely on a 24/7 internet connection is a fail. At least for now and the foreseeable future until we have really fast and rock solid internet connections available.
 
[citation][nom]robochump[/nom]Not until everyone has 20 mbps speed. OnLive is just ahead of its time and I forgot it existed until this news post...lol. I just vaguely recall some ads but nothing in the last year or so. Its too bad, hate to see good ideas fade, though I am sure PC hardware companies like Intel is all smiles....heh.[/citation]

It doesn't matter that much what download / upload you have. 5 megabit down is plenty for streaming the service. It's the latency that is bad.
 
[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]Dear Subscriber,We're writing you today to inform you that you exceeded your bandwidth limit last month by a wide margin. If this happens again we will charge you up the ass. That's why all these streaming sites won't last. My friend tried and hated it. It sucked so much bandwidth and the lag was ridiculous.[/citation]They would if ISPs build their networks to support it... Thankfully I have Surewest and they have no caps.
 
[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]Dear Subscriber,We're writing you today to inform you that you exceeded your bandwidth limit last month by a wide margin. If this happens again we will charge you up the ass. That's why all these streaming sites won't last. My friend tried and hated it. It sucked so much bandwidth and the lag was ridiculous.[/citation]
Sucks to live in the USA, your ISPs are shitty, in the UK I can buy into a 12 month ADSL contract from several providers for the equivalent of $8 a month and get 24Mb speed, totally unlimited and believe me I have tried to exceed any kind of unlisted fair-use policy and have no problems, last month I must have chewed through 400Gb
...
As far as Onlive goes, great idea, just was ahead of its time - I can see the company being an easy acquisition for Steam however, strip out the IP and get ready for the next generation
 
For gaming I believe the idea is absolutely brilliant. More and more customer's are purchasing tablets, netbook,s and other small mobile devices that don't offer a whole lot in terms of gaming. This puts a sour taste in any users mouth and this offers a solution short of emptying your pockets at an electronics retailer. So we could keep our high end rigs and this offers them a solution, it's win win.

However, I do have to agree with the general populace here in stating: Today's internet services are not ready for this... At all. They're a little ahead of their time but I say within a few years, with the way tech is progressing, they should be good to go!
 
I've used OnLive and, let me tell you, it eats a crazy amount of bandwidth. From my estimation, about 2 GB per hour. And that's just for lowly 720p resolution. Could you imagine the bandwidth that a 1080p stream would use?

It's not a bad service, but after using it for a few hours I knew that it wasn't going to replace consoles and PC gaming anytime soon. When you're used to the high detailed resolution of PC gaming, the graphics quality on OnLive feels like a huge step backwards. Plus, if your internet cuts out, you lose any unsaved progress on your game. The best feature of OnLive actually was the ability to spectate other people as they were playing, in real time.
 
Gaming is one thing--and as far as that goes, OnLive needs a lot of work. I am convinced that it or something like it will be what "PC Gaming" is at the moment. But there are many things they need to work on.

OnLive as a software-access service would be brilliant. Instead of needing a Windows computer running Office, you could access, for example, Excel through your OnLive account (I believe this is--or was--in the works). And you could get true productivity on any device--desktop, laptop, tablet or phone--without having to put up with the inherent instabilities in, for example, android platforms.

I don't know what to make of this rumor. I was pretty convinced OnLive knew what they were doing despite still not being a perfect--or even good at the moment--solution.

I have hopes that this is just a rumor, because I think OnLive and related services/technologies could really free people from being tied to a hardware platform if they want a particular thing. On the other hand, they'd be tied to paying for such service. Whether it pans out over the long run, that's yet to be seen.
 
[citation][nom]buckcm[/nom]It doesn't matter that much what download / upload you have. 5 megabit down is plenty for streaming the service. It's the latency that is bad.[/citation]

You nailed it. There are a lot of comments in here for ppl saying it sux for me and I have a XX Mbps connection. No mention of the routing ms latency for the most part.

Too many kids in here, I guess.
 
Some napkin math on input latency:
Display latency 5-20ms depending on refresh rate and response time.
USB polling latency 1ms (or 8ms for non gaming mice).
Input processing is usually done per-frame in the game loop and is tied to the display latency.
So 20ms is a reasonable amount of input lag for gaming normally.
50ms is a normal ping time for cable connections (DSL has better ping times but has other problems). However since streaming a game is bandwidth intensive, and maximum payload frames take about 3 times as long to round-trip, 150ms latency is expected. So 850% more latency on streamed gaming versus normal gaming.
 
[citation][nom]Fokissed[/nom]Some napkin math on input latency😀isplay latency 5-20ms depending on refresh rate and response time.USB polling latency 1ms (or 8ms for non gaming mice).Input processing is usually done per-frame in the game loop and is tied to the display latency.So 20ms is a reasonable amount of input lag for gaming normally.50ms is a normal ping time for cable connections (DSL has better ping times but has other problems). However since streaming a game is bandwidth intensive, and maximum payload frames take about 3 times as long to round-trip, 150ms latency is expected. So 850% more latency on streamed gaming versus normal gaming.[/citation]

and for most games and the casual player, that lag doenst matter much. it matters when you get into the competitive arena.
 
You need at least 50Mbps just to accommodate 1080p blu-ray quality video/audio streams, and it must be nearly lag free for fine gaming. Good luck with that! It might be better if they upgrade to h.265 codec, but you'd still need a decent video card/CPU to decode it.
 
[citation][nom]dimar[/nom]You need at least 50Mbps just to accommodate 1080p blu-ray quality video/audio streams, and it must be nearly lag free for fine gaming. Good luck with that! It might be better if they upgrade to h.265 codec, but you'd still need a decent video card/CPU to decode it.[/citation]


Bluray max bitrate is 40 mbps. Onlive uses something like 2.5 mbps. The quality is crappy at best in my experience. If that can be overlooked, the latency issues are the bigger problem. The response time is very slow.

By the way, this thread is pretty old.
 
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