OnLive - The Next Generation of Gaming Announced (And it's Mindblowing)

[Tsunami]

Before I dive into what OnLive is and how it works, let me start by saying that you should read every word of this article as this service has the potential to completely change the way games are played. If it works and gets proper support from both publishers and gamers, you may never need a high-end PC to play the latest games, or perhaps even ever buy a console again. That is not an exaggeration.

Just announced at this year's GDC, OnLive is an on-demand gaming service. It's essentially the gaming version of cloud computing - everything is computed, rendered and housed online. In its simplest description, your controller inputs are uploaded, a high-end server takes your inputs and plays the game, and then a video stream of the output is sent back to your computer. Think of it as something like Youtube or Hulu for games.

A handful of us have played [Crysis], at its highest settings, on a MacBook Air with the service.

In its simplest form, instead of your computer or console computing anything, it just streams the video in the service's "cloud", which you control with a mouse and keyboard, controller, or whatever. No downloading, no requiring high-end hardware (or really hardware at all). Multiple developers/publishers have signed on to releasing their games on the service when it launches in the winter. Holy crap, this is amazing.

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

[ame]http://www.gametrailers.com/player/47080.html[/ame]
[ame]http://www.gametrailers.com/player/47082.html[/ame]

Here's another site with more info and pics.

 

[sub]

Mindblowing? Try impractical and idiotic.

1) Now not only are you going to be playing multiplayer games online, you're going to be playing single player games, too! 30 - 90ms of lag between the video streaming to you, and then again when you upload the control input back to the server.
2) You're going to need an online connection wherever you hook up your console (Even someone like me whose online 24/7 doesn't have their 360 hooked up to the 'net because there's no Ethernet cables anywhere near my TV. Not everyone has wireless, and wireless + the aforementioned lag wouldn't be ideal, to say the least).
3) They're going to need a hardware machine running for every single unit sold. High end hardware machines. And what happens when technology advances? They're going to have to replace their entire fleet of hardware. And they're people to take care of said hardware once it malfunctions. And huge datacenters to store the hardware. This is going to cost a lot of money.

This is going to fail.

 

[MF29]

This is destined to fail, no question.

 

[Grega]

This is a totally stupid idea.

In a age where levels of a game consist of hindreds of megabytes of information they think of "streaming the info"

Get real. Think of it like this. Every single time you play through a level you have to download that entire level. Loading times would skyrocket unless you have a connection that allows you to download hindreds of megabytes in a couple of seconds. Since you have to remember that the level itself isnt all the info you have to download. You allso need to download the info about NPCs, effects and the actuall image itself.

That translates into gigabytes of information. Especially since the game engine wont be on your computer. Youll need to download 60 pictures per second with round 5 megabytes per image. Meaning 300 megabytes per second just for the pictures. Then you have to put in all the info of the actuall physics, effect physics, sounds and all that.

Youll have to deal with hindreds of megabytes per second to download.

This idea is impossible unless your connection is atleast round a gigabyte per second.

Not to mention youd get ping on a single player game.

This is one of the stupides ideas people could think of.

 

[sub]

This is a totally stupid idea.

In a age where levels of a game consist of hindreds of megabytes of information they think of "streaming the info"

Get real. Think of it like this. Every single time you play through a level you have to download that entire level. Loading times would skyrocket unless you have a connection that allows you to download hindreds of megabytes in a couple of seconds. Since you have to remember that the level itself isnt all the info you have to download. You allso need to download the info about NPCs, effects and the actuall image itself.

That translates into gigabytes of information. Especially since the game engine wont be on your computer. Youll need to download 60 pictures per second with round 5 megabytes per image. Meaning 300 megabytes per second just for the pictures. Then you have to put in all the info of the actuall physics, effect physics, sounds and all that.

Youll have to deal with hindreds of megabytes per second to download.

This idea is impossible unless your connection is atleast round a gigabyte per second.

Not to mention youd get ping on a single player game.

This is one of the stupides ideas people could think of.

Not exactly. They only want to stream video and for you to upload your user input. It's still a horrible idea, but physics and the like wouldn't be streamed.

Another reason it's destined to fail is a lack of support from the big three. Why would Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo ever support this? Who would buy a games console without first party games?

Edit: This seems like an inferior version of Steam. Actually, thinking about it, why do they want me to buy their box. Couldn't this work equally as well on a PC?

Edit 2: You know, thinking about it some more, does this seem eerily familiar to the Phantom anyone? Not just in concept, but in practice, too - The Phantom was never actually in development, the company just pretended it was to secure development money. Could be the same case here

 

[kam!]

3) They're going to need a hardware machine running for every single unit sold. High end hardware machines. And what happens when technology advances? They're going to have to replace their entire fleet of hardware. And they're people to take care of said hardware once it malfunctions. And huge datacenters to store the hardware. This is going to cost a lot of money.

Probably they'll only use several cluster of monster machines to power multiple instances of games at once.
Like one powerful machine to run 100 instances of Crysis (because we're not talking about consumer level hardware here) and have several of those in one cluster handling all the Crysis demand.

[...]Another reason it's destined to fail is a lack of support from the big three. Why would Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo ever support this? Who would buy a games console without first party games?

I guess it will be this:

on-demand gaming service

They can and will probably charge you either monthly or per minute/hour usage, so they can sap you out of sp games and the like.
Or even worse, per game hour contingents, like you "buy" 5 hours of crysis.
Monthly fee would probably be king, because then they don't worry about sales, since steady income is there.

Definitely not a service for me, and seems like the next step of DRM.
Besides I don't want another variable in my gaming experience (like internet or this onlive service not being available when you want to play)

(watched only first vid and did not do any research, so if payment was mentioned anywhere and I look stupid now, ignore this post pls)

 

[Snowm@n]

w.....tf....If this works as they say it will work then its the end for consoles, and many pcs. He seemed so sure of what he was saying...

 

[Grega]

Not exactly. They only want to stream video and for you to upload your user input. It's still a horrible idea, but physics and the like wouldn't be streamed.

NVM i missread the thing.

In any case the point still stands.

You ever try recording a video with quality of over 1024x768. Let me tell you. Youd need a supercomputer to keep your FPS high while the vid is beeing processed.

And even then there is the LAG and size issue.

Face it. This would only work as long as each user would have a private supercomputer. Since the workload is doubled.

 

[Snowm@n]

And even then there is the LAG and size issue.

Face it. This would only work as long as each user would have a private supercomputer. Since the workload is doubled.

The guy said this is a new technology that toke 7 years to develop. You can't say how it's going to work because you never saw it working.....it's new lab product.... Lets w8 and see.

 

[sub]

The guy said this is a new technology that toke 7 years to develop. You can't say how it's going to work because you never saw it working.....it's new lab product.... Lets w8 and see.

I have this cool new type of car. I've been working on it the last 7 years. Runs on a cheap renewable resource and everything.

What's that? Yeah, I said a cheap renewable resource. It runs on hamsters. For every one hamster it'll get 100 miles per gallon!

What's that? Bad idea? **** you, you can't say it's a bad idea until you've seen it in motion!

 

[Skiwan]

I don't see the point in being so skeptical, lets see it work in real life and be reviewed by people who know what they're talking about, hypothetical criticism is hardly valid. The thing is, they have some of the top publishers support for this idea, this platform offers many things, that doesn't tie it down to a certain console or rig or whatever and opens up a whole new market.

lag is really the biggest problem for this thing to overcome, however with the dawn of fiber optics, you can already get 50mb connection here. Time will tell what'll happen with this, the only thing that's made me think this could actually be feasible is the fact they have developer support.

 

[Grega]

The guy said this is a new technology that toke 7 years to develop. You can't say how it's going to work because you never saw it working.....it's new lab product.... Lets w8 and see.

Think about it. They will need one computer to Play the game, record the game, compress the videos and send them off in real time and at a frame rate of 60.

No way they can manage to do that with more than 1 person on a box. I mean when recording a game your frames drop usually below 60 even on a high end PC. And thats just recodring without compression at the same time. Add compression and youd be dealing with frames round 20 or below depending on the compression. They would need computers atleast twice as powerfull as the best gaming rigs market can buy in terms of processing power.

 

[Skiwan]

I should think that's what they're actually doing though, probably super computer and a server all in one. With things like this, it requires the technology to be built for it, it's not going to be a pipeline of individual machines, its going to be a single machine specialised to do exactly the job it needs. I can't see this being possible without some kind of subscription fee, to maintain and buy servers/computers etc but I do think this is exciting.

 

[Grega]

Thats exactly what i ment skiwan.

And itll have to be 1 of those supercomputers per game instance. Meaning each person has his own.

This could get really expensive on the companys side. Or youll have to wait in line to play a game.

 

[Skiwan]

I disagree, you could have a hell of a lot more people use a super computer, who knows, you may be able to design something that holds a 1000 users. Corporate funding gives the possibilty to create immensely powerful machines that make our home computers look like casio calculators. Plus cooperate computers makes much more sense, theoretically, it costs more for people to own their own computers to run a game, say my computer cost £400 when I bought it, and it runs the latest titles decently, not perfect but well enough, a hundred people owning a similar rig thing to play a latest title is £400, 000. Whereas if each person pays a subscription fee per month of say £10 for a year is £120, 000, that without money from publishers for platform rights is more than enough for a super computer that may be able to house 10x the number of customers that have paid. No need to upgrade every 3-4 years, just a subscription fee to play the latest titles.

The bigger corporate machines also allow developers to go further with game design, since they would not have to target mass production platforms which are quite limiting, instead they would be using super computers which are capable of a hell of a lot more power than what is available on a mass scale production.

 

[Snowm@n]

Those are some big hamsters. And your car has to be made of glass fiber. Still if connecting a hamster rolling "thing" to a multiplier and then to a generator takes you 7 years to make, you are slow dude. I'd say a hydrogen engine would be mutch better, but that was already developed on the 60s "If not before...".

Anyways, i'm not saying this will work, i'm saying I DONT KNOW, and so do you. I wouldnt tell everyone I would start selling a car like yours that couldnt work like you said.

 

[Tsunami]

I would like to see this idea work. Then in the future, I could buy a crappy laptop, and still be able to play the newest stuff without hardware lag and play it when I go on vacation, etc.

I theory it is a neat idea. And I think when more ISP's get faster speed (Hell, my ISP Charter Communications is working on a 60mb plan for docsis 2.0) net lag -shouldn't- be a problem.

 

[Tenzo]

I believe this idea has potential. That's all i have to say.

 

[TehMuffinMan]

"whats that? crysis crapped out and froze again? ok, let me jump into my golfcart and drive down the three mile-long supercomputer aisle, find hub 6545 and reboot server 429"

Can you even begin to imagine the sheer amount of workforce it would take to maintain millions of peoples requests like that? while the theory works on a small scale, its completely disregarding the big picture, the way its been announced as the "console-killer" is just being bullheaded.

Oh, and usually hosts of this magnitude would need some form of routine maintenence, that would be a fun job....

 

[Grega]

Not to mention the shear amount of cash that would be required for maintenance of all those supercomputers.

And no i dont think any currently existing computer can run more than 1 instance of Crysis while recording and compressing video at the same time.

Atleast not with a quality picture.