I tried OnLive last year and it was 'Meh' at best, but recently it's had a launch in the UK and I was able to pick up Arkham City for a whole English Pound I thought I'd give it another try and you know what - I'm sold.
I have all the consoles (literally, going all the way back to the NES) and hooked up to the main TV in the living room are the big three current gen machines (the previous gens are all on another old CRT) but I also have a HTPC - it used to have an ATi 3870 GPU but as I never really played PC games on the TV (preferring my gaming rig) I took it out and put it in the Girlfriends gaming rig and replaced it with a 5570, a very basic card, cost around £20 but still lets the machine play blu-ray/HD-DVD's through it's combi drive and 1080p mkv's.
The spec of the PC ain't much, AMD DualCore 2GHz chip (few generations old, think it's Athlon branded) and today I upgraded it to 4GB of DDR2 ram (had been 2GB, though there's no real noticible difference). All in you could build this machine for less than £300, including the fancy Antec Fusion case.
And I've just played Arkahm City with graphics as good as either my PS3 or Xbox - as I have a crossfire dongle I even used my 360 pad.
What incentive do future games consoles creators have to make expensive machines with cutting edge technology that are difficult to program when they can stream quality games from standardised servers.
Piracy - gone, no draconian DRM required, no fancy hardware tricks to keep the tinkerers out. Rental vs Owning options within OnLive allow people to try before they buy at very low cost and can be inductive to sales as people try a game they may of otherwise pass up on.
Hardware limitations are a thing of the past - PC gamers lament the lack of new features in games built for consoles, Metal Gear Solid 4 was said to be "too big" for the Xbox's disc media by it's creators - not an issue, new features can be added as soon as the server farm is upgraded to support them, the end client can stay the same.
Online play - no more trouble with ping between machines as all interactions are calculated on the same server farm, the only lag you have to worry about is in the video stream to you, and if my experiences so far in Batmans single player mode is that's not an issue.
Save sync - I know this is something PSN are bringing in but I first played Batman on my gaming rig, came downstairs, fired it up on the HTPC and carried on from the same save - awesome. I regular have a beer and games night with an old friend and we take it turn to who's house it is and commonly play a different game at each - with this we could carry on the same game regardless of who's house we're at without the PITA it is to transfer saves or cart consoles back and fourth
End users get the benefit of being able to play how they want - Living Room TV with a small streaming box, PC, laptop, netbook hell event tablet or phone if you can get the controls and screen res right.
This works perfectly on my consumer broadband at a peak time right now and broadband speeds are only going to increase and we're already seeing caps/limits being removed.
I even read that the next Xbox will have a cheap Arm CPU and run Windows 9 and Xbox Live will morph into an OnLive cum Netflix area - you have a fully functioning computer and gaming device in one package and it costs less than a "decent" graphics card?
Yes there will be service outages, yes they'll probably be a few groan initiating dumb moves as we step towards this but it's no worse than red rings or yellow lights of death we have now, PSN hacks or what-have you and it's all things companies are learning now so when they get to this point hopefully they'll have learned many important lessons to make the transition easier.
I think the next console may be a little early, as good as the infrastructure needed is now and the better it's becoming I think we need just that generation to step across, maybe even bring it in as a feature on those boxes. But mark my words peeps, OnLive is where it'll be - a service where everyone benefits (except maybe the Pirates, well guys, you had a good innings?)
I'm sure they'll be a few comments along the lines of "my internets not good enough" etc.. but I'm not talking about right now, you're internet will get better, there's a lot of people who will make a lot of money by it doing so so believe me, there's investments being made.
Not sure if the offer's still on or whether it was yesterdays "Black Friday" deal but take a look, tons of new games to pick from, including Saints Row The Third and the aforementioned Arkham City - all starting from a pound/dollar (if you're American) - limited to first purchase, so you can only have one, but hey, still a bargain, and you get to try out an awesome new tech.
I have all the consoles (literally, going all the way back to the NES) and hooked up to the main TV in the living room are the big three current gen machines (the previous gens are all on another old CRT) but I also have a HTPC - it used to have an ATi 3870 GPU but as I never really played PC games on the TV (preferring my gaming rig) I took it out and put it in the Girlfriends gaming rig and replaced it with a 5570, a very basic card, cost around £20 but still lets the machine play blu-ray/HD-DVD's through it's combi drive and 1080p mkv's.
The spec of the PC ain't much, AMD DualCore 2GHz chip (few generations old, think it's Athlon branded) and today I upgraded it to 4GB of DDR2 ram (had been 2GB, though there's no real noticible difference). All in you could build this machine for less than £300, including the fancy Antec Fusion case.
And I've just played Arkahm City with graphics as good as either my PS3 or Xbox - as I have a crossfire dongle I even used my 360 pad.
What incentive do future games consoles creators have to make expensive machines with cutting edge technology that are difficult to program when they can stream quality games from standardised servers.
Piracy - gone, no draconian DRM required, no fancy hardware tricks to keep the tinkerers out. Rental vs Owning options within OnLive allow people to try before they buy at very low cost and can be inductive to sales as people try a game they may of otherwise pass up on.
Hardware limitations are a thing of the past - PC gamers lament the lack of new features in games built for consoles, Metal Gear Solid 4 was said to be "too big" for the Xbox's disc media by it's creators - not an issue, new features can be added as soon as the server farm is upgraded to support them, the end client can stay the same.
Online play - no more trouble with ping between machines as all interactions are calculated on the same server farm, the only lag you have to worry about is in the video stream to you, and if my experiences so far in Batmans single player mode is that's not an issue.
Save sync - I know this is something PSN are bringing in but I first played Batman on my gaming rig, came downstairs, fired it up on the HTPC and carried on from the same save - awesome. I regular have a beer and games night with an old friend and we take it turn to who's house it is and commonly play a different game at each - with this we could carry on the same game regardless of who's house we're at without the PITA it is to transfer saves or cart consoles back and fourth
End users get the benefit of being able to play how they want - Living Room TV with a small streaming box, PC, laptop, netbook hell event tablet or phone if you can get the controls and screen res right.
This works perfectly on my consumer broadband at a peak time right now and broadband speeds are only going to increase and we're already seeing caps/limits being removed.
I even read that the next Xbox will have a cheap Arm CPU and run Windows 9 and Xbox Live will morph into an OnLive cum Netflix area - you have a fully functioning computer and gaming device in one package and it costs less than a "decent" graphics card?
Yes there will be service outages, yes they'll probably be a few groan initiating dumb moves as we step towards this but it's no worse than red rings or yellow lights of death we have now, PSN hacks or what-have you and it's all things companies are learning now so when they get to this point hopefully they'll have learned many important lessons to make the transition easier.
I think the next console may be a little early, as good as the infrastructure needed is now and the better it's becoming I think we need just that generation to step across, maybe even bring it in as a feature on those boxes. But mark my words peeps, OnLive is where it'll be - a service where everyone benefits (except maybe the Pirates, well guys, you had a good innings?)
I'm sure they'll be a few comments along the lines of "my internets not good enough" etc.. but I'm not talking about right now, you're internet will get better, there's a lot of people who will make a lot of money by it doing so so believe me, there's investments being made.
Not sure if the offer's still on or whether it was yesterdays "Black Friday" deal but take a look, tons of new games to pick from, including Saints Row The Third and the aforementioned Arkham City - all starting from a pound/dollar (if you're American) - limited to first purchase, so you can only have one, but hey, still a bargain, and you get to try out an awesome new tech.
