Sampler said:
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.
Sampler said:
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.
See below
Sampler said:
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.
I've always been a supporter of the rental option.
As for the DRM issue, as others have said before, this is not a lack of DRM, this is DRM taken to the ultimate extreme.
Always-online was bad. What do you call this?
Sampler said:
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.
Personally, I think this is great for console gamers, and absolute crap for PC gamers.
Seems to me the console guys will get a few PC-centric hardware upgrades, while still keeping their console feel, while the PC gamers won't even get a low-quality crap-port anymore, instead being referred to OnLive.
Sampler said:
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.
Again, been said before, but all this means is that we'll be lagging in MP as before, but also in SP.
The video stream is HUGE compared to what gets sent back and forth in MP gaming.
Sampler said:
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
This was never a problem. We have memory cards, detachable hard drives, Steam cloud saves, flash drives and internet file transfers.
Transferring a save to a mates house to continue it there is not a problem, unless you make it one.
Sampler said:
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.
No real argument on this, except that I believe very few people have need of it.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say: "Hey, I got this game on X, but I'd really like to be able to play it on Y."
We all have our preferred way of gaming, and with the exception of exclusive titles, which are the scum of the earth, I reckon people stick with what they got.
Are there games which I'd love to be able to play on a PC which are currently console-exclusive?
Sure.
Will those games EVER be released on OnLive, playable on a PC; without being a straight port with added M/K functionality?
No.
Sampler said:
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.
Obviously I can't speak for or against your experience, but the people around me, and myself included, definetely felt a difference in the experience between the Arkham City 30-min trial, and the real thing played locally on PC.
First of all, the graphics were not maxed on the OnLive trial. And it was very, very noticeable, to an extreme degree in the displayed subtitles.
The gameplay was fairly smooth, but it did feel a little off. I attribute that to a miniscule delay in the transfer, and it was enough to put an uncanny valley-like feeling in me.
Sampler said:
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?
No real comment. I'm not gonna be buying that, and I'd fear for my system of choice if a lot of people did, but free market economy is a fickle ***** and I'd have to deal with that.
Sampler said:
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.
Generally, I feel like people are too demanding on new servives, be it Steam-clones or WoW-clones.
Nobody can have everything Steam and WoW has right from the get-go.
There's not enough money and developer time in the world for that.
So yeah. No real argument.
Sampler said:
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.
In closing, I think OnLive has potential. Despite what may seem like me disliking it, I do think it's a good idea.
I am, however, fearful of what happens to consumer rights, including the right to mod, if we all switch to an OnLive-like way of playing games, and I believe we'd see a stagnation in games as a result of the lack of interest in new PC hardware.
It's important to remember that it's the PC games that drive the hardware development. Not the consoles.
If I could buy a game on OnLive, and also have the option to run it locally, I'd be thrilled, 'cus I've certainly been places that had reliable internet but no proper gaming rig in sight.
I'd be able to play the game via OnLive whenever I only had my laptop with me.
But I'd need to see an increase in the quality of the product they deliver, I.E., some kind of compensation for downtime and an increase in the quality of the video stream.
Overall, it's not worth it as-is, and while I'm sure it will get a lot better with time, I doubt it will ever be able to fulfil my expectations.
