OnLive - The future of Gaming

[Bad Jim]

OnLive may be cheaper in the first place but people soon realise that they have to pay that subscription each month if they want their games

If you buy a game via Onlive you can play without further charges. The only subscription required is your internet connection, which most people pay anyway.

The subscription deal gives you access to over 100 games. It can be a pretty good deal, depending on how you play, but it is merely an option.

 

[devotedsniper]

I played the lord of the rings war in the north demo on there a few weeks back, it was ok but the graphics were meh (no way to turn it up to the correct res for my comp), and from time to time the graphics got so pixelated it was just a jumbled blur (probably because of my internet connection slowing).

I'm definatly not sold, i'd much rather fork out £400-500 on a machine which will run everything on high at the time and then just upgrade the GPU when i need to. I did this 3-4 years ago now and i'm still running all the same hardware except the GPU has changed and it now has extra hard drives (ran out of room), still plays on high graphic settings at 1680*1050.

 

[endtherapture]

Technically, I was quite impressed by it - I was streaming a full game and playing it as it went along - I thought it was pretty cool and despite the low graphics, still a great achievement.

However I can't feel it will take off. People want to own the content, and speeds simply aren't fast enough. For example if the internet goes down, I'll go play a game whilst I can't do anything else. That's taken away from me with OnLive.

The controls were also very floaty ... I felt disconnected from the experience and I didn't like it.

 

[Richardplex]

If Onlive or Steam is the future I won't buy game anymore.

What's wrong with Steam? The fact that you can't sell your games? That is a PC issue, not a Steam issue.

It's akin to you-must-be-online-to-play-single-player DRM. (There is an offline mode, but if you go without being connected to the internet for like two hours, Steam will freak out because it's afraid there is an update it isn't getting.)

Since when? They has the server blocked at my college and I never had a problem with playing in offline mode all the time.

You must be lucky, then. Every time I try to use it, it'll keep telling to go online and check for updates. Every. Single. Time.

Or you're just unlucky. I can play fine offline as well.

OT: I prefer being able to play my games offline thank you. It's like DRM, but worse.

 

[Michael Hirst]

Onlive is the worst system ever conveived, always on drm all the time. For anyone with any kind of internet resriction its the fucking worst thing ever. No offline mode and having to play games in poor resolutions with choppy frametates unless you can get a great connection.

 

[viranimus]

Why would anyone want "cloud gaming" to succeed? If your a consumer and supporting anything remotely like onlive is sort of like bathing using used MRSA covered latex gloves to wipe down with. Sure you could do it, but absolutely nothing good will come of it, and you become a danger to everyone who would try to get close enough to help you out of your own stupidity.

 

[ZeroMachine]

I love using OnLive for deals on games I wouldn't normally buy.

But let's say you have a shit internet connection, or it just dies on you.

Good bye OnLive games.

Plus, there are a ton of limitations regarding PC gaming, which I'm sure everyone else has pointed out.

In fact, I think they pointed out my first points too.

... Actually, it was probably pointless for me to post this.

... well... fuck.

Er, look useful, look useful, ah...

OH, point I'm not sure if was brought up. I got Amnesia: The Dark Decent on OnLive instead of Steam because at the time my computer was a horrid piece of shit, and it didn't come with the bonus story from the Potato Sack. Don't think it ever will. That's another downside.

 

[Dabrainbox]

I live in a village in the midlands in the UK, our area was recently upgraded to fibre-optic broadband so I though I might as well give this OnLive thingy a go.

I was gobsmacked; in my little village, on a laptop, with poor signal from my router I could play 30 minutes free on any game they had in the store with full graphics in 1600x1080 (HDMI to my TV). It may not take over quite yet, but I hope it does well, this service is amazing.

With my 1 game for £1 offer I bought Deus Ex: Human Revolution, did a short commentary on it and posted it to a friends YouTube channel; I have been an avid video maker ever since.

One thing I would love to see is this service, or one like it, being bought by Google. Just imagine how far it would get with all those servers, existing clients and investors. If OnLive gets more games and some modding support, I think it could take over console gaming before the next generation is released.


Edit: OnLive currently only supports up to 720p. They're focusing on reducing the connection quality needed rather than improving the stream, which I think is bullshit; I have 25mb download at peak times, connection is not a problem.

 

[Something Amyss]

Objectively, services like Onlive probably ARE the future of gaming. But not the near future. Onlive is probably about 20-30 years early to the party.

Objectively, it's impossible to know the future. Objectively, it may or may not be the future. While there is an appeal to it, it hardly is the probable future.

It may be the future, but the likely future? Probable? Nah.

If you buy a game via Onlive you can play without further charges. The only subscription required is your internet connection, which most people pay anyway.

The subscription deal gives you access to over 100 games. It can be a pretty good deal, depending on how you play, but it is merely an option.

To be fair, OnLive was a subscription model until relatively recently and was hyped as one for a long time before launch. I can't blame people for thinking it still is. That was a bad model and they were smart to abandon it (monthly fees plus up-front cost for games? NOOOO).

 

[MammothBlade]

OnLive is NOT the future of gaming. For someone who can't afford a console/good pc upfront but have a decent internet connection, maybe, but it's nothing more than long-term game rental. In the end the consumer loses out. You pay extortionate prices to play a game for 2-3 years -- compared to as long as you have a functional game disc for hard copies, and an infinite period for conventional digital distribution. It's impossible to mod OnLive games. You don't even control or own any of the game files.

The DRM fetishists may have wet dreams about it, but it sounds like any self-respecting gamer's NIGHTMARE.

Apologies if it sounds like scaremongering, but I definitely don't want "cloud" gaming to become mainstream. I view it as a threat.

 

[VanityGirl]

The future of gaming is as it was: Retail hard copies.

I wish you were right. I do. It's really too bad that you're not.

Digital distribution is skyrocketing. I know more people that bought Skyrim on steam than at a store. It's easier, you get the same product, and with steam, a lot of the time you get a great deal on it too. There's a lot of incentive to buy digitally now.

For the record, I bought Skyrim Collectors Ed, so definitely no digital copy here.

I wish you were right too. -_-" My game collection won't be as impressive if everything goes digital. I have a nice collection of SNES, NES, PS2, PS3, Wii, XBOX360, Genesis, ect games.
My collection will suffer!!!

Oh, and I bought Skyrim for the xbox, so I went for a hard copy.

 

[Hiphophippo]

It may be the future, but the likely future? Probable? Nah.

Agree to disagree, I suppose. We'll both found out for certain one way or the other yea? Either way, I'm along for the ride.

 

[boag]

When you buy a game, you no longer own it in any real sense, should the company who runs the game go bankrupt or simply decide to stop running the servers,

added bit of info here, ever since the Timothy Vernor case was overturned, no one that has a bought a physical disk, owns a game.

What you own is a digital license to access the game in the prepackaged media only.

 

[Something Amyss]

Agree to disagree, I suppose. We'll both found out for certain one way or the other yea? Either way, I'm along for the ride.

Even if it ends up being the future, that doesn't mean it was ever probable. Sorry.

 

[gamer_parent]

OnLive gaming is a great concept, but only if you can overcome several very real issues:

1. infrastructure: onLive surface is pretty much surgically attached to the hip of the telcom industry. Until the telecom infrastructure in it's intended market really hits critical mass, and that would mean it's targeted demographic all have a connection speed that is at a minimum of 3 mb/s, which is not that common in the US or the UK. If the onLive surface was say, a company aimed at the Korean markets, on the other hand, it COULD work. But it really will depend upon the telecom companies. If the telco decides to stubbornly stick to volume base data plans, this will have a hard time taking off.

2. As people have noted, server costs can really add up. Virtualization technology still has some way to go before I think it can really handle the scalability issues.

3. Market attitudes between "owning" a license and "renting" a license needs to change. This is no more apparent than at this very forum itself. This alone will be one of the greatest challenges they must overcome, as the technology is simply a matter of time, but this attitude here is what will KILL this franchise. I imagine it would take some pretty impressive number crunching to show this. maybe some kind of "how much do you spend on gaming hardare and software" type questionnaire.

4. they will STILL need to content with people who want to actually own copies of the game. That market will never go away. Someone's always going to want to own the game. Someone's always going to want to play their games at a place without an internet connection.

edit: another interesting mental exercise is to try to figure out how this wave of gaming will cross with the smartphone/tablet platform revolution.

 

[walrusaurus]

When you buy a game, you no longer own it in any real sense, should the company who runs the game go bankrupt or simply decide to stop running the servers,

added bit of info here, ever since the Timothy Vernor case was overturned, no one that has a bought a physical disk, owns a game.

What you own is a digital license to access the game in the prepackaged media only.

O i realize that. But the legal semantics of ownership doesn't change the physical reality of possession. I can continue to play my physical game even if the developer decides i can't anymore, short of them physically confiscating the disk from me, which is never going to happen.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Tell that to the armies of people who assault DRM because of lousy internet connection. Apparently the majority of gamers live in a country with no or poor internet infrastructure. (honestly if every Starbucks has wifi I don't see this as an issue in the future but its a valid complaint right now).