OnLive - Streaming PC/Console games @HD quality

[Waef]

^Do you have NoScript by any chance? If you have it on, there's a captcha field that you won't be able to see, hence the error ;o

And yeah, sounds like a terribad idea to me. I still want physical copies of my shit :U

Haha that was it...silly me.

And here I thought I had already put it to allow the site. ><

[guartz]

Yes, let's target people with no money to buy computers. Business idea = fail

not to mention, no more mods

[Casey_]

I don't see how this could feasibly work without them creating some sort of time machine after they compress the video for a few weeks and send it back to the past

[guartz]

oh hai guis, I'm from the future using Onlive.

Don't worry, it's totally awesome.

[Tythera]

their plan for dealing with bandwidth caps is apparently hoping ISP's will just be nice and not count onlive traffic against users. this company is clearly destined for glory

That's amazing, this went from just kind of awesome to the best idea ever

[fantasticdan]

I can't believe you guys are so pessimistic, they have over a hundred patents!!! They obviously know what they're doing.

Given the immense multi-disciplinary complexity of OnLive, the time that was required to address the practical execution issues, and the fact we have over 100 patents and patents pending, we think it is unlikely there will be another system like OnLive anytime soon.

EDIT: Also lol...

MTV Multiplayer: The Xbox had Halo when it came out. A few years ago, the then-struggling Nintendo had Wii Sports with the Wii. It seems that one of the best ways to get gamers to choose a new gaming platform is to hook them with exclusive content. But that doesn’t appear to be part of OnLive’s business model. How can you pull this off without exclusive games that make OnLive a must-purchase?

[Stiker]

Not that I want this to fail, but I mean seriously this just doesn't make any logical sense at all. Look, forget bandwidth issues that will be glaring. There are a metric fuckton of other issues.

The biggest of which is that you have ZERO control of the PC(s) that you use. Hey great, they got a sweet rig I'm renting and it overheated. Now what? Your gaming session just got screwed because the system crashed.

How often are they going to update the systems as well? Sure they are great now, but how "top of the line" are they willing to keep them?

How many PCs will they have total and what happens if users > PCs. Again, go back to the crashing issue...even if they have enough PCs for the number of users what if a whole section of PCs go out because of power failure. Then what? Your power is fine, but you can't game and you are pissed.

Unless they plan on having duplicate PCs for every user, a UPS on every system, backup/restore plans out the ass, etc, this is just one gigantic clusterfuck waiting to happen.

[Darus Grey]

Crashing is a non-issue. The way this is going to work is through high-end virtualization.

It isn't a dedicated PC per user, it's a dedicated amount of resources per user. You have a gigantic server-farm and just dedicate a certain amount of resources per user as they need it, they're not keeping a gaming rig on site just for you.

Upgrading is also a non-issue, they'll upgrade the cluster or add more to it, but in general it would be enough to render *any* game at max as long as it doesn't exceed X users.

[Stiker]

Crashing is a non-issue. The way this is going to work is through high-end virtualization.

It isn't a dedicated PC per user, it's a dedicated amount of resources per user. You have a gigantic server-farm and just dedicate a certain amount of resources per user as they need it, they're not keeping a gaming rig on site just for you.

Upgrading is also a non-issue, they'll upgrade the cluster or add more to it, but in general it would be enough to render *any* game at max as long as it doesn't exceed X users.

Even if you put a bunch of virtual boxes on a server, crashing and such is still an issue. There is always a point of failure. This could cause an even bigger issue if something fails as now we aren't just talking about one box, but several going down at once if a certain hard drive/server fails.

Upgrading is still an issue even if you only have to upgrade less physical machines...that is a still a hit to the budget no matter what. If they are committed to keeping it as top end as they say, you are talking possibly what, a 1-2 year lifespan for certain parts?

Like I said, there are a ton of issues to just actually have the server farm up and running at high reliability. Then you have to deal with all the bandwidth, latency, etc on top of all that.

[Darus Grey]

Even if you put a bunch of virtual boxes on a server, crashing and such is still an issue. There is always a point of failure. This could cause an even bigger issue if something fails as now we aren't just talking about one box, but several going down at once if a certain hard drive/server fails.

Upgrading is still an issue even if you only have to upgrade less physical machines...that is a still a hit to the budget no matter what. If they are committed to keeping it as top end as they say, you are talking possibly what, a 1-2 year lifespan for certain parts?

Like I said, there are a ton of issues to just actually have the server farm up and running at high reliability. Then you have to deal with all the bandwidth, latency, etc on top of all that.

I think it's pretty clear you lack an understanding of distributed computing. A single HDD failure is going to bring down several servers? lol. A point of failure? The only "point of failure" for a server farm is the power. None of this stuff you mention is an issue.

[zoobernut]

Doesn't sound very 56k friendly.

Interesting idea, but then no one could blame losing on their machine. All excuses would turn into "omgwtf lagtastic!"

I was talking to one of the guys at the GDC booth yesterday and he said minimum 1.5 meg connection for normal tv quality and min 5 meg connection to get HD.


For only being in beta right now they do seem pretty on top of it. Their booth was very nice and the demos worked great. You can go to their website right now and sign up for the beta, not sure if that includes the tv version but you can beta for them for the pc at least.

[Stiker]

I think it's pretty clear you lack an understanding of distributed computing. A single HDD failure is going to bring down several servers? lol. A point of failure? The only "point of failure" for a server farm is the power. None of this stuff you mention is an issue.

No. Depending on how the virtual boxes are set up, HDD failure can kill the config files they are stored on. No it won't bring the server down, but it could kill several of the virtual boxes set up on a hard disk. Even if you configure the disks in RAID in the servers for redundancy, the RAID controllers can fail.

Point is there are far more points of failure than just the power to the farm. NICs go out, HDDs fail, servers overheat, security can be breached, etc. While you can do a lot to try to avoid them, you can't prevent every possible failure and higher reliability = lots more cash/equipment. From a money-side, I am wondering how monthly subsription fees cover that enough to profit.

My main point to begin with is that if, for some reason, their system goes down, the server you are on goes down, or if their Internet connections have an outage, you are SOL on your gaming. This is all completely out of your control and that's where I see the main issues coming from as far as the examples I brought up as far as the customer side goes.

Personally, I'd like to have control to fix and take care of my own machine in order to game. The issues of being dependent on yet another service in order to do so doesn't make me comfortable with signing up. When you compound the other network issues that will certainly arise, that just makes it a complete no go for me.

[Darus Grey]

Well fuck...the data center could be bombed...terrorists could take it hostage...the LHC could create mini black holes that take it out...you forgot all those.

Seriously, what is with your level of hardware paranoia? You realize that is no different than...EVERY OTHER SERVICE ON THE INTERNET? What is the down-time of any Cable/Satelite TV provider, ISP, Major Website like You-tube?

Do you sit around all day fearing for the hardware on their end? No? Then why do you think this is an issue when it's the same exact technology.

I agree with your over-arching point about service availability...but the reality is your fear is entirely unfounded, I don't avoid purchasing MMOs because of my fear that I might lose internet 0.0001% of the time, which is your argument.

[Okan]

Besides the latency, which will be an issue for some games, one thing that stood out to me is how they're stating that they don't plan to archive games. So my concern now is how longs are the games stored on their servers? I mean say for example you purchased CoD4 on OnLive and it's now almost 2 years old with MW2 coming out now (The sequel for those unfamiliar)... How much longer will CoD4 stay on the servers? Technically, you did purchase CoD4 to play and now that they're removing it, you essentially are totally incapable of playing the game now.

This is why I prefer buying my games on disc versus virtual distribution -- Steam could die tomorrow and that would mean I'd lose all those games that I would have purchased though that service. At least with the physical disc, I can drop that in my xbox/ps/pc and still get some form of entertainment out of it, even if it's not online anymore.

Edit: it's the same thing for Vudu for me. While my roommate has it and loves it, I fear that the service may someday end and therefor I have a $150 box with no way to watch these videos that I purchased. Though they do save to the harddrive in the device, how long do they stay? (this assuming I bought them and they're not rentals). After all, I now "own" the video. Again, it's lost once the service ends and I now have nothing or no way to obtain it again.

[Eticket]

Sounds promising, but I want a version that you can directly hook up to your TV (via a box) instead of having to route it from your comp.

I may have misread it, but looking near the bottom of the Kotaku article it looks like they're selling a 'mini-console' that has an ethernet port and connects to your tv via HDMI.

[Stiker]

Well fuck...the data center could be bombed...terrorists could take it hostage...the LHC could create mini black holes that take it out...you forgot all those.

Seriously, what is with your level of hardware paranoia? You realize that is no different than...EVERY OTHER SERVICE ON THE INTERNET? What is the down-time of any Cable/Satelite TV provider, ISP, Major Website like You-tube?

Do you sit around all day fearing for the hardware on their end? No? Then why do you think this is an issue when it's the same exact technology.

I agree with your over-arching point about service availability...but the reality is your fear is entirely unfounded, I don't avoid purchasing MMOs because of my fear that I might lose internet 0.0001% of the time, which is your argument.

Because if I'm understanding this right, unlike most of the services you listed the machines are going to be flat out running and transmitting the games and at max levels no less. This kind of server farm just flat out hasn't been seen or tested before (IE one that is going to employ top-end GPUs and likely multiple ones) that I know of. So I can see more potential issues as a possibility for hardware failure.

It isn't a fear I have of their service just going poof. I simply see just another potential problem besides the obvious latency issues and such. Again, I'm sitting here trying to think of all the crap they'd have to keep their service up to 99.9% and that kidna shit just has to add up.

Forget reliable, how in the hell is this going to be profitable?

[Shiroikage]

Maybe this is a very elaborate April Fool's prank.

[eunhye]

the people who are against this seem to be jealous. why would you want this to not work in the first place? let them try. none of you geniuses have the money to even think of this. so let someone else do it. they are not taking your money. i can never understand people who want things to "fail" just cuz it's the cool thing to want in a company.

[Pikarya]

This will last about a month, two at best.

[Okan]

the people who are against this seem to be jealous. why would you want this to not work in the first place? let them try. none of you geniuses have the money to even think of this. so let someone else do it. they are not taking your money. i can never understand people who want things to "fail" just cuz it's the cool thing to want in a company.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want it to fail. I just think there could be a lot of flaws and with today's 0.00000000000000001 second difference in games between life and death, lag will be a huge contributor no matter what the company says. However as I also said, they would need a HUGE server to store all "purchased" games because they will eventually remove them and you won't be able to play them anymore... So in today's age of Halo 3, Halo 1 might not be on the server no matter how much you want to replay the whole trilogy.