OnLive is shutting down and selling its patents to Sony

[MightyJordan]

 

It is with great sadness that we must bring the OnLive Game Service to a close. Sony is acquiring important parts of OnLive, and their plans don

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Sony probably picked things up for cheap.

[HawkMan]

While I think Live game streaming is absolutely horrible, and barely playable if you live on top of the datacenter. I find it equally questionable that Sony is allowed to buy both Gaikai and OnLive.

 

on the other hand, the technology behind both is fairly simple and easily replicated without breaching patents if this stuff ever becomes in some way playable. 

[Aergan]

Surprised it lasted as long as it did.

[nosense]

Is playstation now still a thing? 

[link6155]

I never saw a single advertisement for OnLive, how could they expect this to grow? Also the game selections is pretty awful, even after the CloudLift feature was added.

[TAZMINATOR]

I never saw a single advertisement for OnLive, how could they expect this to grow? Also the game selections is pretty awful, even after the CloudLift feature was added.

 

I saw advertisements on my TV ... not long ago... 

 

This service is not interesting to many people...  that's the reason they are closing it down.

 

I have tried it when they came out. I have not used it since then.

[Jose_49]

It's a pity. It was a service with lots and lots of potential. I can see Microsoft doing much better with the new Xbox App and Nvidia with Shield. Although different approaches, the concept remains the same.

 

Hope Sony does a great job implementing the service and patents!!!

[WesDog]

I tried the free trial of OnLive back in 2011 sometime. It was OK and the latency wasn't a big issue. My latency averaged around 50 to 60ms. I live in central Arkansas so not being close to one of their data caters I thought that was pretty dam good. It's only 10 to 15 more milliseconds than I average on other online games.

My issue was game ownership. They didn't have anyway to transfer the license you bought and paid for to you if they shut down. So I quit after the trial and never looked back.

I have the same problem with Steam. I get around that by downloading cracked copies of all the games I buy digitally and keep them backed up on hard drive and/or DVD. I don't think Steam will shut down but I don't take any chances. I own around 1200 games purchased digitally with about 860 on Steam. I don't believe in all that terms of service cap about owning a license to play the game but not owning the game that you have to agree to. If I pay $2 or $70 for a game I own a copy of that game and I make sure I have a physical copy of it in case the company I purchased it from caps the bed.

Streaming gaming is the future as much as I hate to say it. For the simple fact that it takes control of the games away from end users and keeps it in the hands of developers or publishers. They will be able to turn off the servers for Madden 2020 the day they release Madden 2021. That will be gaming's future as soon as the technology and backbone of broadband is able to do it with sub 30th latency. They will turn off single player servers just like they turn off multilayer servers now as soon as the next version is released.

I hope I'm wrong but I think developers and publishers are going to push streaming down our throats because it means they can force purchases of new games by killing their streaming servers of the old titles. Sports games do it now. How long do they keep the old games mp servers up after the new version is out? Maybe 6 months at most. They are starting to kill them as soon as they release a new version, even when there are still thousands of people playing every day.

OnLive failed because they were here to soon and went through so many financial problems that people didn't know they were still around. Sony bought gaikai and are pushing their own streaming games service. Now they have OnLive ip to work with.

The next generation of consoles will be the last to use physical media. It might be the last console with a hard drive to download games to. I think that the PS6 will be a streaming console like the OnLive hardware was. Just your account and a controller. Just imagine all the account theft that consoles will face like Steam does now. I don't trade or sell anything and I still get people trying to phish me to steal my account everyday. My Wow account has been taken several times even though I use the authenticator app.

I hope we can still play older games like we do now. Unfortunately the only way I see it happening in the future is being forced to buy a "remastered" or HD version for $30 or more. Business is business and profits are more important than the games. It will only get worse from here on out.

Sorry for the long post. I just hate the way the games industry is going with Free2Play and other ways publishers are fleecing customers.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

There's a physical limit to how much you can lower latency, and things like OnLive are specifically hit hardest by it (You can't compare it to a normal MP game, since your local client is still responding to input within a few miliseconds)

Another problem OnLive had, was that whenever anybody brought up the issue of latency, they'd change the subject to bandwidth (or video codecs), they had no solution to the problem, and didn't want to talk about it.

[Shiranui]

Game streaming is dead in the water.

[HawkMan]

I tried the free trial of OnLive back in 2011 sometime. It was OK and the latency wasn't a big issue. My latency averaged around 50 to 60ms. I live in central Arkansas so not being close to one of their data caters I thought that was pretty dam good. It's only 10 to 15 more milliseconds than I average on other online games.

My issue was game ownership. They didn't have anyway to transfer the license you bought and paid for to you if they shut down. So I quit after the trial and never looked back.

I have the same problem with Steam. I get around that by downloading cracked copies of all the games I buy digitally and keep them backed up on hard drive and/or DVD. I don't think Steam will shut down but I don't take any chances. I own around 1200 games purchased digitally with about 860 on Steam. I don't believe in all that terms of service cap about owning a license to play the game but not owning the game that you have to agree to. If I pay $2 or $70 for a game I own a copy of that game and I make sure I have a physical copy of it in case the company I purchased it from caps the bed.

Streaming gaming is the future as much as I hate to say it. For the simple fact that it takes control of the games away from end users and keeps it in the hands of developers or publishers. They will be able to turn off the servers for Madden 2020 the day they release Madden 2021. That will be gaming's future as soon as the technology and backbone of broadband is able to do it with sub 30th latency. They will turn off single player servers just like they turn off multilayer servers now as soon as the next version is released.

I hope I'm wrong but I think developers and publishers are going to push streaming down our throats because it means they can force purchases of new games by killing their streaming servers of the old titles. Sports games do it now. How long do they keep the old games mp servers up after the new version is out? Maybe 6 months at most. They are starting to kill them as soon as they release a new version, even when there are still thousands of people playing every day.

OnLive failed because they were here to soon and went through so many financial problems that people didn't know they were still around. Sony bought gaikai and are pushing their own streaming games service. Now they have OnLive ip to work with.

The next generation of consoles will be the last to use physical media. It might be the last console with a hard drive to download games to. I think that the PS6 will be a streaming console like the OnLive hardware was. Just your account and a controller. Just imagine all the account theft that consoles will face like Steam does now. I don't trade or sell anything and I still get people trying to phish me to steal my account everyday. My Wow account has been taken several times even though I use the authenticator app.

I hope we can still play older games like we do now. Unfortunately the only way I see it happening in the future is being forced to buy a "remastered" or HD version for $30 or more. Business is business and profits are more important than the games. It will only get worse from here on out.

Sorry for the long post. I just hate the way the games industry is going with Free2Play and other ways publishers are fleecing customers.

 

Their latency wasn't true though.

 

they displayed the latency value which didn't include the video encode and decode delays and the the very large disconnect of your input having to go there before being returned.

 

the games played horribly even when they claimed to have low latency. of course you only got low latency if you where right next to a datacenter anyway. 

[Aergan]

Game streaming is dead in the water.

 

Over a local LAN, no - over our current generation of internet? Very much so.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Once Sony implement DX12 in their clouds though they will become over level 9000.

 

 

200% GPU boost and 60FPS 4K gaming. Quote me on it, I know the future.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Called it, Neowin game podcast #4

 

But in all seriousness, I remember the CEO being ###### that Gaikai was allowed to continue and they were raging that Sony bought them up a couple of years ago. Apparently the aim was to be the company that everyone wanted to snap up and sell off their streaming tech. Nobody was interested at the time though.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Called it, Neowin game podcast #4

 

But in all seriousness, I remember the CEO being ###### that Gaikai was allowed to continue and they were raging that Sony bought them up a couple of years ago. Apparently the aim was to be the company that everyone wanted to snap up and sell off their streaming tech. Nobody was interested at the time though.

 

Can you believe at one point they were estimated at a worth of over 1 billion?!

[MightyJordan]

Called it, Neowin game podcast #4

Damn, that's nostalgic. Any hope of a revival there? I do remember trying to wrangle my way onto one of them before.