Before you pitch both your Xbox and your PlayStation, let's take a look at the technology behind the console-less console that was revealed last night at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. It has been created by the same people who created WebTV which was ultimately sold to Microsoft for US$500 million.
Entrepreneur Steve Perlman, C.E.O. of his Palo Alto-based company OnLive Inc. and a former principal scientist at Apple, says "It's the last console you'll need." What does he mean by that? The OnLive console is thin client that streams gaming content from the Internet to your television. If you prefer, they will also stream gaming content to a low-end Macintosh or PC. All of the processing is done from the server end which means that OnLive will be responsible for any hardware upgrades required for new titles and that means that you won't need to buy a new console every few years.
Experienced players know that the true enemy of online gaming is lag. Simply put, this is the delay between when a command is issued and when the server responds. Anything that slows down response time or creates hiccups in the flow of game can ruin the gaming experience pretty quickly and even more so when your 10th level Elf "needs food badly". Well, after seven years of working on the project, the OnLive people think they have solved this. OnLive says they can now compress and stream the content fast enough that people will not be able to notice the lag. In fact, they demonstrated Crysis in action at the Game Developers Conference.
There would seem to be many advantages to this new system of delivery but there would be concerns as well:
-The system requires a high speed Internet connection to be present
-Playing games may reduce the usable bandwidth for everyone else in the house
-Playing games may use up your monthly cap (a 250GB cap could be used up in 12 full days of playing)
-The popularity of the service may place huge strains on the servers thus increasing the lag to noticeable levels
As with all gaming solution, the key to this venture will be in the titles that are made available. Electronic Arts Inc., Eidos Interactive Ltd. and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. have already signed up to produce content.
Many a smart gamer will hold on to their existing consoles and titles to see how this venture will be played out. Among the greatest interest will be to see if this product is marketed at casual gamers or core gamers. The biggest potential loser would be your local game shop since titles will be sold electronically and downloaded directly to the device.
Screenshot: OnLive MicroConsole
Screenshot: How it Works
Link: OnLive Website
Entrepreneur Steve Perlman, C.E.O. of his Palo Alto-based company OnLive Inc. and a former principal scientist at Apple, says "It's the last console you'll need." What does he mean by that? The OnLive console is thin client that streams gaming content from the Internet to your television. If you prefer, they will also stream gaming content to a low-end Macintosh or PC. All of the processing is done from the server end which means that OnLive will be responsible for any hardware upgrades required for new titles and that means that you won't need to buy a new console every few years.
Experienced players know that the true enemy of online gaming is lag. Simply put, this is the delay between when a command is issued and when the server responds. Anything that slows down response time or creates hiccups in the flow of game can ruin the gaming experience pretty quickly and even more so when your 10th level Elf "needs food badly". Well, after seven years of working on the project, the OnLive people think they have solved this. OnLive says they can now compress and stream the content fast enough that people will not be able to notice the lag. In fact, they demonstrated Crysis in action at the Game Developers Conference.
There would seem to be many advantages to this new system of delivery but there would be concerns as well:
-The system requires a high speed Internet connection to be present
-Playing games may reduce the usable bandwidth for everyone else in the house
-Playing games may use up your monthly cap (a 250GB cap could be used up in 12 full days of playing)
-The popularity of the service may place huge strains on the servers thus increasing the lag to noticeable levels
As with all gaming solution, the key to this venture will be in the titles that are made available. Electronic Arts Inc., Eidos Interactive Ltd. and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. have already signed up to produce content.
Many a smart gamer will hold on to their existing consoles and titles to see how this venture will be played out. Among the greatest interest will be to see if this product is marketed at casual gamers or core gamers. The biggest potential loser would be your local game shop since titles will be sold electronically and downloaded directly to the device.
Screenshot: OnLive MicroConsole Screenshot: How it Works Link: OnLive Website
Lag is to do with latency not available bandwidth. You could have a 1Gbps connection but if you have high latency it will still be useless for online gaming.
That is what I don't understand about this service. No matter how much bandwidth you have the server cannot anticipate and buffer every action you may take, so there will be times when the game cannot react to you until there has been a communications round-trip with the service, which even with good connections on both ends is normally at least 50ms. 50ms may not seem like much time but it can make the different between feeling like you are in control of your charactor or not--espachlly on FPS games.
I see what you meant now
Indeed. Latency and bandwidth are entirely different. Funny how people think, oh my 1.5mbps connection lags my games so I'll upgrade to 10mbps. With the same provider you will probably not lower your latency no matter how much bandwidth you are paying for.
However, if you don't have enough bandwidth forget about latency. It will be crap.
Imagine if your controller had a 50ms lag... it just wouldn't work for gaming. I know the subject has more to do with ghosting than lag, but I saw a huge difference between my older 5ms response computer LCD monitor and my newer 2ms response one. I will have to see it to believe it... good idea in principle but I think that it will not work with typical internet latency.
Soo, I didn't read the whole article first. Streaming games off the internet? I don't think so. Maybe casual games sure, but anything that serious gamers would play. Not anytime soon.
id need to see some real tests.
Last edited by thatmikeguy2 on 25 Mar 2009 - 15:07
i dont think you get how this works. The box itself simply acts as a communication tool. The user send input to the game and receives back video of the game. All of the actual game processing is done on the servers being run by OnLive. Within those servers are the exact same video/sound/chipset configurations you're talking about.
Because we all know in the USA how the "Sega Channel" worked... and in Japan with Nintendo's satelite based system worked out...
I could also see this turning into an outragious rental system with pay for play per hour or something stupid like that
The big 3 aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
-Spenser
considering the price, and the varying hardware they have to support; yes. of course, its extremely dependent on the hardware and throughput available, as is this OnLive service. The largest issue will be latency though, and the biggest effect on latency is geographical distance. so, if all of the OnLive server are in NY, and im in CA, im screwed. i doubt they are that naive, though. if they are, its the least of their problems.
phantom's about downloading games into the console, so it still needed the usual gaming hardware .
all OnLive client needed is a web browser or the video decoder thingy.
phantom's about downloading games into the console, so it still needed the usual gaming hardware .
all OnLive client needed is a web browser or the video decoder thingy.
and a prayer that there isnt a million people trying to play a game on a data center that can't handle it...
phantom's about downloading games into the console, so it still needed the usual gaming hardware .
all OnLive client needed is a web browser or the video decoder thingy.
and a prayer that there isnt a million people trying to play a game on a data center that can't handle it...
the data center is an irrelevant factor, all the data center is is floorspace. its the carriers that will determine available bandwidth. these days, bandwidth is cheep. as long as they provision enough funds for adequate bandwidth it wont be an issue. this is the same reason why this service will probably carry a monthly fee.
I think this is aimed at helping people play games on a PC, where requirements are high and updates are needed every few years, not at eliminating console games.
And lastly, I think streaming is capped at 720p, even on consoles some games run at 1080p.
It definitely is, all the way to 1080p to be exact.
I think this is aimed at helping people play games on a PC, where requirements are high and updates are needed every few years, not at eliminating console games.
And lastly, I think streaming is capped at 720p, even on consoles some games run at 1080p.
what would make you think streaming is capped at anything? the only cap is the cap on the line. there is no mystical property to 1920x1080 video that restricts it from being streamed. but streaming uncompressed HD quality video is not even a glimmer in the American eye. even uncompressed 720p is something like 70-80MB/s (not to be confused with 70-80Mb/s). 1080 is probably over 300MB/s. so it really all comes down to the compression.
People should deny this big time...it is the biggest bull**** they are trying to enforce on people. We should all fight against it. This will never work simply if people don't use it...no money back and they are epic failure.
Trust me...if they ever enforce this deny it...it's for good of humanity.
I see this being a niche product, not a replacement. There are millions of console users not even interested in internet features - so investing in a product that relies 100% on the internet isn't for them. I say, keep up the work with OnLive but don't do so with the intent on eliminating the console.
I'm not sold on this at all.
It's basically Citrix/RDP for gaming. Everyone thinks cloud computing will eventually become the be-all/end-all solution, however, there is a lot of misunderstanding on the topic. The more users you add, the more processing power is required.
There is a big difference between using the cloud to store information, and using the cloud to process information. Storing information is significantly easier (and more cost effective) to perform: you just add more storage. Processing, however, is not so easy. As applications get bigger and more complex, so do the hardware requirements to run those applications.
Gaming is extremely resource intensive. Not only for the CPU, but the GPU and RAM. Just 1 user running 1 game requires a ton of resources. Now multiply that for many users running many different games. The amount of resources to run this is massive. Massive server farms would need to be created, and as newer and more advanced games come out, those server farms will become overloaded and will require upgrades. Those upgrades are very costly. In addition to the upgrade costs, one must also take into consideration the operating costs, especially power (both for operating the servers and cooling them down).
A long time ago, mainframes processed all information. That has since changed, as the mainframe was simply not powerful enough for processing newer applications for all users on the system, and was not providing a cost-effective solution. I believe that while cloud computing will continue to grow; it will not be an adequate replacement for powerful client hardware. It is, however, great for storing information and presenting that information to the user whenever they want access to it.
How can anyone believe that this service will be successful? Gaming does not scale well across multiple users!
I liked, Fred Derf's comment the best. Just wait and see.
There are major, fundamental flaws to this type of system, and there is nothing wrong with pointing them out.
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