Will OnLive work?

May 19, 2009 porkchop 1 comment

OnLive http://www.onlive.com/
is a on-demand video game platform, announced at the Game Developers Conference in 2009. The service is a gaming equivalent of cloud computing, the game is synchronized, rendered, and stored on a remote server and delivered online. The service was announced to be compatible with any Windows PC running Windows XP or Windows Vista, or any Intel-based Mac running OX X. A low-end computer as long as it can play video, may be used to play any kind of game since the game is computed on the OnLive server. For that reason, the service is being seen as a strong competitor for the console market. Thus, Broadband connections of 1.5Mbps dials the image quaility down to Wii levels while a 4-5Mbps pipes are required for HD resolution. The average broadband connection speed in the US at the end of 2008 was 3.9 Mbps, while 25% of US broadband connections were rated faster than 5 Mbps. It was announced that Electronic Arts, Take-two, Ubisoft, Epic Games, Arari, Codemasters, THQ, Warner Bros, 2D Boy and Eidos Interactive have signed up to have their PC games available on the service. Sixteen game tiles are currently available from the OnLive service. The service is currently in a closed beta with plans to have an open beta during the summer of 2009. The service is planned to release in the winter of 2009. – Source Wikipedia

OnLive is very exciting thing to happen for gamers and they currently have beta sign up’s on there website, unfortunately its only for US residents. It is a great idea but also there is a lot of speculation on will it work, especially with Internet not being that reliable with speed’s. As you know for gaming, especially FPS (First Person Shooter Games) registry/lag is important or the game is unplayable. The major problem I see is the latency in time it takes to send data to the server and back to the end user, For example pushing the buttons on the controller will probably have a delay as well as the video rendering on screen. I also can’t see how they can stream HD games with current broadband technology, unless you are on a Fiber optics line. They state that different speeds will on your Internet such as 4-5Mbps will get you HD resolution, but that is highly unlikely since, most of you know, you don’t actually get the Speed that your ISP says you get, it varies most of the time, so that is a unreliable way of saying what you can play. The amount of server’s/computer’s needed to host this service would be another problem, games have always been improving in graphics, thus requiring even the most sophisticated gaming computer’s even graphic cards have a hard time with the game, one example is Crysis, which even at the time the fastest PC would get slow frames. The cost of the service must be real high as well, probably even more expensive then buying the actual game, or renting it from a store, it will probably be billed on a monthly cycle, costing as much as your current Internet or even more. Gamers are very fussy about lag, if something lag’s really bad, they will probably avoid it and not recommend it to anybody else, if this suffers from that, then people will most likely say it sucks, and it will get that reputation, to avoid. Also companies that make hardware, and Consoles would be very angry about this, since they would loose a lot of money if this happened, but looking online, they are not worried one single bit, this also raises a few questions, since they are experts in the field and if this posed a significant risk, they would be doing something about it. I have to also say that a lot of people enjoy playing mod’s, this would eliminate that as well, and it would hurt the current development of these mod’s, a lot of people do this as a hobby, and a lot of people enjoy playing them. The service kind of reminds me of the Sega Channel, my friend use to have it and it was available through its ISP company, it was a cool idea at the time, but also really buggy, he ended up getting rid of it, the Sega Channel was out in 1994, and it used cable Internet. So if this OnLive does work I can see ISP’s probably doing it as well, since they have the direct connection to customers, and also with the recent Digital Phone they provide they would probably have its own network for it. When OnLive is released it will probably be only good for old single player games and racing games.

OnLive I think will work, but it won’t work as well as everyone is saying it will, the major reason being the latency problem, in the future this will probably work well with the Internet, and as more people get connected to Fiber Optics lines, I think it is a bit to early for this technology to work. It will be really buggy and laggy, I may be wrong lets see.