Tried it just now from Belgium, the lag makes it impossible to play (tried Borderlands demo) But when this service is fully functional it would be very cool since in Belgium there isn't a rental market for games anymore
If my comcast would get their lazy asses out here and fix my weak signal and actually provide me with the 12mbps i pay for instead of only receiving 2-3mbps i would totally use this.
So if you say stream UT3 over the service and jump online would it not crash like it'll be so slow using the connection to go online and play the game and then using more connection to play online...seems pointless.
Also Mirror's Edge is garbage...stick something like COD 6 as the promotional screen shot and we are talking. This will bomb!
" Do they have PC games? Like, could I play Civ5 on my crappy-completely-unable-to-play-CIV-5 laptop? Because I'd double woot for that. "
PC games is all they have, that's the entire point of the service.
I wonder how MS, Sony, and Nintendo would react to a service that streams console games to you, negating the need to buy a console. If they could find me a way to play Red Dead Redemption without a console, I would pay for that.
edit: Of course I just remembered that those three companies would probably have to give the go-ahead of selling individual games on the service, so that's probably a pipe dream.
Its still a cool concept, and watching other people play is pretty great (with a dash of wierd when you are playing a sp game and get up/down votes from random people watching you, its just a wierd feeling), but it just doesn't cut it currently. The bandwidth isnt available currently to make this system work. Which, the bandwidth could help with graphical/streaming limitations...but even at a much higher bandwidth you will always notice some controller lag.
OnLive will still be gone within two years. Regardless of whether or not they have a monthly fee, the fact of that matter is that the world is just not ready for it yet. I mean, seriously. It's not ready. We don't have the online infrastructure to support it. You can't even use it over wifi right now. How ridiculous.
So basically, OnLive's audience is people who have a crappy desktop computer, but a very fast high-speed internet connection. And no other game consoles. But they still want to play hardcore games. So... nobody?
And dude... you don't even own the games you buy. No thank you.
Valve has the market cornered on this sort of thing already. I would actually prefer to have the software I own installed on my machine that I know runs better than a server a few states away but apparently OnLive is cutting edge :P
So, I signed up now that it's free... but MY GOD!! there's next to NO GAMES on this thing... seriously, they need to expand their service if they want me to play anything on there...
I'm pretty sure most of the people bashing OnLive haven't even tried it, and are just attacking it because they have a $1000+ computer they built; well guess what, you should probably just ignore it since you can run games locally just fine.
But the fact is that cloud-based computing is the future, end of story. Maybe Onlive wont be the major pusher of cloud-based gaming (mainly due to the horrible infrastructure of the US right now), but do you honestly think you will be buying computer parts and assembling them in 20 years? Give this stuff a shot, we'll never get anywhere with the kind of closed minded thinking people have towards Onlive. Thankfully Internet gaming forum members are not at the helm of technological advancement.
That said, my connection at home is crap and the image quality was horrible, but the lag didn't seem that bad (in Houston).
" @Kyle: You know, I fit perfectly into that niche, but OnLive has no games I'm interested in. "
But then doesn't that just prove my point? That OnLive doesn't appeal to anybody? :P
Wait a second... I just took a look at your profile. I see you have Reach achievements. So then you DO have another console, right? So presumably, if you wanted to play any of the games on OnLive, you could just go buy them for 360 instead, and for the exact same price (or cheaper if you bought it used) you could actually own the game instead of own the right to play the game as long OnLive stays afloat. And without the bummer video compression. Boo OnLive. Okay, no more ranting. I promise. Super promise.
Cool. There was no way the sub fee was gonna work since you still had to pay for the games individually. But it's still waaay too early to be selling this type of service, excuse me... "paradigm" in the United States with the fucked up state of broadband in its current form. If they were South Korean, then it might make an epsilon of sense.
" I'm pretty sure most of the people bashing OnLive haven't even tried it, and are just attacking it because they have a $1000+ computer they built; well guess what, you should probably just ignore it since you can run games locally just fine. But the fact is that cloud-based computing is the future, end of story. Maybe Onlive wont be the major pusher of cloud-based gaming (mainly due to the horrible infrastructure of the US right now), but do you honestly think you will be buying computer parts and assembling them in 20 years? Give this stuff a shot, we'll never get anywhere with the kind of closed minded thinking people have towards Onlive. Thankfully Internet gaming forum members are not at the helm of technological advancement. That said, my connection at home is crap and the image quality was horrible, but the lag didn't seem that bad (in Houston). "
OnLive is not Cloud Based Computing. You don't know what Cloud Based Computing is. Video Streaming is not Cloud Based Computing. Oh and cram your misguided illusions that people aren't as advanced as you. I've worked on Cloud Based Computing systems and this isn't one.
It just seems like a weird time to release this service considering we are 5+ years into this console cycle. Maybe if they had released it back when the PS3 had a $600 cost of entry it would have been more successful.
Props to a CEO willing to be quoted with woots. Sounds like he was one of us, once. Before we became bitter critics that for some reason want fewer ways to play video games because, I dunno, OnLive is a silly name and we can't imagine anyone who doesn't play games like we do? That about covers 90% of the opinions and doomsayers I'm seeing here.
Brad touched on it, but it's no small feature that you can rent PC games, in a way completely able to remunerate developers and publishers. Which hasn't happened since, oh... Sega Channel? That doesn't make the concept destined to fail, even if the technology isn't quite there yet. 10 years from now bandwidth won't be a word people use to describe download speed. Data will simply arrive.
Pay to play is not a bad option to have on the menu, if someone can find a way to make it work (remains to be seen). If I can pay $15 to finish the Starcraft 2 campaign in 3 days without having to buy a new video card, and never touch it again, that's relevant to my interests. It's that or go pay $5/hour at my campus LAN-cade. Stop being so goddamn possessive about how games should be played and owned. It's a big world and there's room for more than one choice.
Screams desperation to me. Last ditch effort to get a viable registered user base to keep the publishers game listing fee and pitiful sales commission fee's coming in.
After all, what use is a $20 subscription fee if you cant get anybody to subscribe. Its a numbers game people. This service is going to join APB in the crematorium.
" Dumbest technology I've ever seen, and I'm still baffled by how many people actually thought this would work. Both gamers and moneymen alike. "
For a lot of people, it does work. Not to mention that they are really making themselves into another (possibly cooler) Steam with all the deals and so far one game is actually releasing there before retail (NBA2k11 I believe, but still).
Just because it doesn't work for you doesn't make it the dumbest technology ever, and the message from the CEO sounded positive about the financial success (I mean, he kind of has to, but it's still nice to hear). I know that a lot of people get bad latency, but this is the first technology of this scale and it really seems to be the way of the future. I'm not saying it's perfect, and there will probably be those dedicated PC gamers who will keep shit running on their own machines for years to come, but calling it the "dumbest technology I've ever seen" seems irrational, thoughtless, and just plain stupid.
I'm not here to pick fights, and I understand why you dislike it. Unfortunately, you came across as a complete dumbass.
To all you haters. I've been a part of On Live since day one and I must say that it is FAR more impressive then I had originally thought. Now, will it ever replace Steam for me? No, not even close, but this is a step in the right direction for On Live seeing how charging for a service and then charging full price for games that they reserve the right to pull off the service after 2 years seemed laughable at best. At least now it can be looked at more like a long term rental with no monthly fees and now they seem to be selling the game passes at a cheaper then retail price. Hate all you want, but you're only proving you haven't spent any decent time with this service.
On Live is real, it works incredibly well and given this recent change, it'll be here to stay more then likely.
If you think about it, OnLive isn't really worth it financial wise. I mean you pay upwards of $100/month for a godly internet service to play a game proper, or you just pay the $2000 or something to get the godly PC you need once every 3 years to play the PC games you want. Or better yet, $300 for an Xbox 360 or PS3.
Is the internet seriously that expensive in the US? And you seemed to have missed that you can use that internet service to do 38493 billion other things too. "
If you want speeds that OnLive demands yeah you'll need the higher-end internet plans.
And regarding that part about internet being used for more than 1 thing, I can say the same for a high-end PC too. Transcoding and rendering becomes a hell lot less frustrating when your CPU clock is faster.
OnLive is not Cloud Based Computing. You don't know what Cloud Based Computing is. Video Streaming is not Cloud Based Computing. Oh and cram your misguided illusions that people aren't as advanced as you. I've worked on Cloud Based Computing systems and this isn't one. "
Would you mind explaining why it isn't instead of just acting like a pretentious douchebag? It's just that every news article I've ever read about the service, as well as their very own site, has called it cloud based. But what would I know, I am not part of the elite class of people that "have worked on Cloud based Computing." Please shower me with your knowledge and experience. Or admit that you're arguing semantics.
The point of my post was that we are moving towards a remote desktop-ish world, it's completely possible and a neat idea to include gaming in the picture, and that I wished more people wouldn't write it off so quickly.
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