News OnLive public beta begins

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/09/03/onlive-public-beta-begins/1

OnLive, the cloud-based gaming system, has entered public beta.

 

Bleh, US-only.

 

Anyone for 'cloud-computing' based Solitaire?

 

I bet it only launches in the US too. Much easier to keep everyone close to the servers and thus the pings down that way too.

It would be awesome to use, but the fear is no matter how fast your connection, the Internet isn't a consistent beast. Still, as Bit says, it'd be wrong to write it off without trying it.

 

lost my internet connection for the last 4 days, was lucky i have Futurama videos and games offline.

i can't see this as my primary system the same reason as i don't use Spotify/LastFM or stream any lengthy videos (i download them)

would be nice to see how the beta goes though

 

I can't see this working on my 1 meg line. They really need to invest in the Telecom infrastructure in the UK before this would be feasible for enough people.

 

This just isn't going to work with the current state of internet telephony.

 

Grrrrrrrr US only that sucks!

Agree with Jamie. A lot of UK connections using ADSL are piss poor. Lucky if you get 2-3Mb out of the line. Plus with all the traffic like iPlayer, YouTube HD etc, IPS's are already struggling to keep up with the demand! I think they would fall over if this became popular.

 

huh? the US is huge, it'd be best for beta in UK
better infrastructure and everythings closer
can't wait to get feedback from the beta testers

 

more about latency then bandwidth, UK is better connected then US

 

There's no way my internet would be strong enough for this, i think i will be playing games for 'real' for a while yet.

 

This is the most important series of stories in gaming since the advent of the graphics cards. HUGE, BIG, ENORMOUS.

By the way this was shown publicly and worked fine.
I feel there is too much neo-luddite skepticism around this company and their efforts, dnoted by the excessive use of "supposedly" and other qualifiers.

Enjoy the future while it is here!

Yours in OnLive Plasma,
Star*Dagger

 

for the US ya for the rest of the 1st world countries will be fine, the US is 28th in terms of internet capability ><

 

I hear UK internet is really garbage too. Good thing i don't live there, i'd be pissed if my connection was weaker than advertised.

 

just signed up.. I wish they had put some questions about system hardware- but I guess if your just streaming it, doesn't matter

 

I also have serious doubts about this, i just don't see it working smoothly enough to play really high end games (crysis for example, which is the kind of game you would want to run on it, games that need seriously beefy hardware)

 

OnLive is concerning, not because of the issue of "will it work", but because frankly, it means a total lack of content control on the part of the users. Games being safely tucked away on the company's servers means that yes, piracy won't be an issue, but it also means that if you want to keep playing your games, you're going to need to keep paying money for them. If the service goes down, you're left with no way to play; if it goes under, all "your" games, and "your" game progress are gone. Personally, I'd much rather have a copy of my game on my computer, to be played when I see fit, than to be constantly renting them.

Please investigate before posting like this. OnLive works by doing all the actual computation on their own server farms, which are likely far more powerful than any home user's hardware, even under heavy loads. Games are streamed to users as 720p video, while the user's control inputs are directed to the server. While this isn't an issue for slower-paced games, if you have anything more than 15 ms of latency, the delay is going to be noticeable in fast-paced games, especially shooters. The video encoding also has to be extremely fast, and even an added delay of 2-5 ms can be noticeable in certain situations. When you consider that most people get pings of 30-70 ms in online games with modern connections and fast servers, OnLive just does not seem realistic for anything requiring fast reaction times from players, even with good latency compensation built into the netcode.

There's also the issue of image quality, of course. OnLive streams games as 720p video, but I doubt that's going to be crystal-clear, and 720p is a fairly low resolution these days when it comes to gaming. 1680x1050 and higher aren't the norm just yet, but they may well be in a couple of years when OnLive debuts, with 1080p displays closing in fast as well, and even small artifacts will be extremely noticeable in those situations.

Suffice is to say, OnLive is a major, major compromise - its aim is to get more people gaming, who don't want to shell out tons of money for their own gaming computers, who don't care so much about image quality, and who don't feel owning their games long-term is a priority.

 

American posters who check it out - let us know your views as soon as possible!

 

That's no different to Steam (aside from the continuous subscription bit, which will doubtless appear down the line), surely you haven't forsaken that superb little bit of software too?

It like most other things is a question of working out your budgets. Sure you'll be tied to the subscription model and there will doubtless be a (small imo) risk of them going bust but chances are for most vaguely serious gamers this would be far outweighed by the substantially lower outlay on games/hardware/electricity and the fact that it'd be so damn convienient. No installation of a game and then mod after mod after mod, no pissing about with patches, just works whenever you want it.

Passing away train journeys playing CS:S on my eee? Yes please.

 

To those worried about not being able to own your games anymore, think of OnLive/Gaikai (cloud gaming) as a service. It's a lot like going to the cinema (you don't own the experience then do you?) as opposed to buying a DVD and bringing it home with you, which is more like Steam right now where you download your games and it's yours to download as many times as you want.

I think we will always... at least for a long time, have a choice of the two. To either stream our games as a service, or buy it and make it ours by downloading it to run completely on our own system.