that onLIVE stuff

[ARTgames]

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/12/29/onlive-technology-demonstrated-at-columbia-university/

Take a look at the video. It looks impressive. I think it could work. And even if it does not work that well if it cheaches of its going to change things. It could google the gaming market!

[EpicPhailure]

Watching the actual menu at work is pretty cool. By actual menu, I mean the main menu where the guy showcases how easy it is to switch from game to game and etc.

It looks awesome, but what's the estimated price?

[Pat]

My friend told me about the beta, I got all excited before I realised it was only for the US. It looks pretty cool but I can't imagine how many powerful servers you'd need for it.

[Scotty]

Just watched the entire video.  Definitely something to look forward to!

[ARTgames]

Think about it. If this gets popular then whats going to happen to the 360, ps3, wii, pc? Game makers would be more willing to stop those than work for this. Now i don't think this will kill the portable game market but that's only a matter of time until we get faster networks.

What i'm scared about is is are internet really good enough to support this, are they evil, and will they have competitors?

[Lingus]

That's what I'm worried about too. The connection speeds. My friend told me last night that they are considering doing the same thing for movies. In other words, rather than have a DVD, you would just stream the movie. Like you can now with Netflix. To me it just seems like a step backwords. They would be getting rid of BluRay and going towards something with worse quality than regular DVDs. The only way they could get it nearly close to BluRay is if connection speeds were much much faster.

[ARTgames]

Well in a way blue ray is the old way. Steaming is convent. And even if the quality is no ware neer its quality people don't care because streaming is good enough for most people. And the market with the people lives.

I don't mind. If the money goes into steaming and downloading then that gives the more of chance to just improvement. And i also don't like that idea of making thousands of disks and having thousands of trucks and air plains take them around the world. That seems so old fashion.

[Jake]

I have a hard time seeing a service like this take over gaming because there are too many flaws in it's design. It doesn't allow people to have physical copies of their game, any network lag at all can cause an annoying input delay that makes the game unplayable, and how is this company going to handle a massive amount of people? Are they planning on purchasing a few thousand super computers?

When fiber optics become the norm in people's houses, a system like this will be a little more plausible. But I still don't see how they're going to fix the other two glaring issues.

[ARTgames]

It doesn't allow people to have physical copies of their game,

Yes people want that but convinces is more important. What if you dont want to own a physical copy? Just look at kindle, steam, itunes, xbox live arcade and game download, netflix streaming, and the list goes on. If that proves anything its that a market can work just fine without having a physical copy.

any network lag at all can cause an annoying input delay that makes the game unplayable,

Thats what im most scard of.

and how is this company going to handle a massive amount of people? Are they planning on purchasing a few thousand super computers?

they answer that question in the video.

[Lingus]

Steam is different than this. Steam is digital distribution. This is streaming/remote connection. With digital distribution you have the game files on your computer. Your machine is running the game. The specs of your computer determine how well the game runs. You can't do that with streaming like this...

I do agree that digital distribution is a good thing. I advocate Steam very much so. OnLive is different though.

[Jackabomb]

This looks really great. It reminds me of something my cousin told me about that should come out within our lifetime. It's supposed to practically destroy the gaming market, but I won't say more since I don't fully know what I'm talking about.

[ARTgames]

Steam is different than this. Steam is digital distribution. This is streaming/remote connection. With digital distribution you have the game files on your computer. Your machine is running the game. The specs of your computer determine how well the game runs. You can't do that with streaming like this...

Thats not my point. My point was to combat jake's point of owning a physical copy. Steam does not give you a physical copy but yet people still use the service. Thus proving to jake that people will buy stuff even if you dont get a physical copy.

[Lingus]

Okay, I see. And yes, that's actually still a concern people have with Steam. There are some people who just have to have the physical copies of their game. They are gaining the benefit of always being able to pop in that disc and install the game. They are losing so many more benefits that Steam provides.

It will probably be the same with OnLive. You are losing the benefit of being able to build your PC to spec, not worry about lag killing your ability to play a game, and not having the games installed on your computer. But you would be losing the benefit of not HAVING to build such a powerful PC in order to play the games. I can see this being a great thing for more casual gamers. They can take their PC that they built for every day use, without gaming in mind, and they should be able to play the more hardware intesive games.

[ARTgames]

There calming that they will have the most powerful hardware (they said they upgrade ever 6 months) and even hardware the consumer cant easy get or use (said something about ray tracking hardware).

The other point they are trying to say is that you can still play these games and not have a powerful system at your end. And for a lot of people that's all they want. The market of pc games that do that pc stuff is much smaller than the total gaming market. Just look at IW cod mw2 for pc. They dont care about pc that much at all.

Also this is much more economical for the game developers. For one it cuts out a lot of cost for them and stops piracy in they way we know it now.

And if this is good enough for most of the people who play games i don't see how the gaming systems today could compete.

These are the the points they say in the video.

[Jake]

Steam is different than this. Steam is digital distribution. This is streaming/remote connection. With digital distribution you have the game files on your computer. Your machine is running the game. The specs of your computer determine how well the game runs. You can't do that with streaming like this...

Thats not my point. My point was to combat jake's point of owning a physical copy. Steam does not give you a physical copy but yet people still use the service. Thus proving to jake that people will buy stuff even if you dont get a physical copy.

I actually made a mistake in my post. I meant physical and digital copies of the game. Like Lingus pointed out, we will no longer have either with onLIVE.

I also watched the video for 25 minutes, and never found out how they're going to account for a massive amount of people. They explained how they're going to account for network lag, and although they're doing a terrific job, there's still so many problems. Even in the test videos, I saw frames being skipped and whatnot. DSL users are going to have a hell of a time playing games without their being a glaring input delay.

I really believe it's a great product, but it's definitely not for everyone, and never will be for everyone. I believe future services will be more of a mix between Steam and onLIVE where they give you the choice, which will give the majority of gamers the option and flexibility they want.

Needless to say, cable users with shitty laptops are about to be on cloud 9.