Onlive & the end of consoles?

kaimera

story

I can't open the link here in work but from the engadget snippet

What if you could stream games, any game, over a decent broadband connection to your PC or Atom-based netbook at the same quality as the PS3? Would you walk away from your beloved console? That's the of hope of Palo Alto-based OnLive. But this is much more than empty rhetoric -- OnLive's been dropping jaws of the press who've seen it working this week

Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, THQ, Epic Games, Eidos, Atari Interactive and Codemasters are already on-board. Expect OnLive to launch this Winter with monthly subscriptions available in "a variety of different pricing packages and tiers, competitively priced to retail.

I must look into this more later.

Brian

http://pc.ign.com/dor/articles/965599/onlive-video-demo/videos/onlive_demostream_032309.html

Ft.com wrote:

The secret is out.

OnLive, a potentially revolutionary video game service that calls into question the future of consoles, has been unintentionally revealed to the public.

After seven years in stealth mode, OnLive was supposed to be unveiled at a swanky launch on Tuesday evening at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. Thousands of members of the video game industry are in the city for this week’s Game Developers Conference.

Journalists and analysts were pre-briefed under embargo on OnLive’s startling capabilities last week, but Variety magazine broke that embargo on Monday evening, spoiling the start-up’s well-laid plans and opening the floodgates of press coverage.

Put simply, OnLive is cloud computing coming to the TV video game experience years before anyone expected it. Its founders say they have perfected a video compression algorithm that allows games to be delivered from a data centre onto televisions or computers in the same quality as on the latest consoles, and with no noticeable lag in response times.

The games can be played on any bog-standard laptop or PC without the need for a high-end graphics chip using OnLive’s plug-in software or on a TV connected to a box the size of a pack of cards that may well be given away for free.

Seeing is believing and, in the demo I was given, two people played the graphically demanding Crysis game with one another via the data centre with no noticeable lag, while a third cruised a matrix of scores of screens where games were in session. They could zoom in and watch, play solo or join multiplayer sessions.

OnLive is given added credibility by its pedigree. Its founder and chief executive is Steve Perlman, who led the development of the QuickTime video standard at Apple and then founded in the 90s WebTV, the TV-based internet service bought by Microsoft.

The service is also receiving backing from major publishers and developers at launch, who no doubt see the revenue advantages of cutting out the middle men of retail shops and royalty-demanding console platforms.

Analysts I spoke to were impressed, but expressed concern about whether OnLive could scale its service and provide the necessary reliability to satisfy gamers using it on a national scale. They also felt the company could quickly be copied or become an acquisition target for a Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo, if they felt their consoles were being cut out of the gaming equation.

OnLive still has a lot to prove. It is beginning by showing 16 titles on the service at this week’s conference and plans to offer the service in the US through a monthly subscription from this winter.

the_syco

I see it being bought, maybe by Nintendo? Imagine being able to play Crysis on your Wii? Would open an entirely new market, as well as being provided on a cheap console, that is already very popular.

Scruff

If the promise can live up to the hype it should be very interesting indeed. Me thinks all 3 console makers would be tussling to get a bit of that action.
Microsoft to maintain its dominant online position, Sony to perhaps ditch the ps3 cause of losses and Nintendo to steal a march on everyone with their huge console ownership base. (Though would nintendo bit the bullet and go for a platform that would have so many non family based games>?)

My main worry is our bb infracture here, no way we'd see that 1ms latency here!

cherryghost

great idea, but wont happen this gen or even next gen i reckon

MOH

IT might look great for two guys playing Crysis, but how's it going to scale if you've got tens of thousands trying to do the same thing?

Plus surely it's going to lead to people hitting their monthly caps an awful lot sooner?

Elessar

Too good to be true. Sorry, I don't think it's going to work out on a national/international level.

K.O.Kiki

Lag will be its killer alright.

That and pessimism.

Helix

cherryghost wrote: »

great idea, but wont happen this gen or even next gen i reckon

its out this year

cherryghost

Helix wrote: »

its out this year

i meant the end of console gaming.

Sabre0001

Elessar wrote: »

Too good to be true. Sorry, I don't think it's going to work out on a national/international level.

Or it'll work everywhere but Ireland

Helix

cherryghost wrote: »

i meant the end of console gaming.

depends how well this works really

not like these guys are new to this stuff either http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1996_Feb_12/ai_17961375

theres an article from just over 13 years ago

cherryghost

hah! nice find!

Sabre0001

Don't see the end coming. Consoles and PCs are set up for two different things really. Look at the Wii against PC for example. Two different target demographics and purposes. Similar arguments could be made for consoles vs PC. One you will play in your living room and built for having friends over (consoles) while the other is better for certain types of games (imo ).

Helix

Sabre0001 wrote: »

Don't see the end coming. Consoles and PCs are set up for two different things really. Look at the Wii against PC for example. Two different target demographics and purposes. Similar arguments could be made for consoles vs PC. One you will play in your living room and built for having friends over (consoles) while the other is better for certain types of games (imo ).

ok this isnt about pc gaming tho

this is a little box that lets you play games without needing an expensive console, and means you never have to upgrade

its ever so slightly different to consoles v pc, this changes everything

its one box that does the whole lot, forever

Professey Chin

I dont see it working for at least a good few years.Far too many things could go wrong. How many systems are they gonna need to run these games?(they have to be run on something). How would their servers hold up to thousands of connections? How much? How much lag(1ms me arse.In a controlled enviroment for investors yeah, publics another issue)? BB caps? Any game they decide to take down means no more playing of it again?If 1 server goes down how many cant play? etc etc. You get the idea. Yes im am a bit cynical

Sabre0001

Helix wrote: »

ok this isnt about pc gaming tho

this is a little box that lets you play games without needing an expensive console, and means you never have to upgrade

its ever so slightly different to consoles v pc, this changes everything

its one box that does the whole lot, forever

Hmmm...I don't seem to be getting it Must investigate further (rather than digging a very deep hole )

CombatCow

Ultimate Chin wrote: »

I dont see it working for at least a good few years.Far too many things could go wrong. How many systems are they gonna need to run these games?(they have to be run on something). How would their servers hold up to thousands of connections? How much? How much lag(1ms me arse.In a controlled enviroment for investors yeah, publics another issue)? BB caps? Any game they decide to take down means no more playing of it again?If 1 server goes down how many cant play? etc etc. You get the idea. Yes im am a bit cynical

I agree with all your points, I cant see this type of thing working..........yet.


CC

Shiminay

Too many variables for me to call this "OMFGWIN!" but it's a step in the right direction.

Cuddlesworth

For anybody who doesn't understand how this works.


You can have any machine capable of displaying a 2d movie over youtube. This includes 4-6 year old laptops running a tiny linux kernel.

What you will be sending will be keyboard inputs mainly.

All the stress of rendering the game will be placed on a high powered sever.

The following Video will be compressed and sent to the machine and displayed on the screen.

All the laptop will be doing is displaying a video and sending inputs.

Lag on a good broadband connection should be around 50ms, which isn't bad really. I've seen and used a very similar set-up with Citrix, their new Xen desktop solution is so very close to this its unreal to see. I was tempted to set up a Citrix server to see if I could get games running on a Dumb terminal recently, but haven't had the time or the equipment handy.

The problems with this, even on a basic Citrix set-up on really high powered servers you see about 25 users max. On this set-up I would be shocked to find more then 5 per server. And the servers, maintenance and bandwidth would cost a hell of a lot of money.

To put it in perspective, you would be talking about 30-40 times more costs in equipment then what a MMO like WOW would run on(as they aren't rendering the game, just coordinating it). Those costs would have to be transferred to the customer. Once you start talking about 40Euros a month plus extra costs for game rights etc, thats when your going to have a hard sell.

Brian

From Engadget comments:

This is a ridiculous idea for a number of reasons... the amount of bandwidth this service will generate would be obscene, and if it becomes even slightly popular the cash they'll need to spend on Crysis-capable PCs will greatly eclipse any money they'd earn from subscription fees.

Besides, if you really want a game badly enough, why wouldn't you want it in your collection, as opposed to a server thousands of miles away? You stop paying the monthly fee and you lose everything. Couple that with the probability that the service won't perform as well for ordinary customers as it would in a demonstration for investors and select members of the press, and it seems likely that OnLive will follow in the footsteps of GameTap as an ambitious, but ultimately failed venture.

Ummmmm, anybody ever think about the fact that this is, in fact, /impossible/ with our infrastructure? I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but here's a thought: video compression != latency. You can throw 250MB down connections, heck you could probably be on a gigabit LAN with the server itself, and you wouldn't be able to pull it off. When you think about what gamers are used to, the latency they deal with (and notice) is the difference between a 4 and 8 ms response time on their screens. Try pinging a major server like google.com right now, I can wait.

Notice those numbers? On my college campus, I get around 35-45ms. Where I am now? 68ms. That's the amount of time it takes for a packet to get responded to, and even that cut /in half/ would be very noticeable lag (to the point of it being unplayable). So yeah, maybe their system lets the video compression/decompression happen in less than 1ms -- it doesn't matter when your pipe only moves data so fast. I don't like posting those nay-sayer "come on, Engadget, think things true" kinds of posts. I honestly don't. But really. Am I missing something here? Isn't it a week early for April fools?

Cuddlesworth

They are all wrong, its very easy to do. The bandwidth is minimal, about 3-5kbs downstream with video if using the same compression as Citrix is currently using. Honestly the tech is there, I'm not surprised somebody is going for it.

Helix

people dont seem to realise that these guys have been working on this for 7 years

theyve kept it quiet for this long, i strongly doubt theyre announcing it without it working

Krieg

They've done bloody good to keep it quiet this long

I first heard it here, but every other forum I visit today, its become the hot topic and lots of discussions over whether or not it will work.

Sounds interesting but im gonna wait until theres more info

K.O.Kiki

Engadget's just a breeding ground for American know-it-alls, why would you listen to the commenters?

Professey Chin

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Engadget's just a breeding ground for American know-it-alls, why would you listen to the commenters?

Because he's one of them??!!! :eek:

Scruff

Some people at kotaku had a go on the beta system

What about lag, you say? OnLive's technology "incubator" Rearden Studios claims that its servers will deliver video feeds that have a ping of less than one millisecond. Its patented video compression technique is also advertised as blazing fast, with video compression taking about one millisecond to process.

Ahh....so its not lag over the interweb they were talking about when i read 1ms lag time

We too were a little suspicious of OnLive's capability to deliver perceptually lag-free on-demand games. But then we played a hasty online game of Crysis Wars on the service today and became a little less suspicious. It seemed to work. Obviously, it was in a controlled environment with only a few hundred internal beta testers populating the system. But it worked.


Will it work in the wild? It might. OnLive is currently beta testing internally, with an external beta planned for Summer and a launch later this year. Expected to be deployed by launch will be five server centers hosting the latest and greatest games—OnLive isn't aiming to be GameTap, with no immediate plans to host archival PC games. Server clusters will be located in Santa Clara, Texas, Virginia and elsewhere, hoping to offer OnLive subscribers within 1,000 miles a seemingly lag-free experience.


We'll be testing the service later this week, letting you know what we thought.

AlmightyCushion

Scruff wrote: »

My main worry is our bb infracture here, no way we'd see that 1ms latency here!

That latency isn't the total latency just the additional latency needed to process everything their end. So if you can ping them in 30ms then if you were to play the game it would only be 31ms. Now, if that'll be true when there is a couple of thousand people playing at the one time is another thing.

It's an interesting idea but we really need to see more. It's only 720p at the moment which I think is a bit of a let down. Although the bandwidth and processing power needed for 1080p and above would severely limit it in that regards.

death1234567

Its definitely one for the future. Cloud computing IS the future so applications like this one will be more an more common in the near future.

Ciaran500

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

They are all wrong, its very easy to do. The bandwidth is minimal, about 3-5kbs downstream with video if using the same compression as Citrix is currently using. Honestly the tech is there, I'm not surprised somebody is going for it.

So they can stream a 720p video image using about 3-4kb/s. Bull the creators even say it will take a 1.5mb line to run in SD and 4-5mb for 720p.

L31mr0d

wow so you mean I can now pay a premium for a service that will now mean that not only will my email and web access go down when my internet dies, but now my entire gaming collection will be unplayable also. SOLD!!! show me the dotted line!!! having all my media dependant on Irelands crappy ISPs keeping my line up is a great idea :rolleyes:

EDIT: On a non-sarcastic note. I don't know about others, but I tend to game a lot more if my internet dies as it doesn't require an internet connection. I think the idea of this is excellent, but it will only work if the ISP's can guarantee near 100% uptime for everybody.

Cuddlesworth

Ciaran500 wrote: »

So they can stream a 720p video image using about 3-4kb/s. Bull the creators even say it will take a 1.5mb line to run in SD and 4-5mb for 720p.

On a internal network I can stream a 1280*1024 image over Citrix xen desktop using 3-4kb/s overhead. I can't see why they can't enable similar compression.

If the above is true you won't see many people doing it here or in a lot of country's(America included). The infrastructure isn't there, the backbone would be destroyed with that amount of traffic. Think when the BBC/CH4 released their subscription service.

thebman

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

On a internal network I can stream a 1280*1024 image over Citrix xen desktop using 3-4kb/s overhead. I can't see why they can't enable similar compression.

If the above is true you won't see many people doing it here or in a lot of country's(America included). The infrastructure isn't there, the backbone would be destroyed with that amount of traffic. Think when the BBC/CH4 released their subscription service.

The image quality isn't HD on the Citrix connection. Nowhere near it I bet. Then you have audio.

Cuddlesworth

thebman wrote: »

The image quality isn't HD on the Citrix connection. Nowhere near it I bet. Then you have audio.

I was quite surprised when I saw it work, I really was.

Here are some tech videos.

Moving picture, audio etc. All streamed to what is essentially a dumb terminal. And little to no network overhead due to video compression algorithms.

thebman

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I was quite surprised when I saw it work, I really was.

Here are some tech videos.

Moving picture, audio etc. All streamed to what is essentially a dumb terminal. And little to no network overhead due to video compression algorithms.

There is no way that can work at a few KBps IMO No video compression is that good for HD video and audio content.

I've studied compression algorithms and as far as I know, no compression on that level exists without loss in image and audio quality.

BlitzKrieg

while the back and forth on the discussion if the service wont buckle under the pressure the element that I am looking at and thinking this could save the PC industry if it works is:

The games can be played on any bog-standard laptop or PC without the need for a high-end graphics chip using OnLive’s plug-in software

Really could return the pc market to the front that any old machine from dell could run Crysis (which seems to be the elected test monkey by discussions)

But I question would companies like Nivida and Radeon take this, wwould they be happy if their market turned into supplyin a select few companies that housed the servers rather then the tech demanding PC market at the moment (even if it is shrinking)

The discussion of pressure etc really depends on who picks it up and how the market is formed. We could see *providers* popping up much like ISP's were at the internet boom or maybe the console manufacterers will see this as the VCR of the gaming world and we might finally get a unified platform.



Then I think of Phantom and shrug

Cuddlesworth

thebman wrote: »

There is no way that can work at a few KBps IMO No video compression is that good for HD video and audio content.

I've studied compression algorithms and as far as I know, no compression on that level exists without loss in image and audio quality.

Why don't you email Citrix and ask them how they do it then? I'm sure a few trade secrets and millions spent in R&D mean nothing to them anyway.

Ciaran500

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I was quite surprised when I saw it work, I really was.

Here are some tech videos.

Moving picture, audio etc. All streamed to what is essentially a dumb terminal. And little to no network overhead due to video compression algorithms.

There is no chance in hell its possible to stream a HD moving image at dialup speeds, you'd be talking about completely throwing out all our current streaming tech if this was true. Were you playing a 1280*1024 video while only using 3-4kb/s or were you just looking at a programme running.

thebman

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Why don't you email Citrix and ask them how they do it then? I'm sure a few trade secrets and millions spent in R&D mean nothing to them anyway.

Lol, I don't think it matters how much you spend in R&D. You can't throw money at something at end up with something that breaks the laws of physics.

Quite simply I don't think it can ever be done at that level without losing image and audio quality. In gaming, that won't be tolerated IMO.

AlmightyCushion

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

But I question would companies like Nivida and Radeon take this, wwould they be happy if their market turned into supplyin a select few companies that housed the servers rather then the tech demanding PC market at the moment (even if it is shrinking)

At the moment it can only do 720p. You can get a 22" monitor and a card that would run most games at 1680x1050 on high settings quite cheap now a days. As long as this continues (spending a few hundred euro on a decent graphics card will provide better results than onlive) then I can only really see it taking over in the low end pc market so it won't make too much of an impact in the medium to high end. There would still be a lot of people who'd spend the extra money to get better quality graphics.

K.O.Kiki

But they're talking of a set-top box that's cheaper than a Wii...

AlmightyCushion

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Why don't you email Citrix and ask them how they do it then? I'm sure a few trade secrets and millions spent in R&D mean nothing to them anyway.

As much as I'd love this to be true, I don't think it is (I'd love to be proven wrong though). If this was the case google would throw money at them just to get it for youtube which last time I checked is still losing money due to the cost of the bandwidth it needs.

Ciaran500

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Why don't you email Citrix and ask them how they do it then? I'm sure a few trade secrets and millions spent in R&D mean nothing to them anyway.

http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2003/10/22/a-look-inside-citrix-s-new-technology.aspx
"Citrix's new “rave” technology completely changes this model. In this model, multimedia content is streamed to the client device via the ICA protocol in its originally encoded state ."

So Citrix doesn't have any spectacular new way of doing it, it just sends the file like it is as (wmv/avi/mkv etc). You couldn't possibly get the results you claim from this method.

Brian

Time.com wrote:

But you know who's definitely going to love OnLive? Apple. All that time they spent not turning Macs into a credible gaming platform now looks like pure foresight. OnLive just did it for them.

Haha. An ex-Apple employee scuppers the vidya gaem market? Now that is interesting.

Of course, it is yet to happen. As pointed out earlier, the Irish internet infrastructure is by-and-large not reliable enough to depend on for 100% availability of service.

Ri_Nollaig

On paper its a brillant idea.
But in reality i dont see this ever taking off or atleast not a hope by winter 2009, maybe winter 2019...
Sounds like another phantom...
Also, what about wanting to play an old game or modding???
Publishers probably love this idea as it could be the answer to all of their problems, end of piracy, end of the second hand market etc etc.

Cuddlesworth

thebman wrote: »

Lol, I don't think it matters how much you spend in R&D. You can't throw money at something at end up with something that breaks the laws of physics.

Quite simply I don't think it can ever be done at that level without losing image and audio quality. In gaming, that won't be tolerated IMO.

Looks like I'm going to have to get my desktop back working and set up a Citrix farm so. Don't suppose anybody wants to save me the hassle?

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

As much as I'd love this to be true, I don't think it is (I'd love to be proven wrong though). If this was the case google would throw money at them just to get it for youtube which last time I checked is still losing money due to the cost of the bandwidth it needs.

Are they not limited to flash?

Ciaran500 wrote: »

http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2003/10/22/a-look-inside-citrix-s-new-technology.aspx
"Citrix's new “rave” technology completely changes this model. In this model, multimedia content is streamed to the client device via the ICA protocol in its originally encoded state ."

So Citrix doesn't have any spectacular new way of doing it, it just sends the file like it is as (wmv/avi/mkv etc). You couldn't possibly get the results you claim from this method.

Quoting a six year old article. Nice. hey have plenty of different methods of media streaming now. Render on and off the host machine, caching etc.

AlmightyCushion

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Are they not limited to flash?

If it meant severely slashing the amount of bandwidth required I'm sure they'd find a way to accommodate it.

Stev_o

Considering the economic climate at the moment i very much doubt those publishers would back it if AMD, Intel, ATI and Nvidia and co decided to cut their sponsorships, and lord knows that those publishers/developers aren't in the sh1t already.

PogMoThoin

Stev_o wrote: »

Considering the economic climate at the moment i very much doubt those publishers would back it if AMD, Intel, ATI and Nvidia and co decided to cut their sponsorships, and lord knows that those publishers/developers aren't in the sh1t already.

One of the big players will buy it and make it disappear before it ever gains momentum if they feel threatened

MooseJam

so if they got a million subscribers all wanting to play crisis at the same time do they have to have a million top spec pc's running it at their end, can't see that working.

Overheal

MooseJam wrote: »

so if they got a million subscribers all wanting to play crisis at the same time do they have to have a million top spec pc's running it at their end, can't see that working.

That plus the bandwidth requirements would be staggering. Corporate-Internet is still spinning its head about bittorrent protocol - whats going to happen when the online gaming bandwidth per person shoots up from a few kbps to 500kbps? Just streaming Hulu, I average 300kbps.

Might be commonplace in 10 years, but not now.