Just tried onlive... seriously impressed

Sam V Smith

I was prepared for a slideshow... but it actually ran relatively smooth with next to no lag on my abysmal 3mbps (barely) eircom connection.

I have always thought that a cloud based gaming service would be the future for the industry, I just hope it doesn't end up being too ahead of its time. I was astounded at how responsive everything was - it left me wondering what technology was at play here... it really did seem too responsive considering my connection. I couldn't quite believe that every action / image frame was being streamed.

The 30 minutes free play time was great, and they really do have 90% of titles available with these free trials! Kept me busy for a while. The image quality was very much scaled down considering my poor connection, but I could still tell that all game settings were notched up to the top.

I'd recommend that anyone who has a spare few minutes to go try it out. I went in with no preconceptions, I wasn't expecting much, and even with my lacking internet connection I was left astounded.

Clicking in and out, swapping between games and seeing so much content available instantly with no loading times... it's quite unreal.

If onlive gets the following it deserves I may never need spend the mad amounts of money I have done in the past on future PC upgrades.

Even if you have a poor connection I'd recommend giving it a try. You might be surprised - although obviously a good connection is optimal if you want something up to replacing HD quality graphics you might see on a high spec personal system... and if you happen to be one of those lucky few in this country and actually have a good connection then get on it and try this **** out!

AceCard Jones

I wouldn't try it out as I'd never encourage making this the norm. I can understand it on the PC side of things but if it takes off there we all know it's consoles down the line that will follow suit. I always prefer a physical copy of my games, and I'm personally not a fan of subscribing, WoW and Xbox Live is already pushing it for me.

It also sucks if this becomes mainstream as a lot of people might want to game offline or may not even have internet connections. I can't see this toppling steam though if I'm honest, not in the near future anyway. Last news I seen on this was even on decent UK connections the games look quite a lot worse than their local versions so I couldn't be bothered to be honest.

Just another way of fighting Piracy and getting credit card numbers.

drunkmonkey

Just tried it there on osx lion, worked perfect, tried Dirt 3 demo very responsive, but the graphics were a big let down and my connection is ok.

Would use this for gaming on my mac but only when i'm not at home, would consider getting a controller.

Can't believe the graphics were so bad though and this is my connection..

Sam V Smith

As far as I'm aware there is no subscription required, you buy a game as you would - although it only exists in the cloud.

I understand many people are just like you with regard to physical media. From my perspective though they are in a significant minority.

That might be my own bias in play as I personally hate physical media of any sort. I've lost count of the multitudes of CD's / Xbox 360 games / PC games that I've lost over the years - in some instances then having to buy additional copies in order to replace them.

Then there's also the advantage that I don't need to lug my games console around wherever I happen to be. I travel a lot, and currently live in London. Last year I was living in Manchester, and I spent 9 months or so living in Dublin in between. The convenience factor is a major puller for me.

And to DrunkMonkey, I'm not sure if the connection listed in your sig is the connection that you were playing on, but I believe 5MBPS is very much on the lower end of the scale when it comes to playability. I really think you need a blisteringly fast internet connection to achieve the 'full experience'. The problem for onlive of course is that very few people have the internet connections the service demands... Give it a year or two though and I'd say things will have caught up.

Canis Lupus

Sam V Smith wrote: »

The image quality was very much scaled down considering my poor connection, but I could still tell that all game settings were notched up to the top.

lol....

Haven't tried it, probably never would.

AceCard Jones

Sam V Smith wrote: »

As far as I'm aware there is no subscription required, you buy a game as you would - although it only exists in the cloud.

I understand many people are just like you with regard to physical media. From my perspective though they are in a significant minority.

I don't think that's true, any discussion on digital only and cloud gaming I've read majority of the comments are against them exclusively. Yes your casual gamer or iphone gamer might prefer this but the core market ie the one that fuels the software sales from what I've seen/read, prefer physical media.

Sam V Smith wrote:

That might be my own bias in play as I personally hate physical media of any sort. I've lost count of the multitudes of CD's / Xbox 360 games / PC games that I've lost over the years - in some instances then having to buy additional copies in order to replace them.

Whereas I personally still have my old nes Snes and MegaDrive games and haven't lost any of my console games from every generation since. You also restrict yourself in loaning/trading in/selling on your own property. DRM will kill media if this is what it all comes down to.

Sam V Smith wrote:

Then there's also the advantage that I don't need to lug my games console around wherever I happen to be. I travel a lot, and currently live in London. Last year I was living in Manchester, and I spent 9 months or so living in Dublin in between. The convenience factor is a major puller for me.

I can see where it may benefit you personally traveling a lot etc. But most people aren't in your situation or if they are they probably fuel the handheld market or 99cent games on their iphone/pad. Not to mention Steam serves people who travel a lot, true they need the hardware but still. I'd rather own a console for every place I intend on gaming than use this. And if years down the line this is all there is, there's always other hobbies.

Chris_Heilong

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Just tried it there on osx lion, worked perfect, tried Dirt 3 demo very responsive, but the graphics were a big let down and my connection is ok.

Would use this for gaming on my mac but only when i'm not at home, would consider getting a controller.

Can't believe the graphics were so bad though and this is my connection..

Dude, those scores look like mobile phone network speeds, also the speedtest pcture you are using looks like it is very old, from before they redesigned their website. Here is a test I just ran:


Edit:just saw the date on your picture, very strange, I have not seen that look in about a year.

Sam V Smith

AceCard Jones wrote: »

I don't think that's true, any discussion on digital only and cloud gaming I've read majority of the comments are against them exclusively. Yes your casual gamer or iphone gamer might prefer this but the core market ie the one that fuels the software sales from what I've seen/read, prefer physical media.

That's the thing, the casual market is the biggest gold mine there is. It seems to be a recent revelation, but since the wii and mobile games platforms have proven their worth in the field I think it's a market which will only get bigger... everyone will want a piece. In that respect, onlive has popped up at a good time.

The hard cores will always be the most vocal. I don't see a time in the near future when they'll be shrugged off for the casuals. They are both significant, and developers/manufacturers will be looking to please both sides... The fact remains though that sales are driven that extra mile by the potential mass appeal which can only come from the casual market.

That said, I don't feel onlive is marketed to casuals in its current state. From what I've seen so far their main focus seems to be the hardcore. It's too early to say where it lies, but I would imagine it has the potential to appeal to both sides of the fence.

I don't think it has to be a case of 'one or the other.' Innovation and Competition can only good for the industry - it's certainly good for us as consumers. There will always be significant numbers who will rather have their xbox's and playstations set up with their games in the living room. Whether it takes off or not I think its success will lie in becoming another option rather than the new standard.

calex71

AceCard Jones wrote: »

I wouldn't try it out as I'd never encourage making this the norm. I can understand it on the PC side of things but if it takes off there we all know it's consoles down the line that will follow suit. I always prefer a physical copy of my games, and I'm personally not a fan of subscribing, WoW and Xbox Live is already pushing it for me.

It also sucks if this becomes mainstream as a lot of people might want to game offline or may not even have internet connections. I can't see this toppling steam though if I'm honest, not in the near future anyway. Last news I seen on this was even on decent UK connections the games look quite a lot worse than their local versions so I couldn't be bothered to be honest.

Just another way of fighting Piracy and getting credit card numbers.

Pessimist lol

I actually tried it on a tablet the other day, admittedly i would have preferred a controller hooked up to it and you can actually buy one for it , but I was pretty impressed. In terms of visuals 1000 times better looking than any mobile ports i've seen, it's actually a disservice to compare it to a "port" so far removed is it.

That said I would not like to be running it over 3G for example, but can see the use, PC running games in the bedroom or where ever , move to another room and play on tablet ..... or in the front room on a 50" smart TV, or the ability to log on and play in a hotel when on holiday on a TV etc etc it has it's uses.

Personally though they can pry the physical product / discs out of my cold dead hands

jaykhunter

I really love the idea of online -- i think it'll definitely be a big success (well the technology, maybe not this company!) -- but what kills it for me is that there are no console exclusives. I know that a lot of the big games are cross-platform, but i don't think i could go without stuff like Gears, Fable, Mario, Zelda etc

Overheal

Chris_Heilong wrote: »

Dude, those scores look like mobile phone network speeds, also the speedtest pcture you are using looks like it is very old, from before they redesigned their website. Here is a test I just ran:


Edit:just saw the date on your picture, very strange, I have not seen that look in about a year.

damn your fibre optics.

You need to click "share this result" to get the image.

those scores look like mobile phone network speeds

Seriously when I left Ireland you were all in the stone age, exactly wtf happened since 2007?

death1234567

calex71 wrote: »

Personally though they can pry the physical product / discs out of my cold dead hands

Dinosaur! The DVD is going the way of the CD/VHS and digital distribution and cloud storage is here to stay (whoo hoo!)

Nody

Sam V Smith wrote: »

As far as I'm aware there is no subscription required, you buy a game as you would - although it only exists in the cloud.

And this is the big issue; you're reliant on that not only will the cloud provider exist for a forseeable future but also that they keep the game available for you that you bought as you can't download it. I still like to fire up really old games (i.e. 10+ years) and if I remember correctly they only offer the game for 2 years (after that it may be removed).

For example Direct 2 Drive sent out this last night as an example of the first point.

1. Download your favorite game purchases from Direct2Drive. We plan to have as many game files as possible available on GameFly. Just to be sure, please download your old game files before the transition.

death1234567

Nody wrote: »

And this is the big issue; you're reliant on that not only will the cloud provider exist for a forseeable future but also that they keep the game available for you that you bought as you can't download it

Its not a difficult issue to solve though. Its very similar to what steam offer except instead of letting you download the retro games cloud game providers will just keep the old games hosted for you. The hardware requirements for them to host old games that few people are playing should not be an issue for them. As its a new service I assume they are just guranteeing the game for 2 years minimum for now, but if there's demand to host old games then I'm sure they'll sort it out.

If they go bust they could offer a contingency with game suppliers where in that event, a digital download of your game(s) would be made available to you if you request it.

Myrddin

I tried it also recently, found it quite impressive

Sasquatch76

How much data are you actually downloading? Surely this is a no-go for serious gamers on anything other than an unlimited download allowance?

Myrddin

Sasquatch76 wrote: »

How much data are you actually downloading? Surely this is a no-go for serious gamers on anything other than an unlimited download allowance?

Would it be any more than a HD Youtube video of equal lenght?

Retr0gamer

They're using some propriotory algorithms to cut down on the amount of data being sent as well. Digital Foundry did a good tech analysis. You can see it works well in very static situations but gets quite blocky with lots of artifacts when there's lots of motion, however it's less noticable when you play since in those situations you are noticing the action more so.

A big disappointment for me is that all the games are running at their medium settings which is about console quality. A big thing about this service is that you could play the games with full settings on modest hardware but modest hardware can easily run any game on medium settings.

Not a big fan of going online only. If onlive goes down you'll lose all your games and there's no room for mods and such.

RobertFoster

Overheal wrote: »

Seriously when I left Ireland you were all in the stone age, exactly wtf happened since 2007?

Don't worry, some of us are still kicking it old school :



That's probably my main reason for not even bothering with OnLive. Plus, I'd rather build a killer gaming PC than stream content with a subscription.

Sasquatch76

EnterNow wrote: »

Would it be any more than a HD Youtube video of equal lenght?

Oh okay, I didn't realise Onlive had such low FPS, although that in itself is a reason I wouldn't be bothered with it.

Krusader

Overheal wrote: »

damn your fibre optics.

You need to click "share this result" to get the image.

Seriously when I left Ireland you were all in the stone age, exactly wtf happened since 2007?

UPC happened, they have their own infrastructure, while most other providers are piggy backing off eircom

Myrddin

Sasquatch76 wrote: »

Oh okay, I didn't realise Onlive had such low FPS, although that in itself is a reason I wouldn't be bothered with it.

I've no idea of the bandwidth, & I found it very impressive on my connection (20Mb at the time). No fps issues when I looked at it.

Sasquatch76

EnterNow wrote: »

I've no idea of the bandwidth, & I found it very impressive on my connection (20Mb at the time). No fps issues when I looked at it.

Right, so we don't know how much data it's using then really.

Myrddin

Sasquatch76 wrote: »

Right, so we don't know how much data it's using then really.

No, if you look at my original post it ended with a question mark, as in I was suggesting seeing as your just more or less viewing the video stream from another computer, perhaps it's little more than hd video traffic would be. If you have to worry about your internet traffic useage, online cloud gaming isn't for you

Sasquatch76

EnterNow wrote: »

No, if you look at my original post it ended with a question mark, as in I was suggesting seeing as your just more or less viewing the video stream from another computer, perhaps it's little more than hd video traffic would be. If you have to worry about your internet traffic useage, online cloud gaming isn't for you

I saw the question mark, but it seemed to me you were making a statement rather than asking a question. Anyway, I'm with UPC so I have no worries as regards data useage personally. The question was asked in the interest of debate.