http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/24/BUS416LJH7.DTL&type=business

Quote :

"(03-24) 16:15 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A streaming online game system introduced Tuesday by San Francisco startup OnLive could make console and PC video games much more accessible - at the same time it threatens gaming hardware sales. The OnLive Game Service, seven years in the making, brings the concept of "cloud computing" to gaming, allowing remote computers to do the heavy processing while users play on simple PCs or televisions that have an Internet connection. Instead of relying on hardware in the home, OnLive makes the investment in robust datacenters that can stream the game play with one-millisecond of lag. For players, especially newcomers to the field, OnLive offers the chance to get into the game without having to plunk down hundreds of dollars for a console or high-end gaming PC. And over the long term, the service allows gamers to play instantly without having to worry about downloads, discs or eventual hardware upgrades. "We're giving access to people who don't have access," said Steve Perlman, founder and CEO of OnLive. "We've moved hardware out of the equation." For publishers, the service provides a piracy-proof way to deliver games, bypassing brick-and-mortar retailers. Meanwhile, gaming companies can expand their pitch to a wider audience. "OnLive fits into our digital strategy, which is to ... bring content to as many distribution points as possible," said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of software publisher THQ. In addition to THQ, at least nine publishers have signed on with OnLive, including heavyweights Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive Software and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. OnLive will be showing off 16 current PC and console games at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week. OnLive Game Service is expected to be available by winter through a monthly subscription with multiple tiers and packages. Users will need to have a high-speed broadband connection of 1.5 megabits per second for standard definition resolution or 5 megabits per second for a high-definition 720p picture. And if they connect to a TV, they'll need to buy a small OnLive MicroConsole, a palm-sized device that connects the TV to the Internet. MicroConsole users also will need to buy controllers that plug into the device or connect wirelessly. Pricing has not been set for the service or the MicroConsole, though Perlman said the device is cheap enough that OnLive is considering including it in the cost of a subscription. PC and Mac owners using most "entry-level" computers will be able to play with a mouse and keyboard using a plug-in program for their browser. Perlman, who has worked at Atari and Apple and produced the Quicktime video software, believes that PC users will be more likely to pick up the service initially, but over time he expects 80 percent of users to play games over their television. Sharing video The service will feature community tools including avatars and the ability to make and share "brag clips," short videos of your game highlights. Users also can have multiplayer matches, watch other gamers and track leader boards for popular titles. Publishers said they are still committed to both their retail and console hardware partners, but see OnLive as a complementary service that can help expand their business. Retail stores and consoles "have a long and healthy future in front of them," said Laurent Detoc, North American president of Ubisoft. "OnLive simply offers us another complementary channel of distribution to reach our fans." The consolemakers, however, understandably have not teamed up with OnLive, so it's highly unlikely games from Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony's own studios will appear there. Sony Computer Entertainment America said it is not concerned with the threat posed by OnLive. "With both digitally distributed and disc-based content, we have a competitive offering for consumers, whether they are tethered to the Internet or not," said Patrick Seybold, a spokesman for Sony. "We're confident in our approach and have a proven legacy that validates our long term value proposition." Threat to consoles Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities, said if marketed and operated well, OnLive could pose a threat to gamingconsolemakers. And OnLive could create a wide lead over competing services if it presses its first-mover advantage. But, he said, much will come down to the pricing of the service and the value people perceive from an online subscription. "Depending on what business model these guys adopt, they could be wildly successful or a footnote in history," Pachter said. Not only will the pricing determine much of the success of OnLive, but it must be able to handle millions of users without any slowdowns. Analyst Billy Pidgeon of IDC said OnLive is a demonstration of serious cloud computing. "We have to see how well it handles the load," Pidgeon said. "This will be a major stress test.""

okay, not really, but how feasible is this, really? i just don't see the infrastructure in place to handle HD-quality gaming over teh intarweb

3/26/2009 7:40:44 AM

http://www.thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=561887

3/26/2009 7:46:14 AM

i never visit entertainment

3/26/2009 7:51:47 AM

I'M GLAD I HAVE THIS GUY ON BLOCK

3/26/2009 7:56:25 AM

Even though there is a topic in Entertainment, I think it's something that should be discussed in tech talk as well. Basically, these guys are claiming to have solved a problem that the cable and internet companies haven't been able to (hence all the skeptism).

Here's a fun article,

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gdc-why-onlive-cant-possibly-work-article

Quote :

"More than that, OnLive overlord Steve Perlmen has said that the latency introduced by the encoder is 1ms. Think about that; he's saying that the OnLive encoder runs at 1000fps. It's one of the most astonishing claims I've ever heard. It's like Ford saying that the new Fiesta's cruising speed is in excess of the speed of sound. To give some idea of the kind of leap OnLive reckons it is delivering, I consulted one of the world's leading specialists in high-end video encoding, and his response to OnLive's claims included such gems as "Bulls***" and "Hahahahaha!" along with a more measured, "I have the feeling that somebody is not telling the entire story here." This is a man whose know-how has helped YouTube make the jump to HD, and whose software is used in video compression applications around the world."

lol

[Edited on March 26, 2009 at 10:44 AM. Reason : :]

3/26/2009 10:29:01 AM

Although I really like and probably would try it out if it was cheap enough, I can only see FAIL with this for right now. The box is only used for games and that's it for one thing, and if the servers or internet is down, or if you don't have internet period, this box ix absolutely no good to you.

3/26/2009 10:44:11 AM

anyone remember segatv? this would work well if you had enough bandwidth to transport accelerated video. a better transport than X, rdp, citrix metaframe, etc would be needed. vmware claimed to have one at vmworld last year. software as a service, b

3/26/2009 10:49:55 AM

I like penny arcade's parallel between this and the Phantom console which turned out to be a money-making scam. If something's too good to be true...

Actually Tycho's post is good here: "If a man claims to be Jesus Christ, you can bet I'll check the wrists."

[Edited on March 26, 2009 at 10:59 AM. Reason : Anybody w/ TWC would also find trying to use this service infuriating.]

3/26/2009 10:58:55 AM

This is a neat idea, but you can't even currently stream a 1600x1200 video stream at 30fps across the internet - at least without some crippling compression. Unless you have some serious dedicated very low-latency bandwidth straight into the cloud, it's not happening.

3/26/2009 12:10:44 PM

the delay in input from the user's controls over the internet is enough to make this impossible.

3/26/2009 12:34:42 PM

vapor/scamware

3/26/2009 12:48:52 PM

I think the latency on a low end usb 1.1 mouse is something like 8ms. So the total latency assuming say 30ms ping times would still be less than 1/10th of a second but since it's more than 1/30th it does approach a perceivable lag. That is of course assuming magically immediate processing on their end and near perfect internet conditions. It is reasonable that you could see total lags between mouse input and on-screen response approaching 200+ms. This would definitely be noticeable. In a first person shooter it would feel like your perspective was dragging behind your movements, almost like you were drunk.

I can't see this working very well either.

[Edited on March 26, 2009 at 7:01 PM. Reason : ]

3/26/2009 6:58:23 PM

many of us play online games with 200+ms delays all the time. in a game like wow, it's not noticeable

3/26/2009 7:04:25 PM

With specialized HW, 1000fps at 5Mb for HD video is possible.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Cell could pull this off. I wouldn't be surprised if a quad or more likely an octo core i7 could do it.

But, i'd have to see this first before I believe it.

3/26/2009 7:52:08 PM

It's a great concept. HOWEVER, with ISP's throttling back on everyone's bandwidth the cost is going to be transferred to internet access prices and cost MONTHLY.

At the very least hardware consoles let you pay for what you want in bursts. Buy this, play it out for a long time, buy another. I think it ends up being waay cheaper (in the long run) to stick with the hardware console.

3/26/2009 7:52:32 PM

and most people don't have internet at the beach.

3/26/2009 7:54:20 PM

It'll work.

Its going to be a limited market rollout (if they are smart). The service will be offered within a certain distance and latency bounds of a data center. Very similar to the ISP business of entering your address to tell you if they offer service to you.

Here's the process I see coming out:

You download a small "connection" app. It runs, and checks your location and latency, and determines whether you qualify for the service. Meet their bar, and you can then sign up for the service.

2-8ms input lag is entirely possible and reliable as long as they keep control of their QoS allowances.

3/26/2009 8:04:32 PM

Quote :

"many of us play online games with 200+ms delays all the time. in a game like wow, it's not noticeable"

Yeah I thought someone would make that comparison. It's not the same at all though. The lag in online games is a lag between the information your system has and the information the server has- basically. This does NOT affect the responsiveness of your controls. A 200ms diffence in someone else's position does not nescessarily have a huge impact on where they are on your screen or whether you hit them or not. A 200ms lag in you moving your mouse and your character/pov responding on screen is much more singificant. That is 2/10 of a second or 6 frames at 30fps. That's noticeable- trust me I had a glitch on one of my old systems that caused just such a lag and it was like playing a drunk CT every time I loaded up counter strike.

Anyways, it's only an issue for most people above say 100 ms and even then it's only most noticeable in FPS type games where a control lag is down right disorienting.

3/26/2009 11:40:41 PM

PLUS, what happens if this takes the world by storm? Surely there will be other companies that all want to set up their own version of this. THEN, do we see game exclusivity rights show up between games and specific server companies?

So sad, you want to play COD6? You have to be on MicroLive

Oh, you want the new mortal Kombat game? Sorry, it's only coming out on Onlive

The New Final Fantasy? Only SonyLive has rights to that one.

That's going to eventually suck

3/27/2009 11:58:21 AM

^ that's not going to happen, or at least, there's no need for that happening.

3/27/2009 12:02:12 PM

There's no need for it to happen with consoles, but it does. It should be a legitimate worry.

3/27/2009 12:09:29 PM

^ there's a very good need for it to happen with consoles. They are entirely different SW and different enough HW platforms that it's practical for a developer to exclude a platform.

Streaming the video from a Windows PC doesn't warrant exclusivity deals on developing a game only for a single streaming service.

You might see that game A is only available on a particular streaming service for a month (but you can still buy it for your local PC), but that's not that bad.

3/27/2009 12:14:25 PM

VAPORWARE

3/27/2009 1:02:24 PM

3/27/2009 2:21:29 PM

^ and ^^

I too read Penny-Arcade. I can also formulate my own conclusions, maybe you guys should look into that.

3/27/2009 2:35:04 PM

Quote :

"there's a very good need for it to happen with consoles. They are entirely different SW and different enough HW platforms that it's practical for a developer to exclude a platform."

That's not why exclusivity deals happen. It's in the best interest of the game company to introduce the game on as many platforms as possible seeing as there are only a few to service and it can drastically increase your sales to do so. The reason exclusivity deals happen is because HW manufacturer's offer kickbacks to game development companies (in the form of fat moo-lah) for the rights to make their console seem like a better choice to buy than other consoles. It's a matter of console company competition, not a choice the game developer makes because they want to.

3/27/2009 2:47:19 PM

Quote :

"2-8ms input lag is entirely possible and reliable as long as they keep control of their QoS allowances."

That'll be a very interesting question. If this works as advertised, they're going to be under a lot of business pressure to expand quickly, and I'm afraid that forces beyond their control will expand the user base faster than what they can expand to meet the demand.

Quote :

"It's a great concept. HOWEVER, with ISP's throttling back on everyone's bandwidth the cost is going to be transferred to internet access prices and cost MONTHLY."

That's another interesting question as well, especially if ISP's really go through with their threat of implementing monthly DL quotas. I suppose that OnLive could negotiate with ISP's for an exception, but it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

3/27/2009 3:15:07 PM

But what about server down-time, unexpected bumps in service, inevitable lag cycles, and the fact that even though you are paying for these electronic services there are going to be times when, for reasons beyond your control, you have to do without. Console's require less maintenance and service (excepting the XBOX 360) which allows you direct access to the stuff you're buying when and how you want it. There is no server run service that can offer that sort of consistency.

3/27/2009 3:35:27 PM

Games like Half-life handle the input lag from client to server by using client side prediction.

Latency in onlive's system would be input lag + render time + compression time + send to client time + decompression time

the input lag is one variable they cant control. Even if they require you to be X distance from their datacenters, best case scenario is 20ms.

rendertime is probably not much of a problem thanks to their hardware. And I wonder if they have some special hardware to do hardware compression of the images for sending to the client. Again this is under their control due to their hardware.

So now to get the image to the client you have to deal with both latency and bandwidth. Then once the image gets there the client has to decompress it. So while it might not require high GPU requirements, theres going to be some moderate CPU requirements. Anyone with anything older than a 3.0 netburst p4 might not be able to handle it. Not a big deal, but you can run alot of current games on a slower pc with a better GPU.

The more they increase the compression, the better they can deal with bandwidth and latency, but the more they increase cpu requirements and vice versa.

I dont want to say its totally impossible, but i dont think they could price their system at the right point to make it a viable business.

3/27/2009 7:38:43 PM