OnLive Launches in the UK

By Oli Welsh Published 22 September, 2011

We talk to CEO Steve Perlman about the game streaming service.

OnLive is live. The game streaming service is now available for the first time outside the US, here in the UK.

It's already come a long way from the 18 games it launched with some 15 months ago. The UK launch line-up is very close to the current American service, with some 100 games freely available on the flat-rate 'PlayPack' offering, and a further 50 premium 'PlayPass' games - typically newer releases - available for purchase or short-term rental.

Our announcement story has the full details of the UK launch, but here are the headlines: PlayPack costs £6.99 a month, but BT is offering three months for free to its broadband customers. PlayPack also gives you 30 per cent off the price of PlayPass purchases. OnLive is offering your first PlayPass purchase for £1, and setting up an account, with access to the game viewer and demos, is free from the OnLive site.

At the Eurogamer Expo at Earl's Court in London this weekend, OnLive will be giving away its £69.99 Game System - more commonly referred to as the 'micro-console' - which includes a decent-quality wireless game pad and HDMI connection for HDTV sets. You can also play OnLive on Mac and PC, with support for Android tablets and iPad (including some custom touch-control versions of games) coming soon. Slightly further off, TVs and Blu-ray players will be shipping with OnLive support built in.

We'll bring you two detailed reports on the UK service in the coming weeks: a technical analysis from Digital Foundry and a Eurogamer review, looking at it from a real-world, gamer's perspective. In the meantime, I met with Steve Perlman, the CEO and founder of OnLive, in London this week for an interview and a demonstration of the service.

First impressions are pretty favourable. The visuals aren't as sharp as your console or PC's, but they look fine; control response is harder to judge from a quick go on Virtua Tennis, but it's certainly playable. The real selling point, of course, is the extreme ease of access to the catalogue of games, with virtually non-existent loading, buffering or downloading times. As home consoles get further and further away from instant-on gaming, OnLive is bringing it back.

Eurogamer: Is this your first launch outside of the US?

Steve Perlman: Yes... One of the key things about OnLive that a lot of people don't quite recognise is that the hardest challenge we had to overcome was not making it low latency - we did that many years ago. It was making it run reliably through millions of different types of connections all around the world.

At this point we have over a hundred different algorithms we use to overcome the various impediments that we run into - lost packets, jitter, different types of congestion and so on. So it's a little slower than we'd like in terms of the full rollout.

The make-up of the internet, the backbone of the internet is different in different territories. In the United States, the internet actually has several backbones which are different large ISPs, and they peer with each other, they have points of connection. In the UK, BT is really the backbone and then they wholesale to different providers, but because of that, the different providers have different kinds of packages of connections they sell...

So all that had to be unravelled. Because, of course, the latency for a website or a streaming video - if it takes a very roundabout route, it's not an issue at all. But for us it's a major issue, because the speed of light through fibre figures into the equation. So we've had to design the system to accommodate that.

Eurogamer: You've demonstrated your own facial animation tech in CG film sequences that look very much like live action, and claimed that, since there's no limit on the computing power in your data centres, you'll be surpassing home hardware and "delivering experiences which really blur the boundary between games and motion pictures". Can your servers handle that kind of thing now?

Steve Perlman: We have a variety of different systems at different levels. The higher-end ones absolutely can. Plus, we have the ability to group them together, so if you wanted to have a game that has 16 servers tied together... There's various ways to divide up a 3D problem.

Because we have this arbitrary capability, you can expand it to whatever degree you want, and all those servers are hooked up together on a gigabit LAN with sub-millisecond latency between them. So we're able to do extremely sophisticated games.

The thing is, you just need to get to a certain audience level. The audience is getting large enough, the publishers are confident enough... We've crossed all those bridges now.

5

Steve Perlman, CEO of OnLive.

Eurogamer: We've heard from developers that you're asking them to work to a single, particular PC spec. Is that a hard limit for what you have at the moment, in terms of hardware?

Steve Perlman: No. It's because, what we're working with the developers on is a game that they probably started two years ago, that already was designed for PC. So we had to give them some sort of a PC specification to work toward.

With developers that are doing new games that are just for OnLive, the tables are turned. What they're saying is, "We need this level of performance to do what we're going to do."

We have different tiers of servers. Virtua Tennis is running on one of our lower-end ones, as is Lego Harry Potter and so on, whereas Deus Ex: Human Revolution is running on one of our higher-end servers. And Batman: Arkham City will be, and we have a number of games that are coming out that are pretty high-performance - LA Noire and so on.

So we will track PCs in terms of performance in terms of games that are written for PCs. But at some point you begin to break away.

Eurogamer: Can you share the spec you're using for a game like Deus Ex: Human Revolution right now?

Steve Perlman: We haven't published any of that information. Um, I'm trying to think exactly how we express it...

You have different time frames. When you're first approached by the developer, they're not done with the game, they think this is what they need, and we say OK, here's the machine we have. They design for that machine, and they find that, you know what, it's not quite running at the frame rate they'd like it to. And so what we do is we work with them to move to another device.

2

OnLive's well-built controller will eventually be released in a universal version that will work with tablets, PCs and other devices.

We have taken games where we just said, I don't think this is really running as tightly as we'd like it to, the developer agreed and even though it's been out there, it gets better. And [players] will say, "No no no, it's the placebo effect." [Laughs] "You just think it's better." And we're just sitting back thinking, "Yep, it's better."

You see that with the latency too. [People say] it's the placebo effect, but in fact, as we improve the algorithm, it gets tighter and tighter.

Eurogamer: You've got solid publisher support, but what about the really big boys? I noticed EA in your list of partners, but I haven't spotted many of their games on your service. [EA has a partnership deal with rival streaming service, Gaikai.]

Steve Perlman: You'll see Bulletstorm in the list, and a bunch of Harry Potter games. You know, the thing about publishers... EA's been on our list since the day we've launched. We've had a relationship with them. It's just... they have different priorities and different things that take up their time.

But now, we've become a mainstream platform, in the States anyways. We've bubbled up in the priority list. If you think about it, the larger the publisher, the least they had to gain by being first.

Eurogamer: I guess that's why Activision's is the name that's still conspicuous by its absence.

Steve Perlman: Well, we've been happily in discussions with everybody. Despite what you sometimes hear in the backchat, at the end of the day, the publishers are there to sell games, right? And they view us as a platform. And so, if the platform's selling and people are buying the games, well, they'll make their games available.

Eurogamer: Are the purchase prices equivalent to what you'd pay for a boxed version?

Steve Perlman: I think, more appropriately, they're more competitive with... the PC digital version, which is generally a little cheaper than the console version.

Eurogamer: Can you share any figures on the number of active users you have in the US?

Steve Perlman: No. This is where we get into being a distributor... Although we have users, think of a user who's just coming in to demo a game, or who's just using this coupon. [He indicates a coupon for a free OnLive copy of Deus Ex that was shipped in the US PC retail version of the game.] Arguably, that's Square Enix's customer. So our agreements don't quite allow us to give aggregate data.

What we can say is that our chief operating officer's the COO of Pandora, which has had very rapid exponential growth. And that's what we're seeing right now. We've had weeks where the userbase has grown by five per cent.

Eurogamer: The state of broadband in the UK isn't what it could be, it's arguably not as good as it is in the States. A lot of our ISPs have bandwidth restrictions and complain about media streaming services such as the BBC iPlayer. What are you doing to make OnLive ISP-friendly?

Steve Perlman: What we found in the States, where there are bandwidth caps as well, is that we haven't really run into them. We tend to be very friendly with [ISPs], we work with them in trying to figure out ways to minimise congestion, rather than just trying to overload them. And they've mainly been going after folks who've been doing things like BitTorrent, where they've been gobbling up their upstream bandwidth, which is actually the most precious commodity, not the downstream. Our upstream bandwidth utilisation is very, very low. It's mostly the controller and status information about the channel.

3

You can browse and spectate other players' live gameplay in the slick front end, and watch the easy-to-upload 'brag clips'.

The other thing is, BT, one of the things they're doing because they really want to encourage people to go and use OnLive, is that they're lifting caps for OnLive through the end of the year. So that's a good percentage of the UK population right there.

I think it's one of those things that will eventually wash away. Canada just ordered Rogers Cable to release their bandwidth caps. You know, if you looked at IP telephony a decade ago, it seemed like an extraordinary load on the internet, right? Today, it's a joke.

I think that our bandwidth is not going to increase; once you reach HDTV, you're there. So we don't need more bandwidth as the games get more complex. I think we'll have that covered.

Eurogamer: At GDC last year, you talked about 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second being possible. Do you think it still is, and on what kind of time scale?

Steve Perlman: We have it working in beta. The OnLive micro-console supports it.

You're talking about 10 megabits a second. What we've found, now that we've had a chance to test connections throughout the States, is that there's just not a large enough percentage of users out there yet to support it. There are some, we have some fibre, but cable systems generally won't allow connections that fast on a sustained basis. They actually will end up limiting you down to about 6 or 7 Mbps. Until we see that ceiling rise up there... It doesn't make sense when only five per cent of your users would have access.

Eurogamer: So it's about waiting for the networks to catch up?

Steve Perlman: Yeah. So for example, we could deliver movies at 1080p24, no problem. That's about 5 Mbps. 1080p60, that's a lot of bandwidth. I think what you'll see before that is 3D games, which would be 720p60, but in 3D - two views. 1080p60? The servers will do it, and the technology delivers it, it's no different than what we're doing today - it's just more bandwidth.

Eurogamer: Would you charge extra for it?

Steve Perlman: I don't expect so, the servers are the same cost to us, and the bandwidth keeps coming down for us, exponentially, in price. Remember, we're talking about a peak data rate of 10 Mbps, we don't always run at that rate. If the scene's not changing very much, we use a much lower data rate. If we could just get the networks to handle that peak, then we'd be OK. But they're just not set up for that right now.

4

The video quality is noticeably less crisp than a raw HD signal, but it's still impressive.

Eurogamer: Video compression fundamentally favours scenes without much motion, and control latency is more important for some games than others. Accepting those facts, is it fair to say that some games are more suited to playing on OnLive than others?

Steve Perlman: It depends on the type of compression you're doing. We compress different types of games differently. Literally, when you go and play Borderlands, it's using a different compression algorithm than if you're playing Lego Harry Potter. The different algorithms favour different things.

We wish there were a silver bullet: one approach that would solve all problems, all games, all ISPs and all internet impairments. But we weren't able to find that.

If we see a game that does not perform well, then we work on it. We go and tune up the algorithm. The hardware that we have that does the compression in the data centre is programmable, and it's very, very flexible. We made it that way. it's the only way we could ever get this darn thing to work.

I wouldn't say there's any one particular [type of] game... The biggest thing you're going to see that happens in the next couple of years... is you're going to see the game pipelines changing to be more optimised to use state-of-the-art hardware. Right now, games are designed to be a little bit mushy, where they can work all the way from an Xbox 360 and PS3 through to a mid-range PC. Now you're going to see games move up to the very high end, knowing that that capability's always available - and then they can tune for things like latency and other characteristics.

Steve Perlman is the chief executive officer of OnLive. Thanks to Rich Leadbetter for his help with this interview.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (114) Latest comment 8 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • HoriZon #1 8 months ago

    Can i get a free one?

  • gjgjg #2 8 months ago

    future shock baby

  • chrisjm #3 8 months ago

    Xbox controller rip off!

  • chrisjm #4 8 months ago

    The announcement story also lists a different price = £6.99

  • Gastrian #5 8 months ago

    Post deleted at 17:56:43 13-04-2012

  • inutaihanyou #6 8 months ago

    "But now, we've become a mainstream platform, in the States anyways. We've bubbled up in the priority list. If you think about it, the larger the publisher, the least they had to gain by being first."


    Ahahahahaahahaha...ahaha...ahahaha..ahaha...ah.

    Mainstream...I think this guy is taking you guys on the other side of the pond for a ride. Most people don't know or don't care about the Onlive service here in the US besides those who don't like PC's/consoles, which is less than 1% of the gaming population.

    The fact that you have to always be online really rubs the wrong way.
    Edited by inutaihanyou at 22/09/11 @ 00:54

  • barrylyndon #7 8 months ago

    I had a go and I don't think I'll be using it. Very impressive technically but the graphics are crap compared to an installed game.

  • chiz #8 8 months ago

    You see that with the latency too. [People say] it's the placebo effect, but in fact, as we improve the algorithm, it gets tighter and tighter.

    Good luck changing the laws of physics.

  • Nithron #9 8 months ago

    Just gave this a whirl. It's impressive that it works at all, but on my connection it was a bit like playing a laggy youtube video.

  • PearOfAnguish #10 8 months ago

    Yeah I just gave it a go as well. Tearing abounds, the graphical quality is low, framerate is poor (like a low end PC...except you can't tweak the settings or upgrade the hardware) and input lag is very noticeable. Playing an FPS was nauseating, which has never happened to me before.

  • Grayvern #11 8 months ago

    When I get past the initial resentment of onlive I find myself taking heart that onlive will probably coexist with existing services not kill them as onlive is an answer to a harware problem that is becoming redundant, games aren't constrained by hardware they are constrained by person hours. It's basically a rebirth of the rental model.

    Besides I'll be very interested to see how onlive copes with the jump to 4k resolution when it comes over the next 10 years.

    That and they have a confused message, they are marketing a vision of not paying for hardware to an enthusiast crowd that are happy to pay for hardware and are also capable of maths.

    If onlive and analysts were more humble, read less crazy then I think the enthusiast crowd would be much more positive about it as a companion rental service.

    Onlive are also vulnerable because their very existence justifies the next generation of consoles having a downloadable rental service provided by the platform holder which microsoft and sony would be crazy not to attempt in order to protect themselves from onlive.
    Edited by Grayvern at 06/10/11 @ 04:59

  • chessboxer #12 8 months ago

    Did he just say 5Mbps for a 1080p movie? That's very low. That's low for a 720p movie.

  • BAZ1307 #13 8 months ago

    Going to give this a good seeing to considering you can get almost any game for a quid, to start you off. Deus Ex included.

    For what it's meant to do, it works very well.

    I'll be sticking to console gaming/PC, but it's nice to have a little alternative on those days you feel like trying something different for a change. :)

  • thesonglessbird #14 8 months ago

    Just gave it a go and I don't think I'd ever pay for it. Video quality not nearly good enough for me and controller input is very laggy. Limited to stereo sound too . I'm sure if you have lower latency it might be nicer though. The service itself seems quite polished with some nice features.

    Could maybe see myself using it for demos if I want a really basic idea of what a game is like without having to download much.

  • Lucodeath #15 8 months ago

    @chess
    They dont say anything about the 7.1 dts ma audio track though. Thats as much as the movie itself. Average speed of uk internet is about 5mb and dont forget 8mb is equal to 1 megabyte ish.
    Press select when watching a bluray on your ps3, 30mbs for picture alone in some scenes an highest of 40mbs. and mid 20s for sound at max.
    All numbers are ish!
    Edited by Lucodeath at 22/09/11 @ 02:01

  • bad09 #16 8 months ago

    "The fact that you have to always be online really rubs the wrong way. "

    I hate always online DRM on products I buy to own and will never pay for games infected with it but here, a rental service where you use hardware not even in your machine? While it does indeed carry the same pitfalls as that retail DRM I don't think anyone can moan at that requirement here! :)

  • Snake_2011 #17 8 months ago

    they are not a mainstream service in the US that is BS.

  • Baranga #18 8 months ago

    "The fact that you have to always be online really rubs the wrong way. "

    Worked for Netflix.

  • komputer #19 8 months ago

    Just tried it.

    Graphically it was better than I imagined on my solid 6.7 Mbps ADSL Max connection, and it allowed me to play games on my laptop, which would otherwise be impossible because of it's Intel graphics chip.

    Lag is definitely an issue though. Whilst playing something as seemingly simple as Braid, timing (and rewinding) jumps was definately harder than it should be.

    I'd probably pass for 'proper' gaming, but it's quite interesting for trying games, or for when you are stuck on your graphically underwhelming laptop.
    Edited by komputer at 22/09/11 @ 02:14

  • Lucodeath #20 8 months ago

    A game with lag isnt a game, its a chore.

  • aplsin #21 8 months ago

    I imagine this feeling like the old days playing QuakeWorld on a 33.6k modem, no pushlatency back then so ping = input-lag! :)
    Edited by aplsin at 22/09/11 @ 02:57

  • NunianVonFuch #22 8 months ago

    It works it's good quick and easy to access. Playing it from Ireland I thought the problems would be worse but it's not really that noticable. I'll use it for demoing and maybe check back again if they setup in Ireland. Space Marine was a bit dodge, but Amnesia worked fine. Duke Nukem was pretty much flawless, unlike the game sadly. It's so quick and easy to use that you're better off trying it for yourself rather than reading impressions.

  • craziii #23 8 months ago

    when onlive can handle 1080p 60 fps, I will become it's loyal customer.

  • stooeh #24 8 months ago

    @aplsin

    Pushlatency helped with shooting stuff not input lag :p

    I think Quakeworld introduced client side movement prediction (playing vanilla Quake didn't back then) and I can't see how FPS games on this could stop that 'slidey' feeling without it. Some games should work fine I imagine.

  • loboMuerto #25 8 months ago

    No, thanks. Licensing in games is bad enough for those of us who like to own things; this is a step forward in the wrong direction.

  • bosseye #26 8 months ago

    Just tried it, its an interesting idea. Works sort of well enough in that I can play games on my shit-tastic non gaming laptop via my wi-fi (circa 10mb connection). Only issues are visuals look a bit fuzzy and there is a little bit of lag when looking around etc. Reminds me of playing PC games on a computer that can't quite handle it. But, it works and as the tech gets better behind it I may show more interest.

  • secombe #27 8 months ago

    £70 for the "console" is the killer for me, I'm on BT Infinity so would gladly take up the 3 month free trial and to be honest would probably happily pay £6.99 a month assuming it all works as advertised...but I'm not risking £70 on the hardware.

    Get these units out there for free (or significantly cheaper) and if the service works I can see it taking off.

  • Darren #28 8 months ago

    "Yeah. So for example, we could deliver movies at 1080p24, no problem. That's about 5 Mbps."

    That's funny because that's the bitrate of most DVDs! Actually some are higher than that and PAL DVDs are 576p!!! Good quality 1080/24p BDs tend to be in the 20-30 Mbps range with DTS HD-MA an extra 1.5-6 Mbps on top of that. I doubt OnLive will be competing with BD quality any time soon then as it soons like everything will be overcompressed which means the image quality suffers badly.

    I was impressed with everything about OnLive except the image quality which is kind of like watching one of those 720p videos on YouTube, i.e. it's not that great; it looks fine in a window but blown up to fullscreen you can see all the flaws such as compression artifacts/macroblocking and a distinctive lack of clarity/sharpness.

    Not that it matters to me anyway as I live in an area of the UK where I cannot get a BT line so even if I wanted OnLive I couldn't get it without moving.
    Edited by Darren at 22/09/11 @ 08:25

  • Flynn #29 8 months ago

    My experience of the service has always been: Run OnLive, it shows the logo, swoops down towards the menu and all I see is a garbled mess followed by a 'network problem' error. I try opening ports, disabling firewalls, and there's no help on their site. So once again I move on.

  • 43n1m4 #30 8 months ago

    The idea is nice. I'm sure when we all have fiber it'll catch on... in 2020 or something. However, I don't live in UK or US, so the chance I'll even get the chance to try it, is slim at best.

  • Greebo #31 8 months ago

    Works nice on a University internet connection at 8am! Might wait until I try my somewhat slower home connection before I sing it's praises though. At the very least I'll use it for demos and the game for £1 is nice.

  • teabagger #32 8 months ago

    I've been really unconvinced about this...

    Until I tried it yesterday. It's early days, and the UK as a whole could do with some fatter pipes, but I can see the Sony and MS executives sitting in a room looking at this and saying "oh, there goes our revenue stream". I really believe this is going to change everything.

  • BraveArse #33 8 months ago

    Just signed up tp look at the vid quality. Tbh it's impressive /for what it is/ but what it is isn't good enough to justify the cost, certainly not the cost of a new game. They have serious problems on two fronts: a/ they need fibre broadband to be ubiquitous and with a near unlimited bandwidth limit b/ lots and lots of high quality f2p games are about to hit the Market on PC at least.

    Chances are, if you have high speed broadband, you probably have some kind of tech that can play games at a quality beyond "YouTube".

  • Tiel #34 8 months ago

    Just tried it with dirt 3 as that keeps crashing my PC (codies are rubbish at tech support).

    The lag seemed tolerable, but the picture quality was shocking. I get 4mb consistently download, and Iplayer HD looks awesome, yet this looked like streaming from the steam age, sub ps2 quality.

    Sorry onlive--I like the basic idea(the price of the play pack is fair), but my connection speed is slightly above the uk average--not sure what speed I would need for this to look anything like decent on my 1920*1080 screen?

    Also liked the portable idea that it would work on ipad etc(though controls would surely be an issue)

  • Snake_2011 #35 8 months ago

    a few onlive employes in here? teabagger are you for real onlive has no were near what MS Sony have.

  • woodnotes #36 8 months ago

    So, just tried it and it works, but on my 16mbs connection:

    1) it constantly looks really washed out like an overly-encoded bink video
    2) the lag made me feel physically sick when controlling FPS games with the mouse

    Also the game selection is very poor. Don't see this catching on at all, especially with all those temperamental Thomson routers doing the rounds in the UK.

  • KeatsSeven #37 8 months ago

    Well, Im on 50 Mbs download and 3 Mbs upload Virgin broadband (and get that with a quick look at Speedtest.net), and the picture quality was poor. Every couple of minutes it says 'Network error' and pauses the screen WHILE THE GAME CONTINUES TO RUN. Yes, turned my Firewall off and plugged PC directly into router.

    So, it pauses for a couple of seconds and when it returns your car is in a ditch or an army or orcs has just killed you. Ill think Ill pass.
    Edited by KeatsSeven at 22/09/11 @ 09:28

  • Subquest #38 8 months ago

    I think this will be the way games are delivered in the future. When I say future I mean 2028 onwards, when the broadband capability of the average household will be much better, and Onlive (or whoever ends up purchasing them - MS? Sony?) can deliver as much visual quality through the net as a console does. We'll all be on 200 meg connections by then, won't we?

    No, thanks. Licensing in games is bad enough for those of us who like to own things; this is a step forward in the wrong direction.

    The writing is on the wall. Best to just accept it. Whether it be movies, films or games, all digital media will be stored 'elsewhere' and served to you on demand. Best we can hope for is something akin to Spotify's offline mode, where stuff can be stored locally and played offline, so long as your account is active. You can fight it all you like, but extrapolate out to 2030, 2040 and onwards - do you really think people will be still buying physical media? Not a chance.

  • HenryFitz #39 8 months ago

    He doesn't mention that EA have signed up to Gaikai, and their game demo service, rather than Onlive's full-game service, which is a competitor to retail. To me, it looks like a means for publishers to make less money selling an inferior product, which I'm not sure makes sense right now.

  • fknetwork #40 8 months ago

    I signed up and bought homefront for £1, also tried a few game demos,

    The lag is certainly better than using the US servers but the video quality is terrible, I am on a constant 14mb minimum connection and the quality is more like a 480p youtube video, it spoils the whole thing for me, someone said it perfectly, it basically looks like a sub par ps2 game.


    At this moment in time this service really is dead in the water, £40 for new releases when they are cheaper to buy for a "proper" copy, poor video quality, always on internet required, there will be terrible lag at peak times in the UK too, there is a difference between testing the service for £1 and paying £39.99 for a game on onlive (dirt 3) that costs £17.99 (shopto) for a proper bought one!

    I do like the arena views and brag clips though, i think xbox live, psn and steam should do something like this!
    Edited by fknetwork at 22/09/11 @ 09:39

  • CamberGreber #41 8 months ago

    Geezz Onlive Sucks

    10 Mega Bits per sec for 1080p @60fps - Thats only 1.25mb per sec.
    5 Mega Bits per sec for 1080p @24fps - Thats only 0.625mb per sec.

    Bluy ray movies on average are 22-28 Megabytes a sec.

    Its just like the 80s-90s where the game companies constantly tried to fool us with marketing campaigns that tried to confuse us of the difference between Megabits and Megabytes.

    8mega BITS = 1 Megabyte. Food for thought.

  • CamberGreber #42 8 months ago

    People need to Understand that the LAG will Never go away.

    Information can not travel faster than the speed of light.

    Even NASA needs to wait 22 mins to see whether or not the input they gave there rover on mars worked.
    It takes 11min for the signal to reach mars and 11mins for it to return.

    I realize that Onlive servers are not located on mars but the time it takes for your controller to signal to reach them get proccessed and return will always be too long for some games and genres. (fps and Raceing games etc..)

    Even in 2040 and beyond this wont change.

  • StooMonster #43 8 months ago

    Steve Perlman: Yeah. So for example, we could deliver movies at 1080p24, no problem. That's about 5 Mbps

    Uncontended available bandwidth really is the flaw with streaming. Take this movie example, 1080p24 at 5Mbps looks poor compared to likes of satellite (e.g. Sky) that use approximately 10Mbps for same resolution *, or Blu-ray disks that use 40Mbps.

    * yes I know it's 25p and encoding is interlaced but that doesn't make any difference, it's 1080p25 when deinterlaced.

    However, quality isn't a guarantee of winning these days. Take digital music, many people prefer the convenience of iTunes / Amazon downloads at 256Kbps versus even CD quality let alone HD-audio formats. :(

    Never mind the quality, feel the width.

  • StooMonster #44 8 months ago

    teabagger: the UK as a whole could do with some fatter pipes

    As a whole it could, but I have 100Mb (usually above 70Mb) downstream and rock solid 10Mb upstream with very low pings (single digits or early teens for many game servers) and OnLive says...

    Connection problem. Please check your internet connection.

    It's not me that needs fatter pipes, its this service needs some work (the help page the problem links to isn't related to the error either).

  • StooMonster #45 8 months ago

    CamberGreber: Even in 2040 and beyond this wont change.

    Surely they're about to announce joypads with quantum entanglement? Would get rid of that pesky speed-of-light barrier or even speed of electricity (which might be as low as 66% of the speed of light when going through cables).

    ;)

    Edit: Garrhh... but that only fixes the input lag. Still need a solution for the lag of encoding to H.264, downloading, decoding H.264, transmitting to display, display scaling and video processing.
    Edited by StooMonster at 22/09/11 @ 12:45

  • Grayvern #46 8 months ago

    The 5mbps 1080p thing is the streaming rate for online movies ie highly compressed. But then most people don;t sit as close to their 40+ inch tv's as they should so upscaled DVD's are still viable for living room setups.

  • _tangent #47 8 months ago

    @subquest

    The issue isn't really physical media, it's what hardware is responsible for running the software. The onLive model seeds control/ownership to a remote server somewhere. The quality of your gaming experience is at their mercy in every respect:

    *You can't play if you don't have a (fast) internet connection
    *You have no way to improve the quality of your experience - there is no new hardware you can purchase to improve graphics etc
    *If they suddenly decide, for example, they need to save money and make what they consider to be acceptable reductions in hardware capacity, which means at peak times you get more lag/lower picture quality, there is nothing you can do
    *If they have a problem, like a network problem, or a software bug, or a hardware failure, the service goes down and there's nothing you can do about it
    *You no longer have copies of all your games, because you no longer really own them (you don't now, but it doesn't stop you playing them, always on DRM aside). If onLive go out of business, or decide simply to stop supporting a game you really like, you're screwed.
    *It's not cheaper than owning a console. I think irrc originally the games were going to be priced the same as retail weren't they? Well then it comes down to monthly subscription vs hardware cost. At 8 quid a month, onLive is about 100 quid a year. Modern consoles are supposed to have a lifetime of 5-10 years. Even worst case scenario, that's 500 quid spent on onLive, on subscriptions alone in the life time of a £300-£400 console. Best case (for consoles) it's £1000 spent on onLive. And there's a £70 "console" to buy.
    *The simple fact of the matter is that whilst broadband and network interconnect technology will advance, so will every other sort of computer technology. Graphics, memory, CPU, available disk space etc. Games will ALWAYS look and feel better running locally. Ask yourself how long it will take before wide area network technology reaches the point where it can stream games such that they look as good and feel as responsive as a PS3 running a game locally today. Then ask yourself what local res consoles (and pcs) will be running with by then, what memory graphics cards will have, what sort of bandwidth frame-buffers will feature. The truth is by that time, we wont look at onLive and say "well, look how good these games look and feel in comparison to games of 5/10/15 years ago" we'll say "wow, onLive looks shit compared to my console", because we're not saying now "look how good onLive looks next to a psone or PS2" today. The standard of a streamed gaming experience will always be below acceptable for most gamers, when running current gen games, because those games are designed to max out the hardware, not the internet connection. And i think onLive would have to have much larger market penetration than it's ever likely to get in order for developers to make games specifically designed for it. Indeed, i would argue it can't get that penetration WITHOUT those games.

    For me this is all about control. I don't want control of my gaming experience to be entirely in the hands of some third party. And that's why i think a service like this will never replace locally installed games running on locally owned hardware. The cloud craze is going a bit silly imo. It's great for access to your data anywhere and for running lightweight applications, but for heavyweight applications which are very graphically and cpu intensive, it makes far more sense to stick the hardware next to the user.
    Edited by _tangent at 22/09/11 @ 10:24

  • woodnotes #48 8 months ago

    The biggest problem is that if OnLive goes under, you'll lose all the games you've purchased on the service. And let's be honest, they're no Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony so it's not completely out of the realms of possibility.

    On a more positive note, erm...
    Edited by woodnotes at 22/09/11 @ 10:33

  • FogHeart #49 8 months ago

    While I'd need a hell of a lot more convincing to have it replace my gaming services at home, if I find myself booking into a hotel in some godforsaken town because I've been put on a course byt he company, I'd jump for joy to hear that OnLive is available in my hotel room.

  • Ryze #50 8 months ago

    No chance I'd PAY for that microconsole.

    They really need to work with Sky to get this kit integrated in the Sky+HD box.

    Otherwise they'd better start giving away those microconsoles if they want any kind of large-scale success.

  • alcides #51 8 months ago

    Tough luck consoles won't die out so I can switch to that kind of service, it sounds very interesting.

  • Seoh #52 8 months ago

    Really interesting tech and its great for playing something like darksiders on my macbook but the video feed just isn't quite there yet, not sure if its a resolution thing or a codec thing. Experience with the US version shows that fast moving scenes are not its friend

  • marmaduke #53 8 months ago

    It works better than I'd expected but it's still as fuzzy as hell. It doesn't seem to be significantly cheaper than digital downloads, or even shopping around online for physical copies. So... I might be persuaded in a couple of years.

  • obscured021 #54 8 months ago

    I live in Ireland and have had access for the last year, so I guess you could have used it any where in the world, works ok the video compression can make the games look funky, and the input lag in FPS games is to high. I was on a 30mb line now i have a 100mb line and get the same performance my pings to the servers were 20-30 ms on avg

  • linea #55 8 months ago

    Anyone else read "Eurogamer: You've demonstrated your own facial animation tech in CG film sequences that look very much like live action," then scroll down to the picture of Steve Perlman and think 'that doesn't look very realistic'?

  • oceanmotion #56 8 months ago

    They can't even put the sticks in the right place. Yuck.

  • Retro_ #57 8 months ago

    Consistant bandwidth is the key to this, plus people getting the head around not owning a console etc. For me, it's a few years off yet. The upcoming 720 / PS4 will kick sand in OnLives face for a few years yet.

  • alcides #58 8 months ago

    to all those bitching about lag, and other shortcommings...

    Lag isn't important for all games. I'll see for myself about the lag, btw, and not follow preconcieved ideas.
    You also have to factor in the fact that you won't buy a big expensive rig every two years, and that as a consequence games might evolve graphically in at a different pace. Slower for some, faster for others...

  • memeroot #59 8 months ago

    would it replace my gaming pc - no
    would it mean I could play pc game on my wifes tablet
    yay

  • johnson81 #60 8 months ago

    This was a hell of lot better than I expected it to be after hearing about this last year. Just been messing about on Saints Row 2 and Warhammer, both of which I've never played. I think I'll use it for demos etc but as mentioned if they go under you lose your game. Its lasted longer than I thought it would though, I thought it would have dies months ago.

  • polaris70 #61 8 months ago

    Can you only play single-player games on it? If there is lag on sinle-player games then I would assume multiplayer would be horrendous. Anyone tried a multiplayer-game on it?

  • DavoTheDiv #62 8 months ago

    £35 per game for new releases? No thanks.

  • TheEarlOfZinger #63 8 months ago

    I like to trade my games for money/more games when I've finished them.

    What now?

  • makeamazing #64 8 months ago

    It's lasted longer than i thought it would also... slightly surprising, because i think its about 5-10 years to early... but its a great concept.

    Tried it for the first time on my Mac last night and was playing Metro to start with, looked grainy and went very blocky when fighting enemies on screen. Didnt work that great. Then decided to try out Tropicano (sp) and was a great way to look at a game that i had only glancing thoughts about...

    So from a demo/tryout point of view, this is a fantastic feature, so is the ability to play on different platforms. But as i am on a unlimited braodband of 20MB, and it still doesnt look great and performance on anything fast moving is ropey, that combined with buying games that you dont own, just dont think its going to replace my gaming habits any time.

    The monthly subscription access is a very good idea, i think people wont care about owning the games so much when they have access to lots of games.

    So overall as i thought, concept is great, idea is great (they could offer movies/tv stuff in the future etc)... i really like it, but i just dont think it will work in the short term.

  • Crea #65 8 months ago

    I really wanted this to be good, but having tried it the image quality and lag are pretty much dealbreakers for me, which is a shame, because I quite like the pricing and the service as a whole.

    Giving it some benefit of the doubt, I suspect it's not going to look its best when you're only a foot or so from a high resolution PC monitor, which is how I tried it. On a lower resolution (but still HD) TV, and from a few feet away, it probably looks ok.

    I played Just Cause 2 for a bit, and found that the input lag pretty noticably lessened my enjoyment of what should be an awesome game.

  • Mughes #66 8 months ago

    As a dinosaur who likes tangible goods, I'd be happy to tell anyone who tries to sell people on a digital-only gaming future to go and fuck themselves with a 10 inch dongle.

  • Altrezia #67 8 months ago

    I have Online on my macbook - it's not as bad as people make it out to be. If it was cheaper per game I'd sign up. They should have a flat monthly fee to play _all_ the games in their library, then I'd jump on board. As long as I could keep my PC/PS3/360 too.

    -a

  • bad09 #68 8 months ago

    "The biggest problem is that if OnLive goes under, you'll lose all the games you've purchased on the service"

    See this is a confusion, you won't lose anything because onlive is purely a rental service. If you pay for the "lifetime pass" you are not buying to own the game you are paying to rent for the life of the product on the rental service. This is guaranteed 3 years but if the publisher takes the game down after that period it's gone.

    Onlive is NOT a replacement to buying your video games, it's a short/long term rental service where you stream the games.
    As that there is room for the service in the industry and may be a nice little earner for the industry but no one should look at onlive and compare it to buying video games to own, you are best off comparing it to Metaboli.

  • _tangent #69 8 months ago

    @alcides

    "You also have to factor in the fact that you won't buy a big expensive rig every two years, and that as a consequence games might evolve graphically in at a different pace. Slower for some, faster for others..."

    Most gamers don't have to do that, because they have a console. In order for people to develop big budget games specifically for onLive, there would have to be a seismic shift in the market. Mainly because, if you value engineer things like graphics and physics for onLive, games released on it will compare incredibly poorly with "native" titles. Can't see it happening. What's far more likely is that they try and limp along providing a sub-standard experience of current-gen games. Networks will get faster, but games will get more complex and prettier just as fast, and the cloud will always be a less efficient way to run a heavyweight, highly user-interactive, application.

  • _tangent #70 8 months ago

    @bad09

    "See this is a confusion, you won't lose anything because onlive is purely a rental service. If you pay for the "lifetime pass" you are not buying to own the game you are paying to rent for the life of the product on the rental service. This is guaranteed 3 years but if the publisher takes the game down after that period it's gone.

    Onlive is NOT a replacement to buying your video games, it's a short/long term rental service where you stream the games.
    As that there is room for the service in the industry and may be a nice little earner for the industry but no one should look at onlive and compare it to buying video games to own, you are best off comparing it to Metaboli."

    I don't think people are missing that point. I think they're saying as a rental service it costs more or less the same as buying a game to own and a console to play it on. I know they have launch games for a pound, but im sure back in the dim and distant the talk was of retail price games. Has that changed?

    EDIT: And they;'re offering a counter-point to the whole "this is the future of gaming" argument by highlighting why they think it wont replace game and hardware ownership.
    Edited by _tangent at 22/09/11 @ 14:01

  • makeamazing #71 8 months ago

    With their costs for a full pass, this is the same cost as owning the game, but without the benefits... yes i know you have to have the latest kit, but in most cases most games can run on lower spec machines anyway.

    As you say Bad09 the publisher could remove the games after 3 years, what happens if you loved the game and want to carry on playing it, you have to go buy it (if you can find it)... so paying the full cost of the game, you get a 3 year deal. I think most gamers would only be going for the shorter rental services... but even then i think the cost is quite high (the monthly pass though i think is a great deal, if the graphics/performance was there... which unfortunately it isnt).

    For me, i will probably use it for the trial option to check out games that i would consider getting on PC (mainly strategy type games), but will just continue to buy games as normal.

  • bad09 #72 8 months ago

    @makeamazing

    Absolutely, I do think the lifetime prices are just too high. Obviously they can justify it to some extent for the costs involved in providing the service and you have got the game for 3 years at least to use on any desktop, laptop, tablet, microconsole so the benefits there also but I do agree paying that kind of price to stream a game just doesn't sit right.

    I to would probably just look at short term rental once I've got a new PC but that needs improving IMO, they need to tweak their rental periods 2 days, 5 days or lifetime just isn't much choice. I would say 5 day, 1 month and lifetime is more suitable to their model especially if they are going for full price retail on lifetime passes.

  • Mughes #73 8 months ago

    @bad09
    "Onlive is NOT a replacement to buying your video games, it's a short/long term rental service where you stream the games.
    As that there is room for the service in the industry and may be a nice little earner for the industry but no one should look at onlive and compare it to buying video games to own, you are best off comparing it to Metaboli."

    Read the interview posted today on CVG. They CLEARLY have far more lofty ambitions than merely competing with other rental services. They're gunning for the major platform holders; if not in this generation, then certainly the next.
    Edited by Mughes at 22/09/11 @ 14:17

  • bad09 #74 8 months ago

    @Mughes

    Well what their lofty ambitions are and the reailty of what their platform offers consumers are 2 diffent things. It won't replace or compete with anything played locally bought to own, but it has huge potential to carve out a solid existence along side and complimenting that model and thrive in role.

  • anthonypappa #75 8 months ago

    interesting the pubs that are holding back. they will view it as a threat - taking away from the more profitable console versions with DLC etc.

    this will always play second fiddle.

  • Bilstar #76 8 months ago

    Just tried it with a free trial of Tropico 4. I was impressed.
    Graphics not mega sharp but they were better than my £260 PC could do on its own and my 20Mb fibre line from Virgin gave me no problems (as expected). Also tried Duke Nukem trial as I'd played this on 360 and heard it was quite a bit better on PC, which it was, but the lag was more noticeable than on Tropico (again, as expected)

    As an extra to my consoles, I'll probably keep using this.

    If you don't have a gaming PC but want to try some games out, I reckon you'd be a fool to not try it for free.

  • chrisjm #77 8 months ago

    "See this is a confusion, you won't lose anything because onlive is purely a rental service. If you pay for the "lifetime pass" you are not buying to own the game you are paying to rent for the life of the product on the rental service. This is guaranteed 3 years but if the publisher takes the game down after that period it's gone. "

    its not guaranteed for 3 years if they go bust in 2, unless they have some expensive insurance to ensure the servers would stay running for all entitlements.

  • sourc0r #78 8 months ago

    as long as it stays away from the mainland, everything is fine.

  • MARKIV #79 8 months ago

    Not sure about this...

    "The online service is currently full. You will be connected as soon as possible."

  • MoFo #80 8 months ago

    I feel it's my duty to respond here simply because this thread is so full of miserable negative sods with unalbe to see the woods for the blades of grass.

    Yes the majority of you think it's naff. Fair enough. But you're hardly a fair cross-section of the British Public.

    There are plenty of hard up families out there that can't afford a £200 console but they're also the type that always manage to find a way to pay for their £30 monthly sky subscription. Point being that to a lot of people, £7/month looks much more affordable than a one off payment of £200.

    Also consider that you can play plenty of games for that £7/month. Maybe not new ones, but you don't have to pay any more once you start paying that subscription. Conversely, buy a console and you have to carry on forking out for new games. Then, your average Joe Bloggs will buy a new game in a retail store for £40-£50, not realising they can get it cheaper online or on ebay. So buy a new console and 5 games in your first year and that's at least £400 versus £85.

    Furthermore, this sort of thing is perfect for hotels/b&bs that want to allow guests to play games in their room. There alone I can see a massive lucrative market for OnLive.

    So by aiming at the poor and hotels they could potential be a comfortably profitable company fulfilling a demand that is very much clear and present.

    And before you all start crying that I must be an employee of Onlive since I'm saying something positive about something you all desperately want to slate - grow up!

    That was fun. I just hope there're enough people still reading this to get over -100 negative rating from you all.

  • Grayvern #81 8 months ago

    I want to agree with some of MoFo's points the hotel and b&b/ hotel thing.

    However arguing that onlive will succeed because you think poor people are idiots only capable of instant gratification that they have no knowledge of pre-owned, and will exploit themselves is mildly sickening.

    And he (presumably) also fails to realise that what most people resent isn't what could be a great rental service but the whole analyst and company hyperbole of 'this is your new god' 'this is your future'.

    That and telling people to grow and generally being either baiting or nasty isn't a good way to go about making a point.
    Edited by Grayvern at 22/09/11 @ 20:17

  • TRUTH #82 8 months ago

    I was in doubt first but having seen and learnt more about it, it really is ULTIMATE gaming. Top notch graphics, sound and high end gaming - without the price or small lifespan as with consoles. Never need to upgrade! Also can use XBOX360 or other gaming joypads. You can buy, rent, sample games. You can simply drop in multiplayer games or invite friends, record and show your gaming. Play on TV , Mobile, PC, Laptop...next gen and forever gen!

    [link url=http://www.onlive.co.uk/
    ]http://www.onlive.co.uk/
    [/link]


    </a>

    Check it out!
    Edited by TRUTH at 22/09/11 @ 20:29

  • septimus #83 8 months ago

    It's really good for me. No tearing, no discernible lag, graphics look pretty good considering and there are hardly any artefacts.

    I do have 100Mbit cable and fuck all latency so that helps.
    Edited by septimus at 22/09/11 @ 20:29

  • disappointed #84 8 months ago

    Haters gonna hate, as they say on the Internet, but I just got a copy of the new Deus Ex game for £1 and I can play it on my old Atom powered netbook. No installation, no drivers, no hassle. This service has its faults but it's also pretty amazing. I won't be paying full price for anything but it's like Steam - you have to wait for the sales.

    It'll be interesting to see how the financials play out in the long term. Theoretically they ought to be able to provide computing power more cost effectively than I could myself.

    It won't replace my console for few years yet but I'm done with the upgrade rat race that is PC gaming. Thin client for the proverbial win.

  • natureboy #85 8 months ago

    The problem is the games are not new (more like recycle stuff) and it will always remain a niche market together with Gakai. At least they will succeed where the Phantom failed [link url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Entertainment.
    ]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Ent...[/link]

    Both Gakai and OnLive won't replace hardware gaming as some uneducated doomsayers are predicting but rather it will supplement it and remain niche

  • bemaniac #86 8 months ago

    I have the UKs fastest fibre optic package and this runs with low textures at a fast framerate with noticeable delay when steering cars on racing games. I'm a dirt 3 lover on pc and have a decent pc. Couldn't even control the car without crashing with onlive. Wouldn't say that any game is worth £1 when reduced to this level of fun unless it is a puzzle game. I've found a use for it. I'll use their bandwidth to demo games for free in low quality before I use my real money for the real item on steam.
    Edited by bemaniac at 22/09/11 @ 21:29

  • m1rk #87 8 months ago

    Crap. Tried homefront and it was a blocky unplayable mess. My broadband is 35Mbps down / 8 Mbps up

    Update. Tried it again today and it was actually not bad. Lag was bearable and the gameplay was relatively smooth. Graphics aren't great, but hey, you wouldn't really expect them to be.
    Edited by m1rk at 24/09/11 @ 12:28

  • jabberwoky #88 8 months ago

    I am really, really interested in this, sounds great. And I will be definitely signing up. Naturally that will be when broadband is as reliable and cheap as electricity and verification of my account is totally bulletproof, ie relies only on the iris of my eye to identify me. So that would be 30 to 40 years I guess. But you can put me on your list.

  • Greebo #89 8 months ago


    Onlive - "The Service is currently fulll".

    PS3 - Before you can sign in, you need to update.

    Damn it, I just wanted a quick go on something!

  • Kafeen #90 8 months ago

    Takes bloody ages to connect to their servers. I could have downloaded and installed something through steam by now.

    If its taking this long to connect I don't hold out much hope for smooth gameplay.

  • mrpsb #91 8 months ago

    It's not bad, but I don't like the idea of having to wait in a queue to sign in if I'd paid full price for one of the non-playpack games before I could play it. Controls feel a little bit sluggish but playable. Video quality was fine. Maybe once the initial spike in demand caused by everyone having a look dies down it'll recover and the queueing will go away.

    Certainly interesting, wonder how it will develop.

  • EmiliasHorse #92 8 months ago

    From what I have seen so far this is the future... maybe not Onlive as a company but the method of delivery. When internet speeds allow HD streaming the need to download anything will end.

    Will I stay beyond my 3 months free with BTinternet? Unlikely at this stage because BT cannot offer me Infinity in my area... upgrade my line BT and Onlive have a customer, simple as that.

    Edited by EmiliasHorse at 22/09/11 @ 23:43

  • dredd97 #93 8 months ago

    OOh look it's the software industry's answer to second hand game sales!!

    after all you can't trade in what you don't own......

    Are the people saying it's the best thing since sliced bread really not bothered about owning games anymore?

  • spinoir #94 8 months ago

    Quick review: Day one of Onlive.

    Virgin 49mb dl, 4.8mb ul and 50ms ping.

    Well it started out bad, with me getting a network problem every 20secs or so, pausing the action, and the video quality was very pasty on some of the games, on a 50mb connection no less.

    While at my sisters in the evening i thought id log in on her 6 year old desktop and try it out........she has 6.8dl 1mb up 64ping.......and it still looked a little soft picture wise but there was none of the lag or network problems i experianced throughout most of the day!

    My guess..... it was just the initial launch rush as playing it this evening was pretty much flawless. Homefront and dirt 3 on my 3year old Medion laptop, the textures and graphical detail was astonishing, and if there was lag it must have been minimal as i couldnt tell at all.

    The problem may have been down to my virgin super hub, as i turned it on to modem mode and dug out my old netgear router. Now its smooth and sharp as. Maybe they added some servers? Will try again tomorrow during the day to see if it was just the off peak traffiicing but if not, its safe to say im well impressed with this service so far ;)
    Edited by spinoir at 23/09/11 @ 07:46

  • Brutal_Zen #95 8 months ago

    Not convinced...

  • StooMonster #96 8 months ago

    Why does OnLive get a link on EuroGamer's side bar, yet mobile/tablets do not?

  • stodgypudding #97 8 months ago

    My set up - bt infinity and a 4 yr old work laptop on wireless. It worked and was playable yet although I stopped as soon as I realised I needed to fanny around with the controller settings in order to play. I guess 8 yrs of console gameing has made me lazy, I just want stuff to work.

    I'm off to Eurogamer event tomorrow and hope to pick up one of these devices for free as I am interested. I won't be paying £70 for one.

  • bad09 #98 8 months ago

    I think the service is great with a lot of potential but you gotta laugh at the balls on Perlman. He is claiming MS and Sony will just give up because we now have a streaming rental service in 2 countries :)

    http://www.next-gen.biz/news/onlive-next...

  • Jorendo #99 8 months ago

    Im still not sure about this. They say they are leading in the states but i hardly have heared of this before. If they where leading why didn't a IGN or a gamespot or any other US game site do a review about it?

    The whole thing does sound interesting and could be the future of gaming. But i just don't know enough of this thing to really see if it does. Hope the rest of europe will see it soon as well.

  • spinoir #100 8 months ago

    Id advise everyone to give it another try as there was an update this morning, i dont know what they did but its a lot better. :)

  • jonfon #101 8 months ago

    @CamberGreber : "People need to Understand that the LAG will Never go away. Information can not travel faster than the speed of light."

    You might want to have a word with neutrinos and those pesky meddling kids at CERN

  • BritishBlue1 #102 8 months ago

    Although I'm doubtful about the service itself, I'm very impressed with the control pad they came up with, it looks like a perfect cross between PS3 and Xbox.

  • Jos #103 8 months ago

    Been trying it out and really impressed.

    The interface is great, performance is great.

    It all felt a little like magic.

    And the deal with BT is genius - giving three months free to get people into the idea. And it's a little thing, but not having to hand over credit card details that have to be canceled later if you don't want to continue after the three months makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

  • johnson81 #104 8 months ago

    I'm tempted to try this even though I have a gaming PC, 360 and PS3. I do have 50mb broadband so that does help but for the price of 2 beers a month, it's not that bad. I've had a few issues here and there but nothing major. I was playing on a 50" Plasma and it looked decent, no artifacts, tearing etc.

  • Lucodeath #105 8 months ago

    @camber
    There are things faster than light, my ass after a night on the piss and a dodgy kebab. And I dont think Im passing neutrinos and tachyons either :o

  • Bartacus #106 8 months ago

    I tried this yesterday on my wireless laptop it was ok, today I have tried again this time with a wired connection & it is fantastic, for just a pound I have Deus Ex: Human Revolution it's a great game.

    I think i'm going to pre order the new saints row game & get the TV kit for the HD big screen games with controller, if it really works at 1080p it will be a great service & a very fair price & it uses less electricity than either my ps3 or 360

  • Shwing #107 8 months ago

    Just thought I would add my tuppence worth...

    Tried the service yesterday and was left disappointed due to artifacts all over the show / lag etc....
    However, as others have said above an update was released today that seems to have completely transformed the service into something quite special!
    The few games I tried tonight were glitch free / artifact free / lag free - very very impressive!!
    The overall sharpness isn't what you would get on a 'local' machine, but I think for what it is OnLive is looking good.

  • Ryze #108 8 months ago

    @spinoir + others with Virgin Media connections

    Judging by what Perlman mentioned about UK infrastructure, it looks like Onlive has been optimised for BT's network. Id' be surprised if anything's been done with regards to getting optimal service on Virgin's network at all.

  • Segaswirl #109 8 months ago

    "Sorry...

    ...but your broadband does not currently meet the minimum line speed recommended by OnLive".

    I'm actually with BT, the company that's promoting this.

    3.2mbps down/0.36mbps up

  • layleeloo #110 8 months ago

    "As home consoles get further and further away from instant-on gaming, OnLive is bringing it back.:"

    Brilliant! Long live the cartridge days when gaming was great instead of just mediocre like the current generation

  • layleeloo #111 8 months ago

    @inutaihanyou. "The fact that you have to always be online really rubs the wrong way."

    You mean you lot over there are not already? What planet are you on?

  • InsoFox #112 8 months ago

    Are people in this thread really saying the speed of light is a limitation for OnLive? Do these people realise how FAST light is?

    Assuming OnLive had got rid of all their other technical limitations and only the speed of light was left...
    ... light travels at about 186282 miles per second...
    Which after some quick maths means that assuming that your nearest OnLive server is within 1000 miles the round trip should take all of of approx 0.01 seconds. (Or, assuming I went wrong somewhere in my maths, very VERY quick)

    Of course, that's not including processing time, but since that's usually imperceptible too, I think the speed of light is the least of concerns for this sort of way of playing.

    Edited by InsoFox at 24/09/11 @ 23:27

  • Vally #113 8 months ago

    My experience with OnLive has actually been very positive so far.

    I'm currently with BT ADSL with a 15~30ms ping to near data centres, 13mbps down and 1mbps up according to speedtest.net

    I've tried this both with a PC using the client and the microconsole. Both have been connected by a crossover cable to laptop, which is connected to WiFi. So pretty much bridged.

    Input lag is definitely noticeable but you adjust to it after a certain period of time. They've done a very good job with lag on mouse input - It's no different to the kind of laggy mouse movement you'd get in some games with vsync enabled. I had a few very successful games of homefront multiplayer and had no problems with aiming.

    Purchased WH40k Space Marine for 70p thanks to the initial offer and I've been getting on very well with that too - Once again, you really tend not to notice the mouse lag after a while of playing. You can just get involved with playing the game without feeling like the controls and latency are getting in the way. It's quite impressive.

    Yes, the video quality is blurry, but keep in mind you're stretching 720p HEAVILY COMPRESSED video to whatever resolution you're running at - It's not going to look as clear as natively running the game is it. Expecting a crisp picture like that with a service like this is nuts.

    Bought a 3 day pass for Dirt 3, so far all gold medals in Season 1 and 2 so I'm certainly not finding playability a problem.

    And no, I'm not an OnLive employee.

    Username is DenjinKay on there if anyone feels like adding me and giving me a thumbs up from time to time. ;)

  • chuck_bone #114 8 months ago

    Tried out Onlive, played a demo of Asassisns Creed Brotherhood from my PC.
    It was pretty darned impressive i have to say.

    I was playing from a 50mb Virgin broadband connection over Wifi, which is not recommended due to the lag that that inherently introduces to ANY connection....

    However, the game was immensely playable. Yes, it was laggy - and yes, the video qualtiy wasnt as sharp as one can get from locally rendered images, but it was more than passable.

    The biggest benefit is that it really is instant - just click on the game, and your away.

    There are so many other ways this could evolve too, like instant action - pause a game, and return later to continue exactly where you left off, - moving locations to play a game at a different computer and just pick up where you left off for example.

    Yes, it's entirely dependent on you being online all the time, but lest we forget that, well, so is any online gaming system, and the cost of entry is very low compared to even a Wii.

    The truth is that it's probably not going to take over the world, but it will be a nice alternative.

    Imagine a free to £69 console with CGI quality visuals that for £7 a month you can play 100s of games, compared to a £300 console with fewer games and lower end but sharper visuals?

    That's reality now.