Zloth
I smell a... wumpus!?
(IGN article and an hour long speil on Gamespot)
So here's the quick run-down: they have a building full of high end PCs running the games. They compress the video output with some uber compression hardware so that they can output 720p in realtime, send it over the internet, and you play it either on your TV or PC. You play around with your controller (or mouse/keyboard), which gets sent to the uber PC in their building. You can buy permanent access to games, rent them, or pay a monthly fee though prices are still up in the air.
On the plus side....
DEATH TO PIRATES! You can't copy it because you haven't got it. About all you can do is hack somebody else's account. Pretty much the same as MMOs in that regard.
No more spending $1500 plus every couple of years for the latest PC. Play at max settings (well, almost, see below) on whatever klunker you've got.
Somebody else handles all the hardware/driver issues. If some game only works under XP Service Pack 1 with two year old drivers, that's what it will play on. Patches are just there when they are ready.
Instant replay - save the last 10 seconds of video feed anytime. (They also resume games they were playing before. Long before. No idea if there are a certain number of pauses you can have saved off.)
No-download demos. If you are curious about a game, you can check it out right NOW. (And, no doubt, buy it with the click of a couple of buttons. Impulse buys r00l.)
They can copy the feed, so you can watch somebody else play on your PC/TV (if they allow it) without degrading the gameplay.
The Bad
I think filling up a 5mbs connection all day is going to destroy most ISPs if this gets popular. Cable companies are already talking about moving to a pay-per-gigabyte system. (Though he's right at the end of that video - they are almost pure download, very little uploading.)
Even if they have uber compression of the gods, they still have to go through the net. Lag kills. (Same as MMOs here, too.) If you are still on dail-up, forget it.
Got a cool mod? Tuff. Maybe some real popular mods can get installed but I doubt you'll get many. What about the more naughty ones, like switching the Witcher over to the Polish version with English subtitles? (Hmmm - or would it be possible? Oblivion would let you pick what mods you want to use in any given game session. For mods like that, it might just be possible. If OnLive is willing to support them.)
720p isn't bad for console games, but is kinda sad for us PC gamers.
You need to be within about 1000 miles of one of their data centers. If you want to play with somebody else, that other person needs to be on the same data center.
Prediction
If it even kind of works, game companies are going to love it. I wouldn't be surprised if games started coming out for OnLive (or some company like them) exclusively. First off, they have no worries about pirates. Second, not only do they get to develop for a particular platform, they get to pick the exact platform! Not just "for PC" but "make it for a PC with 4 CPU cores, ALchemy, nVidia graphic chips, and the 185.61 drivers." That's got to save tons of development and testing time.
What happens if OnLive gets popular, I have no idea - other than ISPs begging for mercy and/or charging by the gigabyte. (But even if they do, would it be cheaper to pay for the gigabytes or for a new PC?) Would AMD and nVidia keep pouring money into researching faster/cheaper/better cards when the only folks buying them are folks without the bandwidth to handle OnLive and a few datacenters?
So here's the quick run-down: they have a building full of high end PCs running the games. They compress the video output with some uber compression hardware so that they can output 720p in realtime, send it over the internet, and you play it either on your TV or PC. You play around with your controller (or mouse/keyboard), which gets sent to the uber PC in their building. You can buy permanent access to games, rent them, or pay a monthly fee though prices are still up in the air.
On the plus side....
DEATH TO PIRATES! You can't copy it because you haven't got it. About all you can do is hack somebody else's account. Pretty much the same as MMOs in that regard.
No more spending $1500 plus every couple of years for the latest PC. Play at max settings (well, almost, see below) on whatever klunker you've got.
Somebody else handles all the hardware/driver issues. If some game only works under XP Service Pack 1 with two year old drivers, that's what it will play on. Patches are just there when they are ready.
Instant replay - save the last 10 seconds of video feed anytime. (They also resume games they were playing before. Long before. No idea if there are a certain number of pauses you can have saved off.)
No-download demos. If you are curious about a game, you can check it out right NOW. (And, no doubt, buy it with the click of a couple of buttons. Impulse buys r00l.)
They can copy the feed, so you can watch somebody else play on your PC/TV (if they allow it) without degrading the gameplay.
The Bad
I think filling up a 5mbs connection all day is going to destroy most ISPs if this gets popular. Cable companies are already talking about moving to a pay-per-gigabyte system. (Though he's right at the end of that video - they are almost pure download, very little uploading.)
Even if they have uber compression of the gods, they still have to go through the net. Lag kills. (Same as MMOs here, too.) If you are still on dail-up, forget it.
Got a cool mod? Tuff. Maybe some real popular mods can get installed but I doubt you'll get many. What about the more naughty ones, like switching the Witcher over to the Polish version with English subtitles? (Hmmm - or would it be possible? Oblivion would let you pick what mods you want to use in any given game session. For mods like that, it might just be possible. If OnLive is willing to support them.)
720p isn't bad for console games, but is kinda sad for us PC gamers.
You need to be within about 1000 miles of one of their data centers. If you want to play with somebody else, that other person needs to be on the same data center.
Prediction
If it even kind of works, game companies are going to love it. I wouldn't be surprised if games started coming out for OnLive (or some company like them) exclusively. First off, they have no worries about pirates. Second, not only do they get to develop for a particular platform, they get to pick the exact platform! Not just "for PC" but "make it for a PC with 4 CPU cores, ALchemy, nVidia graphic chips, and the 185.61 drivers." That's got to save tons of development and testing time.
What happens if OnLive gets popular, I have no idea - other than ISPs begging for mercy and/or charging by the gigabyte. (But even if they do, would it be cheaper to pay for the gigabytes or for a new PC?) Would AMD and nVidia keep pouring money into researching faster/cheaper/better cards when the only folks buying them are folks without the bandwidth to handle OnLive and a few datacenters?