Laugh at me if you want to, but that's exactly the way I look at MMOs.
OnLive: Thin client gaming
- Thread starter Zloth
- Start date
Laugh at me if you want to, but that's exactly the way I look at MMOs.
All those posts and you STILL haven't learned … ?
I saw that as well - to me it looks like you are:
- paying $180 a year for the equivalent of XBOX Live (which costs ~$50)
- still have to pay for games ("competitive" means "same" to me … i.e. $50-60)
- do not 'own' games, as they will go 'poof' when you unsubscribe.
In other words, you have to buy games and still pay a maintenance fee to keep access … talk about the WORST of both worlds!
But there's still the good part: No equipment obsolescence. No need to spend $500 to upgrade your computer every 3 years or to buy a new console.
I do agree I was more hoping towards paying a monthly fee and that's that or 'rent' games so you only pay, say, $15/month while you play it.
It's not for everyone definitely. Will need to see what 'competitive prices' means, if it's, say, $50 instead of $60, there's no point.
EDIT: actually, I just read the press release and they do plan on having a 'rental' plan. Will need to see how much the monthly fee + the rental fee ends up at. It would be stupid to pay $15 for the monthly service + $15 for a month rent for an older game that you can find for $30, but it may make sense for a new game (specially console games that start up at $60).
People that don't play online as much, but only the single player games or part of games may benefit well from this. In my case, it could make sense since I only play games once, and it usually takes me 2-3 weeks to finish a game, so I'd pay $15 (more like $10) + $15 for the game instead of buying it for $50 or $60.
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Zloth
I smell a... wumpus!?
XBox Gold only costs $50 when you buy a full year. It's $96 month to month. OnLive will be cheaper by the year, too, though I'm sure it will still cost more than XBox Live. But then, it offers a lot more than XBox Live. You can't record and store video clips on Live, for instance. Oh, and the PC games are certain to cost $10 less even if there's no discount at all.
I'm really curious about what the publishers will want for their games. Games on Steam, Impulse, D2D, and especially direct from the publisher *should* be a lot cheaper but the publishers don't want to undercut the brick & mortar companies so they end up being the same price - at least for the first several months. Will that happen to OnLive, too? Or will OnLive's subscription fee mean the publishers can give us a break and give us Best Buy's cut.
Unsubscribing doesn't scare me much. There aren't many games I play long term other than MMOs. I leave a lot of games on my drive and tell myself I'll play them through a second time but it only very rarely works out that way. 90% of the games I buy are love-m-and-leave-m games.
Loss of resolution and lossy video compression does scare me, though. Quite a bit.
I'm really curious about what the publishers will want for their games. Games on Steam, Impulse, D2D, and especially direct from the publisher *should* be a lot cheaper but the publishers don't want to undercut the brick & mortar companies so they end up being the same price - at least for the first several months. Will that happen to OnLive, too? Or will OnLive's subscription fee mean the publishers can give us a break and give us Best Buy's cut.
Unsubscribing doesn't scare me much. There aren't many games I play long term other than MMOs. I leave a lot of games on my drive and tell myself I'll play them through a second time but it only very rarely works out that way. 90% of the games I buy are love-m-and-leave-m games.
Loss of resolution and lossy video compression does scare me, though. Quite a bit.
txa1265
SasqWatch
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So you don't mind 'buy' meaning 'not buy'?
- Joined
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In my case, not at all. 99% of the games I've bought I eventually end up throwing away after I finish them, as they're just collecting dust and no chance of me playing them again.
Why don't you sell them via ebay or so ?
I don't understand much how it could work. Don't they know that most recent games require almost a high end PC to run well the game with the best effects?
Clearly players will not admit pay for such service and get low quality so it involves high end PC. Now this server approach doesn't seem to bring much, each player plays his own game so requires his own resources to compute everything. I don't see how anything could be shared and then save resources on server side.
On this base let do some approximation, players have rush hours where a percentage play and some other not, let say even at rush hours there's never more than 50% players playing at same time.
On this base you still need 1/2 latest high end PC for each consumer. That's huge,
it's not only the buy price but the place cost, maintenance costs, for such numbers that seems weird. If that's the conclusion it's a clear future market plan failure. Ok there's perhaps some points I don't see, but it's not clear where they are hidden.
Clearly players will not admit pay for such service and get low quality so it involves high end PC. Now this server approach doesn't seem to bring much, each player plays his own game so requires his own resources to compute everything. I don't see how anything could be shared and then save resources on server side.
On this base let do some approximation, players have rush hours where a percentage play and some other not, let say even at rush hours there's never more than 50% players playing at same time.
On this base you still need 1/2 latest high end PC for each consumer. That's huge,
it's not only the buy price but the place cost, maintenance costs, for such numbers that seems weird. If that's the conclusion it's a clear future market plan failure. Ok there's perhaps some points I don't see, but it's not clear where they are hidden.
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ToddMcF2002
SasqWatch
This topic is pretty goofy. Anyone have Netflix? Watch any movies online? I HDMI them to my 42" LCD and if you squint real hard and if the scene is bright enough and there isnt much movement it looks pretty good. All hell breaks loose on artifacts in the dark or movement or if the connection burps. And thats data moving ONE WAY at approximately 480i? Come on now.
Zloth
I smell a... wumpus!?
Well well well, I got me one of those free Founders memberships. OnLive for FREE for the first year and cheap for the second year!
When I tried to play last night, it was pretty bad. My connection kept dropping and I had an awful time. But tonight the connection seems pretty sweet. (Perhaps my ISP is getting overloaded at night?) I'm located in Kansas City which is several hundred miles from the nearest data center but just within the 1000 mile range. I'm just using a "standard level" cable modem connection.
The graphics are on the low-rez side. Currently the max rez is a widescreen 1280x720 but it scales up just fine on my CRT monitor. The compression is GREAT! I really don't see it at all, at least at this resolution. Higher rez (1920x1080) should be showing up in about half a year but I can only see that making things better.
Lag is noticable but not too nasty. I was playing a sniper in the Borderlands demo so I needed pretty precise aim - and got it most of the time. I did notice the camera going wonky every now and again, probably because of a lost packet just as I started moving the mouse. You aren't going to win any FPS tournaments with OnLive but it's definitely playable (and even a slightly laggy mouse beats the hades out of a console gamepad).
Prices aren't bad. Fear 2 is $20 and Assassins Creed 2 is $40. When you buy them flat out, you are told you can play them for the next three years or so. (I presume they dump the games after that long to make room for new stuff.) Batman AA does things a bit differently, letting you buy a 3 day or 5 day pass. The 3 day pass costs $5 and the 5 day costs $7. Five day sounds like a better deal but, if you can only play on the weekends anyway, you might be better off going three days at a time. Borderlands has the most options, letting you pay $30 for a full pass, $9 for a five day pass, and $6 for a three day pass.
The game selection is not so impressive. Despite what the home page says, there's no Dragon Age: Origins or Mass Effect.
The Founding Member program gives you a free membership for the first year and only charges you $5/month for the second year. You can still sign up here until July 15. USA only, I expect, but I didn't read closely enough to find out. At that price, OnLive is WELL worth it. Even if you don't buy games, being able to load up a game demo in 30 seconds and play for 30 minutes is very much worth the trouble of signing up, IMHO. (In fact, that's exactly what I did. Steam is having a sale on Borderlands today and I wanted to see if I would like the cell shade graphics.)
At full price… well… OnLive is not so worth it yet. It should be a very good system for playing games if you can't cough up the cash for a fancy new PC. I think it will give consoles a pretty good run, too. They need to get some more games in there before I would start giving them any money, though.
When I tried to play last night, it was pretty bad. My connection kept dropping and I had an awful time. But tonight the connection seems pretty sweet. (Perhaps my ISP is getting overloaded at night?) I'm located in Kansas City which is several hundred miles from the nearest data center but just within the 1000 mile range. I'm just using a "standard level" cable modem connection.
The graphics are on the low-rez side. Currently the max rez is a widescreen 1280x720 but it scales up just fine on my CRT monitor. The compression is GREAT! I really don't see it at all, at least at this resolution. Higher rez (1920x1080) should be showing up in about half a year but I can only see that making things better.
Lag is noticable but not too nasty. I was playing a sniper in the Borderlands demo so I needed pretty precise aim - and got it most of the time. I did notice the camera going wonky every now and again, probably because of a lost packet just as I started moving the mouse. You aren't going to win any FPS tournaments with OnLive but it's definitely playable (and even a slightly laggy mouse beats the hades out of a console gamepad).
Prices aren't bad. Fear 2 is $20 and Assassins Creed 2 is $40. When you buy them flat out, you are told you can play them for the next three years or so. (I presume they dump the games after that long to make room for new stuff.) Batman AA does things a bit differently, letting you buy a 3 day or 5 day pass. The 3 day pass costs $5 and the 5 day costs $7. Five day sounds like a better deal but, if you can only play on the weekends anyway, you might be better off going three days at a time. Borderlands has the most options, letting you pay $30 for a full pass, $9 for a five day pass, and $6 for a three day pass.
The game selection is not so impressive. Despite what the home page says, there's no Dragon Age: Origins or Mass Effect.
The Founding Member program gives you a free membership for the first year and only charges you $5/month for the second year. You can still sign up here until July 15. USA only, I expect, but I didn't read closely enough to find out. At that price, OnLive is WELL worth it. Even if you don't buy games, being able to load up a game demo in 30 seconds and play for 30 minutes is very much worth the trouble of signing up, IMHO. (In fact, that's exactly what I did. Steam is having a sale on Borderlands today and I wanted to see if I would like the cell shade graphics.)
At full price… well… OnLive is not so worth it yet. It should be a very good system for playing games if you can't cough up the cash for a fancy new PC. I think it will give consoles a pretty good run, too. They need to get some more games in there before I would start giving them any money, though.
I think the best advantage this could have is not being exploited (probably because of publisher requirements). The ability to play console games on your PC (or Mac or Linux PC). Imagine being able to turn on your PC and play Red Dead Revolver, Demon Souls or Valkyria Chronicles. Technically it's now possible, the main obstacle now is just the licensing agreements.
Zloth
I smell a... wumpus!?
Well, if 'other stuff' involves bandwidth then yeah, you're going to hose things up. Popping over to GameTrailers or Hulu or maybe even Pandora while you try to play a game isn't going to work so well. This site shouldn't hurt you a bit, though. Wikia might hurt a tad when you download all the Flash advertisements but shouldn't be a problem after that.
Lower-end computers could run into trouble if you do something that burns a lot of CPU, too.
Lower-end computers could run into trouble if you do something that burns a lot of CPU, too.
depends on what other users are doing. Torrenting? forget it. Downloading/streaming movies? forget it. Web browsing? not an issue.
I don't remember the answer of this question: Let imagine the streaming is working but how they can offer the CPU power for the most recent games? The game needs run fully for each player independently and unlike MMO most of the CPU power is used on "server" side. If the graphical elements don't need to be drawn they need to be fully computed and send.
So for 1M users they'll need 500K PC constantly upgraded to last powerful model? This model makes no sense for me.
So for 1M users they'll need 500K PC constantly upgraded to last powerful model? This model makes no sense for me.
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Zloth
I smell a... wumpus!?
They don't use PCs, they use servers. Also remember that not everyone is going to be playing at the same time. Not everyone is going to be playing Crysis, either - even my home PC could probably play half a dozen Civilization 4 games at the same time.
Don't get me wrong, the CPU and GPU requirements are going to be huge. I just don't think they will be quite as huge as you imagine.
Don't get me wrong, the CPU and GPU requirements are going to be huge. I just don't think they will be quite as huge as you imagine.
Sorry to say that, but from a technical standpoint servers CAN be PCs … Although ot very likely.
I think I've read somewhere that Goole for example uses several thousand PCs as their data storage servers …
The term "server" isn't fixed to any technical environment.
What could be right, though, would be to say "they don't use desktop PCs, they use servers". That would be right, although the term "servers" would still be a bit vague.
I think he meant servers as that their setup is not 'one computer per game'. Basically, one computer could be running 3 games or more, who knows. It basically depends on how many people are playing what games at what times. The thing is, at least that part is working well right now.
Zloth
I smell a... wumpus!?
Yep, what Wolfing said. You can set up a PC as a server - heck, these days they are pretty much designed to work on a home network. I'm talking about machines that are designed to have dozens or more people playing on them. "Application server" would be the technical term.
The big problem for me with the service is the internet. I'm within range of three datacenters but I'm close to the 1000 mile limit on all three. If the internet (meaning everything between the back of my PC to their datacenter) is running well, it's great. If it's not, I can't even stay connected for five minutes. Sometimes it comes and goes. There's no way I would put up with that as my sole way to play a game.
My guess is that the choke point is my ISP. TimeWarner has a shared network so, if a lot of people are online in town, everyone gets bad response times. If not, it's great. That would explain why I can almost never play in the evenings but have no problems early on a Saturday morning.
The big problem for me with the service is the internet. I'm within range of three datacenters but I'm close to the 1000 mile limit on all three. If the internet (meaning everything between the back of my PC to their datacenter) is running well, it's great. If it's not, I can't even stay connected for five minutes. Sometimes it comes and goes. There's no way I would put up with that as my sole way to play a game.
My guess is that the choke point is my ISP. TimeWarner has a shared network so, if a lot of people are online in town, everyone gets bad response times. If not, it's great. That would explain why I can almost never play in the evenings but have no problems early on a Saturday morning.