GDC 09: OnLive Introduces The Future of Gaming

[proliferazor]

Before I dive into what OnLive is and how it works, let me start by saying that you should read every word of this article as this service has the potential to completely change the way games are played. If it works and gets proper support from both publishers and gamers, you may never need a high-end PC to play the latest games, or perhaps even ever buy a console again. That is not an exaggeration.

link

more links

[nutcrackr]

what kind of connection do you need to stream high definition video? Also this would need to be localized, or people from other countries would get far too much input lag.

I personally would rather spend a few hundred more on hardware to get as little input lag as possible. Not to mention modding and such.

hmm 5mbps for 720 video. Then that's probably 30 FPS capped from the 60fps that the machine runs else the bandwidth would be too huge. 1ms to compress video?

Lag in single player sucks tbh.

I can see this working better for Strategy games, only problem is the requirements for those are low anyway.

[LordJuanlo]

There should be zero lag for this thing to be effective. I don't see it happening soon

[saturnotaku]

This is pointless if you have a bandwidth cap imposed by your ISP.

[CaptNKILL]

A similar thing is already being done with the StreamMyGame service. It works extremely well over a LAN with no lag but I don't see it being even remotely useful over a standard broadband connection. Especially given how unreliable the speed of the connection can be.

If I have trouble getting into a game of Left 4 Dead with less than 170 ping, I doubt I'll be getting zero lag by running the game from a server a thousand miles away, streaming 100x more information, while also being connected to an online game server.

Also, say goodbye to user created content, mods, offline gaming (obviously), tweaking and high res graphics (720p is hardly "high def" in my opinion).

This would basically suck all of the life out of PC gaming. I don't normally hope for the failure of new technology, but if this catches on in any significant way, it'll destroy our hobby. You might as well just watch TV.

[Bokishi]

I could see this catching on in 10 years, where bandwidth is bigger and 1080p content can be streamed easily

[Toss3]

..............................720p................ .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. ...............................

If only the ISP:s could provide content servers then it could potentially be a win-win for both them and the consumer.

[Noriega]

Sorry makes no logic sense at all.

[Toss3]

Originally Posted by Noriega

Sorry makes no logic sense at all.

Yes it does - most people out there are casual gamers and want to enjoy a game every once in awhile without having to spend tons of money on new hardware and it would be great for notebooks!

[Noriega]

Originally Posted by Toss3

Yes it does - most people out there are casual gamers and want to enjoy a game every once in awhile without having to spend tons of money on new hardware and it would be great for notebooks!

Only if they can make 5Mbit/s of video data from 1Gbit/s without loosing quality, they can beat latency, build PC and server for less than you can buy a console or PC. Sorry this never happen

[rudedog]

isn't that the definition of console gaming?

To make it even cheaper they simply rent their games instead of buying outright.

[Toss3]

Originally Posted by Noriega

Only if they can make 5Mbit/s of video data from 1Gbit/s without loosing quality, they can beat latency, build PC and server for less than you can buy a console or PC. Sorry this never happen

1Gb/s - where did you pull that number from(blu-ray movies have a video bit rate of ~40mb/s)? A good quality 720p stream only needs about 5mb/s to look good(at 24fps that is).