OnLive Microconsole more awesome than PC gaming?

[Refalm]

The OnLive Microconsole.
It promises some serious gaming without having to buy games. Just hook up that thing to your TV and internets, and play (for a $15 subscription).

This will hopefully kill off any need whatsoever for playing games on Windows (Wine sometimes doesn't work), or buying ridiculously expensive hardware.
Especially since there's a Mac OS browser plugin.

I'm anxious to see if it will all work. If it does, and there's an actual Linux browser plugin, I'm going to seriously check it out.

[Lead Head]

I see a couple of problems with it honestly. To send that much high def imagery at 60FPS minimum is going to use a lot of bandwidth the other issue is latency. When you move your mouse on a "local" game being played on your PC, the screen updates near instantly. With this, the move command has to be first sent to the computing servers,  calculated, the the new image has to be sent back. That means there will be an actual video delay between when you push a button and something actually happens on screen. I'm guessing if you have a ping over ~50ms or so the games will be unplayable.

[Refalm]

It's streaming pictures and sound, which is no different than Streaming a 720p HD movie at YouTube.
Mouse and keyboard movements isn't that much data to send.

The technology already works in LAN's when you try to play a 2D game in a VDI environment.
So it's possible, but the bandwidth is a problem if your bandwidth isn't at least 20 Mbit for down and up. Then take in account all the hops to the server that adds up to the latency, or your family members using usenet or bittorrent.

It could all be a big scam like Palm Invest, but if it's real and works, it would be revolutionary in how people buy and play games.

Here's a clip of OnLive in practice, with some guy that sucks at GRID:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7fq8NmiV8U

[Aloone_Jonez]

So it's possible, but the bandwidth is a problem if your bandwidth isn't at least 20 Mbit for down and up.

How many people have that kind of bandwidth both up and down?

Going from the other thread, so far you're the only person here who could use the service.

[Kintaro]

What the fuck incentive does anyone have to write games for it?

[Refalm]

What the fuck incentive does anyone have to write games for it?

Because it takes almost no effort, since they are basically modified Windows games. If this proves successful, independent developers have yet another good platform besides Steam to release games without distributors that come with associated costs, packaging, stores that disregard the release date, and overall butthurt. And of course, hoping to get gamers back that exclusively pirate games.

Also, I appear to be wrong with that 20 Mbit remark. 5 Mbit is the minimum (no HD though at that speed, but I personally don't care).

[Kintaro]

What the fuck incentive does anyone have to write games for it?

Because it takes almost no effort, since they are basically modified Windows games. If this proves successful, independent developers have yet another good platform besides Steam to release games without distributors that come with associated costs, packaging, stores that disregard the release date, and overall butthurt. And of course, hoping to get gamers back that exclusively pirate games.

Also, I appear to be wrong with that 20 Mbit remark. 5 Mbit is the minimum (no HD though at that speed, but I personally don't care).

So it would split users in their choice of games even further? I swear these game companies should stop being faggots and either publish with everyone or nobody. In the end it would mean I could choose a console, a game, another guy could chose another console, but still get the same game and horrah: I have more usability and game developers have more customers. Without the bullshit legal runaround and expense developers might decide to team with eachother rather than bloated patent hoarding consortiums like Sony and Microsoft.

Personally I'll stick with a PS3 and Windows. No point in having Windows x64 and Windows Xenon as well really.

[Refalm]

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3180014

Now that it's released, and looking at the prices, it doesn't look as appealing.
Comments from actual users claim that they have tried it on a 90 Mbit connection, and what they got wasn't even good enough to be called 480p. While OnLive claimed 720p at more than 5 Mbit connections.

To recap, you pay $50 for a game, you don't own that game, and when you decide to quit OnLive, your game is lost. Renting a game for a week is $9, but that's way more expensive then renting a game at a normal shop.
On top of that, a subscription fee that will be between $5 to $15 a month.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Sounds shit.

I don't play games anyway so don't care myself.

[Lead Head]

 I just read some other articles and they were saying it is 720p, but its highly compressed garbage. Probably comparable to youtube. Another person was saying they tried it out at E3 where they had a demo setup, and the input lag was huge on the system.

After reading that article though about its costs, I don't see this going anywhere. At least with a service like steam you still have the actual game data on your harddrive, and I'm sure valve would provide means for users to play the games offline in the event they did fold. With this, what do you do if the service goes down?