So "OnLive" is actually "Live" now. has anyone tried it out? How's latency? I'd like to hear some first hand accounts. Better yet, tell us you "Have it. Don't like it! And now you're kicking your-self in the ass for spending money on it"....mostly because I want to see this business model crash and burn...Burn baby, Burn...and then see the flames grow so huge they take every corporate ass-jack who's come up with this plan, or will later come up with this plan, with it into the Blaze....
So, um, yeah...How's that "OnLive" working out for you?
P.S. Here's GameSpots "What you Need to Know" about OnLive.
Been a couple of discussions over on reddit:http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/cij7b/i_just_got_access_to_onlive_heres_how_the_video/
Main facts:
1) It does indeed work2) Graphics are 720p, but are compressed. See above link for a screenshot3) Input lag is noticeable. Most people claim to get used to it, but it's definitely there.4) Games are full price, but also have rental prices of $1-$2 a day. Not all games have all options.5) Not everyone who has signed up has been able to get in.
Now, for my opinions:
There's simply no way this business model can work currently. They're offering 1 year free service to new users, and then $5 a month after that. I just can't see how they can make enough profit when they've invested so much and have giant server farms running, both to run the games and compress the video, not to mention bandwith costs.
They're also targeting a very strange market: People who don't have a console/PC, but have super high speed internet.
I appreciate the info and linkage. I would also tend to agree with your opinion of the business model.
I don't see though how:
1) It does indeed work
if it has:
3) Input lag is noticeable.
To me that sounds like it doesn't work as well as they said it would. Makes me glad it's yet another thing I Won't be getting into.
To parody Aragorn from the last battle in LotR:
Some day the want of consumers to Actually Own their bought and paid for products may end, but that day is not this day!!! Some day the Courage of the Consumer and Consumer Rights may fail, and civilization will fall, but that day is not this day!!! Some day the Corporate Magnates will Own Everything while the Consumer Pays for it All, but that day is not this day!!! Rise Consumers of the west, and fight!!!
LoL
Again, thanks for the info, good looking out.
of course input lag is noticeable, haha. they havent broken the speed of light with their new tech!
i hope i am never reduced to playing games like this. what an abortion.
I don't think it's a speed of light issue.
Based on a back of the envelope calculation, speed of light (3.0x10^8 m/s) is plenty fast enough to get 33 ms there & back trips with non-ideal systems within 1000km of a server hub:
(1000 km / (3.0*10^8 m/s * 0.2))* 2 =~ 33ms
*0.2 is fudgefactor for our non-fiber lines, it may be too optimistic.
*2.0 term is fudgefactor for there and back again.
So on paper you should be able to get a system like this working. They're probably staring down some network traffic problems, local service provider issues, and the speed of their compression algorithm. At least, I find that more likely than Speed of Light limitations being their problem.
33ms is great latency for networking traffic, but its still pretty shitty compared to how long it takes my PC to recognise my input normally (because its my input + ~33ms).
Lets put it this way: I pretty much cannot play most graphically intense console games because I find the lag to unbearable. There is no way I'll be using OnLive any time in my near future.
I just don't understand why you are supposed to pay for the privlege of using their service. It makes sense to me that you pay for the games of course, and that they should get a cut from that, but to have a pay yearly sub and then lose your games if you stop paying the sub... why would I ever pay full price for a game they are going to take away from me if i stop paying the sub? At least this is how it is being described on CAG anyway.
They're offering to effectively "rent" you most of the hardware cost. A decent gaming PC most often costs in the $1500 ballpark if you assemble it yourself and reuse things like monitors and I/O devices (mouse, keyboard, speakers etc.) However, if you want to stay at the same level or so on the graphics scale you'll need to rebuy that $1500 about every 3 years or so.
So, Onlive steps into the picture and announces, you subscribe to our service instead of buying that ueber gaming PC, and we promise to keep our Sys-reqs static, so after plopping down $500 for that basic computer, you won't have to rebuy the system, and instead commit to our service. This is reflected in their initial pricing, where they're definitely trying to encourage you to make the leap.
I've got an Excel sheet lying around somewhere with the cost-benefit analysis of various tiers of PC, Console (Xbox-360), and Onlive floating around somewhere when I was puzzling through this myself (some of my friends got hired by Onlive out of college and I thought it was a rather curious idea). Would that be something folk would be interested in seeing polished and reported?
The limited amount of games makes me not care all that much about this service. If I had played 0 of the games they currently have, I'd at least try the service... but now, even as a free trial, it wouldn't be worth it to me. I'm going to keep my eye on this and give it a shot in the future if they get more solid games frequently.
Am I curious about the numbers? You Bet. Will the outcome make me change my mind and suddenly want OnLive? No way in hell.
I'm still curious about the numbers though, so if you find em floating around that would be cool.
Hey Raven, I found the spreadsheet, wrote it up into a two page PDF. It's a very simple analysis, but I think it does give us a couple of key insights into the price scheduling of Onlive. I did not include the free year of subscription offer, subtract $60 from the five year cost if you want to account for that.
Here's the conclusion:
Dollar for dollar, Onlive is offering a gaming experience which is comparable in cost to a next-generation (though it's been 5 years!) console system, while promising to deliver graphics more comparable to a high end or better custom PC. Stardock Forumites have raised issues about input lag, and more generally the concept of having repurchase games for use on the system.
In my opinion, I think that Onlive has marketed to the wrong gaming community: high end PC Gamers, and instead should be marketing towards consoles and low-end PC gamers who want to see the latest and greatest in graphics and processor crushing games.
Well many could build a machine for 500-750 most years that would easily play games and play them pretty well for a couple of years (I do this all the time). I think the people that would demand 1500 or more for high/ultra-high settings on every game and top benchmarks would never settle for ongoing lag. I mean high end is putting in SSDs just to get that extra boost, and we're talking noticable lag on Onlive. If you are riding the front wave of gaming hardware, it's unlikely that cost is going to be a huge factor so saving money with Onlive wouldn't be much of a benefit... and that seems to be the only benefit.
As one of the people who has a intel SSD that cost more than my graphics card (its just a 285 for now) and is a core part of the computers spec for me and one of the biggest things I hate about console ports is the way the mouse imput is usually smoothed as if it was thumbstick input... OnLive would not be acceptable for me to play anything on it. Id rather get a console.
Yeah I don't understand their focus, there dosn't seem to be such a gap in the market.
"promising to deliver graphics more comparable to a high end or better custom PC."
Except that is patently false. The graphics for Borderlands are 720p, with shadows turned OFF. An ATI HD4850, a sub $100 video card, can run that no problem.
Your cost comparison is also highly flawed (Seriously? Buying a $800 PC every year?). You must start with a low end PC for $500, including monitor and peripherals. This is because OnLive requires one! You can easily price one out with a dual core and 2GB of RAM here for example:
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/desktop-inspiron-560?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
Now all you need to add is 2GB of RAM and an ATI 4850, adding less than $200 to the cost. You also must have a high speed connection to game on OnLive, whereas you only need DSL to game on a PC.
Any PC gamer also knows that graphics have really plateaued over the past few years. And if the graphics do get more demanding, you also can't generously assume that OnLive would upgrade their entire computing farm with the latest graphics card the minute that they're needed, meaning OnLive graphics will always be behind even a low end gaming PC.
Well done, my friend . Thanks for breaking that down for us. I do think how-ever the numbers on your Plat PC and High PC are a little low on the PC cost scale, but they are "pretty close" . When you say "Plat PC" what does "Plat" stand for? Platinum or Platform?
I'd honestly like to see that one my dear. Even your bottom of the barrel low end Wal-Mart PC is going to cost the average consumer between $600 and $800 and those PC's are Not capable of running...lets say, Crysis, or even Fallout 3 on Ultra Settings. Even at "wholesale" prices it would be hard to do with only $500 to $750.
To give an example, when I built my system (now going on 2 years old) I spent a little over $2,100. For that money AT Wholesale prices here's what I got (rounded off for easy adding) :
Motherboard: $350
Proc: $700.00 <---- That was only a few months after the i7 Quad Core came out. Some places were still selling the i7 920 for $900 + .
Video Card: $350 <----- when the GTX 280 first hit the stores most places were still charging $499.00 for it.
Blu-Ray/DvD/CD Burner: $200 <----- Blu Ray burners were still expensive.
I could go on listing the new parts I got but as we can see we're already way past the $500-$750 mark. With the exception of maybe some High End Laptops, I don't see any $700 PC running High End (Crysis type) games. That's even With Re-Using a lot of parts, Hard Drives, DvD drives, hell lets even assume your old Memory will fit the New motherboard.
I'm not saying it's Impossible to do at the prices you quote. I could buy a a "Base System" at the prices of $500-$750, but I would still need to go out and buy a decent graphics card before it could even think about running High End games. Note, when I say "decent graphics card" I Do Not mean the $99 EVGA special. The $99 special might run your High End games for a year, maybe even a little less, before the new games coming out would need a better card then what you have installed. That's why when I build a new gaming rig every 3-5 years depending on my income, I save up and get the best I can possibly afford at the time. That way I Won't have to go buy a new Graphics card every couple years to keep playing my High End games. I'd rather spend $500 on a graphics card and not have to buy another one for 3-4 years instead of spending $150 a year just on graphics cards.
More or less completely agreed.
Please read my post above. Disregarding the compression, OnLive is not running ANYTHING at ultra settings. These are 720p graphics, without shadows on Borderlands. A $100 ATI 4850 would run that. An nVidia 8800GT, $200 3 years ago, would still run that no problem. The fact is this: OnLive graphics are not ultra high settings. They are actually very undemanding, especially because it's only 720p. And ever since Crysis, there really haven't been any games that demand a higher graphics card. Gaming graphics have plateaued. Hell, even Crysis 2 is LESS demanding than the first Crysis.
People also seem to think that OnLive will magically have enough money to upgrade their infrastructure every 2 years, when that would literally require them to replace every single graphics card they have.
Indeed, you're quite right my friend. My point in posting those prices I mention is that even if you do go out and buy a $500-$750 PC, you won't be running High End graphics on Ultra Settings.
I never said OnLive was running anything on Ultra Settings. In fact, you've more then proven (to me anyway) that they are Not.
Playing on one right now. I don't know what to tell you. I built my system 1.5 years ago, cost me less than 750 and that was only because I also purchased a LCD Monitor to replace my perfectly fine but large CRT. I don't just play low end games either, nor do I have to scale much back then or even now. I don't have no name parts either, EVGA, Intel, nothing in here that is gimped, so to speak. She's not going to break benchmarks or anything, but neither is Onlive. I also don't pay retail for much. I shop sales using slickdeals, fatwallet, CAG and other places. It's very easy to build solid gaming rig for around 500-750 that could play everything on the market now and keep you going for awhile.
I have a few games running on max settings... just fine by the way. I am still well within recommended reqs for pretty much every game coming out, as in above it, AND i also replace my machine every 3-4 years.
I'm sure that's true. What do you exactly know though about the parts in your machine? Maybe I'm over-pricing things or just haven't tried to build a PC on a less then $1000 budget lately? I don't see how you could have built a whole system though, two years ago, for $700 and Still have been able to run Crysis on anything above the lowest settings.
Of course there's always going to be varying price ranges on parts. There's also always going to be a difference between buying a $500 GFX card and $200 GFX card that says they are the same thing, when in reality, they are not. They'll have less "pipe-lines", or a lesser ability to "crunch numbers", or less memory on the card, always something. That's why the person who buys the $500-$400 card gets better performance then the person who buys the same "name" card for $150.
I see people talking about their 500-800 dollar machines and I look at my keyboard, mouse and keypad combined that costs £270 and three question marks appear above my head, as I say "Huh?". Do you steal half the components? Aside from the £600 I paid for an old 40" TV to upgrade my monitor this computer cost me £2000...
Graphics are important to me but I still don't buy the absolute best, I care more about load times and throughput, stability and minimum frame rates (but still turn everything on if I can). OnLive can't stand up to either the PCs superiority nor the Xbox double Xs.
The new Order of War is thus:
PC > Xbox360 > PS3 > OnLive > Handhelds > hookers > Nintendo.
The Xbox is actually becoming... slightly alluring to me lately, as painful as that is to admit.
I want to hear from someone who actualy likes OnLive.
Hey now, Nintendo is better then a Hooker. Unless you're talking about the $1000 a Night "Call Girl", but they come with mind altering drugs included and a disease free garantee....er....not that I'd know that first hand from a trip to Vegas or anything...hehe.
On a more serious note. I started as a gamer at 8 years old on the original Nes. Many years later I became a PC gamer. Now, I own a High End PC, a Wii, and a XBox360. With those 3 systems I'm able to cover Every Game that comes out that I'd want to play, minus the Very Few Exceptions that are PS3 exclusives like "Infamous" and "God of War 3".
Edit: I highly recomend getting a XBox360 and then a Natal/Kinect when it comes out in October.
Yeah, plat. was short for platinum. I had to shorten the names to get the whole thing to fit on a page. With pricing, I find that the majority of the cost for a "gaming" computer is going to come from the pair of processor/MoBo and your choice of graphics card. Honestly, these numbers were made without consideration to the solid state hard-drives, since I myself haven't made the transition to OS-SSD computers.
Given that, I'm looked at the standard consumer market, not the enthusiasts, so the folk who basically go and get a computer from Dell or some other assembler because they either just don't know any better or are allergic to mucking around with electronics.
Being an enthusiast and building the whole thing yourself is often a -35% cost modifier to be honest, as long as you're willing to do the research about parts and careful selection, you can squeeze alot of miles(power) out of parts you wouldn't expect.
These days, it's actually the opposite. They are very few exclusives on the 360 that don't eventually make it over to the PC, so I traded in my 360 to get a PS3.
Uncharted 2 is amazing. Demon's Souls is an old school ARPG. Infamous 1 and 2 I've heard good things about, but have yet to try. The same with Heavy Rain. Of course, there's God of War 3, Valkyria Chronicles, and Little Big Planet 1/2.
I grew up on the NES, Super Nintendo, PS1, PS2, and then Xbox and Halo, but the fourth iteration of Halo and Alan Wake are not enough to keep me on the 360. Also, the Kinect and the Move are all gimmicks that will fail horribly. I had a Wii and sold it because it was just collecting dust. Until movement controls get some tactile feedback, they'll never be good.
Sorry for the off topic.
Well I am sure what's important to you is not as important to me. I mean ask someone to build a computer or ask someone their opinion on a build, and you'll get a dozen different answers in the first hour alone. My uncle swears by Asus, is the only board he will buy. I've had an Asus board before, I went with EVGA this round. Last time I had an AMD chip, now I have an Intel again. So I am not really brand loyal, but I tend to avoid some of the more iffy brands like ECS even if they are very cheap. Everything in my machine was new even the case and, like I said, the montior, because I did a fairly large jump from the old machine that chugged along (waited until about 4-5 years this time around so it was getting into the can't play this game category).
I should mention my state has no sales tax either, so possibly there could be an additional 100 saved for that depending on where you buy your stuff. That's the other thing I do, I don't necessarily buy everything from one place. Newegg, Amazon, Outpost, Microcenter, Best Buy... I don't care who i get it from generally. I just want the part. I'll narrow my choice usually down to two builds, AMD and Intel, maybe four-five motherboards and then patiently watch prices for a bit, and snag the parts, once I couple of main parts, CPU, mobo, GPU, I usually order the rest within a couple of weeks.
I guess my main point is that the entry level (and really these parts I am using wouldn't eve be considered entry level then and just aged now), for PC gaming is not nearly expensive enough to justify what OnLive is offering. Not for actual gamers. For people who like casual games or gaming casually, well I don't see how this helps either as the casual games pretty much run on anything, and someone who games casually, to me, seems unlikely to pay 60 dollars for a game and then continue to pay for the opportunity to play it for long.
As I mentioned if there is a wave in game, I am not at the forefront, and I am not really at the back either, more mid-range which is what the kind of machines I build and use are although some machines I've seen labeled as "mid-range" make me cringe.
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