Onlive & the end of consoles?

AlmightyCushion

I don't think I would use this service. When playing games off line I usually set up downloads and have them max out the connection or use a good chunk of the connection if someone else is online. I don't like the idea of having to depend on my internet connection just to play games. Also I have a 24" monitor, I'd rather play at native resolution and given how cheap graphics cards are at the moment I'll stick with a good pc

irish_ninja

This will not kill consoles anytime soon.
First of all you wont have games or franchises that are developed by first party studios(basically no from studios owned by sony,microsoft or nintendo) this means no Halo, Forza, Gran turismo, Little big planet, etc..This will mean that hardcore gamers will not give up their consoles.Most will not pay two subscription fees and will choose their xbox live sub if they have an xbox.
Thats most of the hardcore gamer community out now for the casual gamer which nintendo have so succesfully captured.
This is kind of like the web browser war.Internet explorer is the default browser on most computers and has about 70% share Firefox has about 25% and this is after years of versions.Firefox is better than internet explorer in nearly every way and still has only 25%.This is because most people dont even know what a web browser is let alone change it.Now take internet explorer as the consoles and firefox as onlive.Firefox is better than IE but IE is winning so how is onlive going to win since consoles are better than it.
-Everyone can get a console
-95% of major games are on consoles
-Free to play after startup cost
-There are consoles with thirty years
-Instant play
Will I go on more??

fugazied

Onlive will fail because the Internet speeds and bandwidth costs associated with it will be too high until about 2015 at the earliest.

Japan might feasibly get it working, but for countries like Australia and Ireland it would be cost prohibitve until around 2018

MooseJam

well the only country they are talking about going live in is the US, no mention of Australias and Irelands

BopNiblets

*bump for news of OnLive*
http://kotaku.com/5475909/onlive-resurfaces-crysis-on-an-iphone-data-centers-located

PogMoThoin

irish_ninja wrote: »

This will not kill consoles anytime soon.
First of all you wont have games or franchises that are developed by first party studios(basically no from studios owned by sony,microsoft or nintendo) this means no Halo, Forza, Gran turismo, Little big planet, etc..This will mean that hardcore gamers will not give up their consoles.Most will not pay two subscription fees and will choose their xbox live sub if they have an xbox.
Thats most of the hardcore gamer community out now for the casual gamer which nintendo have so succesfully captured.
This is kind of like the web browser war.Internet explorer is the default browser on most computers and has about 70% share Firefox has about 25% and this is after years of versions.Firefox is better than internet explorer in nearly every way and still has only 25%.This is because most people dont even know what a web browser is let alone change it.Now take internet explorer as the consoles and firefox as onlive.Firefox is better than IE but IE is winning so how is onlive going to win since consoles are better than it.
-Everyone can get a console
-95% of major games are on consoles
-Free to play after startup cost
-There are consoles with thirty years
-Instant play
Will I go on more??

I fell off my seat at the mention of hardcore gamers and consoles ,
by hardcore You mean 10 year olds, right?

From what I've read any pc gamers who tried this noticed the lag. I notice it myself everytime I play 360 with a controller, having the game hosted online is going to really exagerate this.

WolfForager

Console owners can't be hardcore gamers? Explain.

Jazzy

WolfForager wrote: »

Console owners can't be hardcore gamers? Explain.

cos they are n00bs durr

PogMoThoin

WolfForager wrote: »

Console owners can't be hardcore gamers? Explain.

Typical Hardcore Console Gamer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ3Ltik1evQ

In explanation to this, its because the average age of the hardcore console gamer is about 13. I've seen XBL and it a terrible place full of whinging moaning kids, I refuse to let my young fella on it, but I do let him play Garrys mod, Css, Hl2 and TF2 online on pc without voice, just text chat, its a much more respectable place.

WolfForager

Holdy on a second. What do you define as a hardcore gamer?

Genghiz Cohen

PC :pac:
Spends moar time playing than sleeping.
Gave up outside for better graphics.

PogMoThoin

WolfForager wrote: »

Holdy on a second. What do you define as a hardcore gamer?

Someone who spends lots of their time gaming

WolfForager

But in fairness though, most of those kids you hear on xbox live play cod 24/7 and pretty much nothing else, i wouldn't put them into the hardcore gaming category, the same way i wouldn't put the Wii Fitness audience into the hardcore category.

PogMoThoin

WolfForager wrote: »

But in fairness though, most of those kids you hear on xbox live play cod 24/7 and pretty much nothing else, i wouldn't put them into the hardcore gaming category, the same way i wouldn't put the Wii Fitness audience into the hardcore category.

But thats Your typical hardcore console gamer, they average at around 13 years old. Thats why I lol'd, its the first impression I got.
The average pc gamer is much older, hence there is more maturity.
The average casual gamer is a girl in their late teens/early 20's, I wouldn't class these as gamers either, but Nintendo hit the nail on the head when they targeted this audience.

Anyway, we've dragged this thread too far off topic, onlive won't appeal to the hardcore gamers, but may appeal to the average 13 yo

Star Bingo

fairly scary video. i'll think twice before i pull the virtual trigger next time on there, don't wanna send some kid all crazy :eek:

Onlive is just what i've been looking for tbh, a fully fledged service for games on demand and do away with the consumer junk - but not to the point of not even owning a d/l'd copy - of a game which apparently you have to keep paying for to retain?
even though you don't even own a copy..

oh look my single player campaign is lagging.. oh sh*t my net is having contention/dropped i can't play my game i paid for but don't actually own. -no.

cherryghost

Onlive appeals to me, just because im very intruiged as to how the technology works, and if it really does what its supposed to do, i'd probably buy it.

sorry póg

PogMoThoin

cherryghost wrote: »

Onlive appeals to me, just because im very intruiged as to how the technology works, and if it really does what its supposed to do, i'd probably buy it.

sorry póg

Would appeal to me and others too, but it can't work. Lag will always exist no matter what compression they use. Here's what You can try, try play a browser game like Quakelive through a remote desktop on Your lan. I've tried this before, I've got a gigabit network so bandwidth is not a problem, with less than 1ms ping between the pc's and I can still feel lag. How are they going to cope with a dedicated gameserver a few hundred miles away, in the UK, because Ireland is unlikely to get one.
In theory its a good idea, in an ideal world where everyone had a fibre to the home connection, but not in the real world

Jazzy

WolfForager wrote: »

Holdy on a second. What do you define as a hardcore gamer?

a giant n00b that thinks they are good at games but in reality cant time a red armor.

Cuddlesworth

Jazzy wrote: »

a giant n00b that thinks they are good at games but in reality cant time a red armor.

I think at some stage you forgot what playing games actually means to most people.

Jazzy

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I think at some stage you forgot what playing games actually means to most people.

or.... i came in drunk this morning and felt like ripping the piss :pac:

Cuddlesworth

Jazzy wrote: »

or.... i came in drunk this morning and felt like ripping the piss :pac:

I think at some stage you forgot what drunken posting actually means to some people.

BaelNaMblath

I'm convinced this is gonna be as much vaporware as the matsu****a console from years ago, whatever it was called.

Kinetic^

This seems to be launching on June 17th of this year. Read here.

A gaming service that aims to kill off the traditional gaming console will begin streaming popular games over the internet in June this year.
OnLive, which launched to much fanfare in 2009, announced details of its service at the GamesBeat conference.
Instead of games taking hours to download or buying them off the shelf, OnLive promises games on-demand.
"OnLive breaks the console cycle. We don't need new hardware devices," said company founder Steve Perlman.
That sentiment was echoed by his chief operating officer Mike McGarvey.
"We want to take your dollars from hardware and let you spend it on software. We are a new platform and we're building a network and infrastructure to last for the next 30 years of gaming, not the next five years," Mr McGarvey told reporters.

BopNiblets

Mini review of the beta here: http://onlivefans.com/showthread.php?t=2198

I got an invite to the OnLive beta today and just got done giving it a go. I thought people here might be interested in how well it works and surprisingly it works pretty damn well. I played Prince of Persia and UT. They both responded really well to my inputs. When I pressed space the prince jumped with no noticeably latency at all. Unreal seemed a bit laggy but I've never played it before so I'm not sure how it should feel.

The big down side so far is the resolution. It seems really low. I'm used to gaming at 1920x1200 and whatever res they're having me play it feels very out dated.

The interface is slick and watching other people play is really cool. I'll try to post more impressions as I use it.

FYI I have 12 Mbps down cable from comcast.

L31mr0d

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I fell off my seat at the mention of hardcore gamers and consoles

A certain "Fighting Games" forum would probably beg to differ on that one

In regards to Onlive, for the foreseeable future I could see myself using it to supplement my dedicated PC machine.

It would primarily be used with the likes of netbooks, or laptops with weak integrated graphics. On holiday I'd usually have access to a decent internet connection, but only enough power in my netbook to run Popcap games and Roms. Being able to have a few games of UT instead of watching crap foreign TV for a few hours would be great.

Sierra Oscar

This looks like it is not going to be as cheap as originally thought . . . you have to buy the hardware and pay a monthly subscription fee amounting to $180 a year. Then on top of that, you have to buy your games . . . I think a lot of people assumed the games would be included in the subscription price.

What happens to the games you bought when you terminate the contract? . . .

The subscription fee amounts to $720 over four years . . . so a console is probably cheaper in my view considering the lifetime of a console is at least four years.

Kinetic^

I don't think they thought out the cost of hosting all those servers tbh, fail format is fail.

AlmightyCushion

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

This looks like it is not going to be as cheap as originally thought . . . you have to buy the hardware and pay a monthly subscription fee amounting to $180 a year. Then on top of that, you have to buy your games . . . I think a lot of people assumed the games would be included in the subscription price.

What happens to the games you bought when you terminate the contract? . . .

The subscription fee amounts to $720 over four years . . . so a console is probably cheaper in my view considering the lifetime of a console is at least four years.

I knew you'd have to buy the games separately but I thought the subs would be lower. When you say hardware do you mean hardware in the data centre or the hardware you play the game on in your house. If you mean the former I can't see it succeeding.

As for the console working out cheaper, you have to take into account that consoles break down. So it could work out more expensive. Plus with the 360 you have to pay a monthly sub for live as well.

WolfForager

Anyone notice how Ubisoft's DRM worked with AC2 for PC? A big old fail. Onlive is gonna be the same.

Krieg

3 weeks to release and there isn't much talk about Onlive
Must be the pricing that's putting people off.
I'm still interested to see how its received by the general public