Remote game services (OnLive, Gaikai, etc.)

[Shifty Geezer]

Ive gotta disagree there, mean is a far better representitive choice than the average is.
(also u had this reversed "That doesn't sound below average to me. Below mean averages, possibly")
WRT internet speed/wages earned etc.
mean is usually lower than average.

If you have 9 in 10 people on 1 Megabit, and 1 in 10 at 100 Megabits, the mode and median are 1 Megabit, representing the speed that most people get, while the mean is 10.9 Megabit, which only 10% gets and is well below what they actually achieve. Hence it's a meaningless average where you are using averages to get a general representation of a range of figures. For the sake of broadband speeds and rolling out things like the OnLive service, you need to know what percentage of a given population gets a certain speed service, so that you can target them and if you don't have a nicely plotted distribution graph, mode and median are going to be closer approximations than mean.

Well I've been told many times (ok, actually read countless comments on Engadget and such) on the internet by Europeans that us poor Americans internet sucks compared to their's.

Europe is very diverse! Some places with great infrastructure and powerful consumer rights or government backed schemes from more centralised control ahve very fast BB. Some, especially those that rely on the private sector, have very spotty BB because the private sector only targets commercially viable (built up) locations.

The Gadget Show has a campaign to address the fact that ISP sell a service as "Up To n Megabits" and deliver well under that. You can read commenters' opinions of their own speedtest to see broadband results in the UK are all over the shop, from sub broadband up to 50 MBs for those lucky enough to come under BT's latest fibre campaign, and changing wildly through the day especially at peaks times. Which is another limitation of a simple mean average. If I get 50 Mb during the day, and 2 Mb in the evening, my mean average may be ~25 Mb but the actual bandwidth I get to use when I'd be gaming is nothing like.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The Gadget Show has a campaign to address the fact that ISP sell a service as "Up To n Megabits" and deliver well under that. You can read commenters' opinions of their own speedtest to see broadband results in the UK are all over the shop, from sub broadband up to 50 MBs for those lucky enough to come under BT's latest fibre campaign, and changing wildly through the day especially at peaks times. Which is another limitation of a simple mean average. If I get 50 Mb during the day, and 2 Mb in the evening, my mean average may be ~25 Mb but the actual bandwidth I get to use when I'd be gaming is nothing like.

That reminds me of some of my friends on cable internet in some areas. They have anywhere from 20-50 Mbps connections. But once evening or the weekend hits, they are lucky to get anywhere from 1-5 mbps combined with frequent (at least once a night) service interruptions which may be as short as half a second (common) or as long as an hour (uncommon). But during afternoons and mornings on weekdays, they'll almost always get their rated speed or more (with boost).

Regards,
SB

 

[zed]

If you have 9 in 10 people on 1 Megabit, and 1 in 10 at 100 Megabits, the mode and median are 1 Megabit, representing the speed that most people get, while the mean is 10.9 Megabit,

u mean 19
but sorry you are correct, I was wrong. it was me getting confused with the terms (two words beginning with M)

median = 10
average/Arithmetic mean = 19

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I think that bandwith is the smaller problem, considering that Onlive takes about 2-3GB of traffic per hour; if they move to 1080p it'll probably double. If you have a monthly transfer cap at your ISP then it's going to be pretty easy to reach it. Let's say 10 hours of gaming per week, that's OK for someone with a job and other activities; adds up to about 100 gigabytes per month. As far as I know that's already above the allowed amount for most ISPs - and you haven't even read your emails or looked at B3D yet, not to mention stuff like Youtube.

Now you should also consider that most ISPs have designed their infrastructure with completely different user activities in mind; and that the more people start to use Onlive, the more demanding it'll be for the network. And mostly at the same time of the day; that is, early evenings and weekend afternoons. It'll probably take some serious upgrades to support this kind of gaming and I'm not sure if it will become a priority, unless you're willing to pay more.

So I still don't think it'll take of quickly, as it is in some ways its own greatest enemy - as the more people would like to play through Onlive, the worse the lag and video quality will become. In the far future, say 5-10 years, it may become significantly bigger and then their early start will have some great benefits, but even in 10 years I'd still prefer to have local computing power...

 

[Nesh]

I think that the future, until we have ultra fast, ultra efficient servers and internet connections, is a console that can provide both streaming games and "tangible" format games. I am not sure how their servers can sustain so much if mass used, considering how much server costs Google and Facebook have for such "simpler" services

 

[DuckThor Evil]

u mean 19

Snap out of it! You're worrying me

(It's 10.9)

 

[BRiT]

I think that bandwith is the smaller problem, considering that Onlive takes about 2-3GB of traffic per hour; if they move to 1080p it'll probably double.

Are you sure about that? The early reviews I saw had 20-30GB consumed in 2-3 hours of gaming. Maybe it only uses that little of bandwidth (2-3 GB an hour) if you have that slow a connection.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

u mean 19

9 x 1 Mb + 1 x 100 Mb = 109 Mb / 10 people = 10.9 Megabit mean average.

Are you sure about that? The early reviews I saw had 20-30GB consumed in 2-3 hours of gaming. Maybe it only uses that little of bandwidth (2-3 GB an hour) if you have that slow a connection.

Is it dynamic streaming tech that expands to fill available bandwidth to work on slower speed connections (3Mbps is the minimum spec) but the IQ is much reduced, while those with faster connections will get better quality at higher use?

It's probably worth reminding people of Grandmaster's technical analysis, that provides useful numbers. 5 Mbps is ~2.5 Gbps.

The specs of this box are a little bit...daft. 1080p60 supported - well technically, not only by being heavily compressed on their 5 Mpbs recommended spec!

 

[BRiT]

Ah,I think there was some confusion in the early previews I saw so disregard that. They were reporting usage in Gb and not GB.

The other reviews I see online now is very consisten with what Grandmaster's technical analysis shows, about 2.5 GB per hour of gaming. Additional Onlive Review

 

[Rangers]

Onlive's Steve Pearlmen demo the unit with our man Dean Takahashi, youtube

Pretty interesting to some of his comments. One being that Onlive will start shipping in some internet enabled TV's next year. That could really do wonders for their install base with minimal effort.

I think I might buy some of these guys stock if possible

Edit: Seems they are a private company. From my few seconds of financial digging though, seems they are much better funded than I though, and claim to be valued at 1.1 billion.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

They may be preparing for long term success, which probably also means expanding the service beyond simple gaming. Competing with the likes of Xbox Live, PSN, Steam and Battle.net to various extents - notice that you can buy games online using any of the above, even battle.net has the option.
Also, console games already have to cover the costs and profits for the developer, the publisher, and the console manufacturer - I doubt there's any room for Onlive there at reasonable prices.

Now if that's the case, then we're probably not going to see console games, or anything from Valve or Blizzard. I wonder if they can survive on PC games only...

 

[Rangers]

They may be preparing for long term success, which probably also means expanding the service beyond simple gaming. Competing with the likes of Xbox Live, PSN, Steam and Battle.net to various extents - notice that you can buy games online using any of the above, even battle.net has the option.
Also, console games already have to cover the costs and profits for the developer, the publisher, and the console manufacturer - I doubt there's any room for Onlive there at reasonable prices.

Now if that's the case, then we're probably not going to see console games, or anything from Valve or Blizzard. I wonder if they can survive on PC games only...

Well the main advantage of Onlive imo is it eliminates the hardware, basically. Someone buying a game off steam or Battle.net needs the hardware to run it. Not so with Onlive. And then, eliminating the console hardware is the same big step.

I guess I dont really understand your post.

I dont think first party console exclusives will go there, but what is that, 8 games per console per year? I dont think they need them, initially.

I dont see why "console games" wouldn't be willing to do a Onlive version though, if it can be additive to their profits. That's the key, and will we start seeing more content on Onlive? It seems most multiplatform console games throw in a PC version anyway. But I dont see why companies wouldn't add the game to Onlive if it can add to their profits and they already have a PC version.

 

[AlphaWolf]

It doesn't eliminate the hardware, it just leaves it out of your house. You're going to pay for some hardware that you never actually own in a server farm somewhere.

 

[ion]

as someone who buries fiber optics and copper lines for a living here in the states, i dont think the U.S. broadband infrastructure as well as ISP's are quite ready for something like this to be easily feasable for the "console typical" or mass consumers. Too slow speeds for price plus ISP capping...etc.
However it has great potential, but more work needs to be done and the service needs to provide smooth gameplay at 1080p, even 3D capabilities to really make a statement or for even Sony or MS consider it. But when that happens and it will eventually, Its a win win for both consumer and company...fewer pirating, more alternatives for pricing..etc and consumers get smaller, quieter hardware and far more conveniences like no more discs, more seamless switching from streaming media, communications to gaming..etc. lots of potential there.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

as someone who buries fiber optics and copper lines for a living here in the states, i dont think the U.S. broadband infrastructure as well as ISP's are quite ready for something like this to be easily feasable for the "console typical" or mass consumers. Too slow speeds for price plus ISP capping...etc.
However it has great potential, but more work needs to be done and the service needs to provide smooth gameplay at 1080p, even 3D capabilities to really make a statement or for even Sony or MS consider it. But when that happens and it will eventually, Its a win win for both consumer and company...fewer pirating, more alternatives for pricing..etc and consumers get smaller, quieter hardware and far more conveniences like no more discs, more seamless switching from streaming media, communications to gaming..etc. lots of potential there.

Add to that ever increasing demands for high bandwidth HD streaming video, and the infrastructure for some countries may be strained to the breaking (or at least heavily groaning) point.

I still think their best bet for mass adoption and success will be in they can convince content providers and ISPs to carry and charge for the service, thus making bandwidth used for Online gaming exempt from the cap for their customers. Or as a VOD (or GOD - heh, Games on Demand) service provided by the ISP/cable provider.

So it would be similar to a premium channel (HBO, Cinemax, etc.) or VOD rental on such.

That'd also make it slightly cheaper for Onlive since they could then allow their partners to worry about billing.

In its current form I still don't see much of a point to the service. Especially when you can (other than at launch) quite often buy physical copies of the games cheaper than you can get them on Onlive.

Regards,
SB

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Well the main advantage of Onlive imo is it eliminates the hardware, basically. Someone buying a game off steam or Battle.net needs the hardware to run it.

Most people using those PC based services have hardware that's strong enough to run those games, and usually run them very well. I wouldn't worry about this part.

I dont think first party console exclusives will go there, but what is that, 8 games per console per year? I dont think they need them, initially.

There are a lot of multiplatform console games that don't have a PC version...

I dont see why "console games" wouldn't be willing to do a Onlive version though, if it can be additive to their profits.

A unit "sold" on Onlive is competing with the unit sold for the console, but has to give away some of its profit for Onlive. It also won't generate any additional revenue from DLC and microtransactions.

But I dont see why companies wouldn't add the game to Onlive if it can add to their profits and they already have a PC version.

They actually have to develop a special version for Onlive, that has a lot of the functionality disabled, and this will involve additional Q&A as well. If Onlive can't generate enough sales to support the effort, companies might decide not to invest in it.But for now, most publishers seem to look at Onlive with the future in mind and will probably continue to grow their list of products for a while.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Add to that ever increasing demands for high bandwidth HD streaming video, and the infrastructure for some countries may be strained to the breaking (or at least heavily groaning) point.

That's a very good point. Even if the UK were to get a full cable infrastructure, you'd need the hardware to feed the content, and 30 million simultaneous 1080p feeds with games and video is going to be an enormous workload to handle. Already, Bandwidth takes a nose-dive at peak times, and it'll remain that way for maybe decade as content becomes richer.

 

[zed]

9 x 1 Mb + 1 x 100 Mb = 109 Mb / 10 people = 10.9 Megabit mean average.

sorry I misread again, 9x 1mb as 9x10mb (the scary thing is I read 'If you have 9 in 10 people on 1 Megabit, and 1 in 10 at 100 Megabits,' like 3x + I only saw 9x10mb

 

[ion]

I still think their best bet for mass adoption and success will be in they can convince content providers and ISPs to carry and charge for the service, thus making bandwidth used for Online gaming exempt from the cap for their customers. Or as a VOD (or GOD - heh, Games on Demand) service provided by the ISP/cable provider.
Regards,
SB

an excellent idea if the ISP's are willing and capable of doing it. would be a great start but i agree the mass is just not ready for that just yet, especially if they can't offer true 1080P and 3d content.

 

[patsu]

Visited a friend on Saturday. He subscribes to Comcast Internet (Highest tier - 12Mbps). Showed me OnLive on his PC for about 5 minutes.

It works really well although I think core gamers here will complain about some blurriness. We were able to spectate games smoothly, price seems to be cheap. The UI is interesting and simple.

He's not a gamer. According to him, he didn't notice any lag.