Remote game services (OnLive, Gaikai, etc.)

[deathindustrial]

Some interesting stuff on Joystiq about On Live:

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/12/06/onlive-releases-iphone-app-reveals-subscription-based-movie-str/

According to a report this morning, OnLive is launching a subscription-based movie streaming service on an undisclosed date in 2011. The news comes from the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), who cites growing concern among media companies that Netflix has grown too large on its own and diversification is desired (read: they want a piece of the large, money-filled pie as well).

This could be significant, could end up being a similar deal as Hulu versus Youtube. I think Netflix is going to have to speed up its plan to get actual ownership of content.

Cheers

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

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.

I still wonder where you are saving money with onlive. You need a good connection if you don't want blurry gfx (and if you don't mind blurry gfx you might as wel play games with your craptastic IGP) so you already need a extra investment there. I think Holland probably has some of the cheapest high speed connections available. some of the cheapest 20mpbs connections come at 20euro p/m but if you want faster or a different isp you will easily be paying 10 euro's a p/m more. That is already 120 euro's a year and if you add the subsription fee, game prices that are the same as retail (last time I read about prices in this topic) and losing your games if you end your subscription make it seem like a expensive deal to me. Especially if you consider that a pc that can easily play all the games out there at good quality these days won't even cost you 100 euro's more than the cheapest off the shelve pc you can get from dell/hp/etc. I happend to check this a few weeks back and I put together a intel quadcore, 2gb ram, mobo, case, psu and 100 euro gpu for 470 euro's. The specs were a bit higher than my pc and I can play all games att 1680x1050 with everything on high with aa/aaf with the only exeption being crysis.

Given that people buy new pc's every couple of years anyway spending not even 100 euro's more to play games seems like a much better deal than onlive. Both financially and gameplay wise.

 

[AzBat]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/14/onlive-microconsole-torn-down-marvell-armada-found-lurking-with/

Engadget is saying this is the Marvell "new gaming platform". I thought we figured it was Kinect?

Tommy McClain

 

[Rangers]

I still wonder where you are saving money with onlive. You need a good connection if you don't want blurry gfx (and if you don't mind blurry gfx you might as wel play games with your craptastic IGP) so you already need a extra investment there. I think Holland probably has some of the cheapest high speed connections available. some of the cheapest 20mpbs connections come at 20euro p/m but if you want faster or a different isp you will easily be paying 10 euro's a p/m more. That is already 120 euro's a year and if you add the subsription fee, game prices that are the same as retail (last time I read about prices in this topic) and losing your games if you end your subscription make it seem like a expensive deal to me. Especially if you consider that a pc that can easily play all the games out there at good quality these days won't even cost you 100 euro's more than the cheapest off the shelve pc you can get from dell/hp/etc. I happend to check this a few weeks back and I put together a intel quadcore, 2gb ram, mobo, case, psu and 100 euro gpu for 470 euro's. The specs were a bit higher than my pc and I can play all games att 1680x1050 with everything on high with aa/aaf with the only exeption being crysis.

Given that people buy new pc's every couple of years anyway spending not even 100 euro's more to play games seems like a much better deal than onlive. Both financially and gameplay wise.

No PC upgrade fees? There is also 9.99 all you can eat plan now monthly. Also, standard cable connections handle Onlive well. At least mine does (10 MB, $39/month, standard basic plan here in America, you actually cant really buy a lower speed in most places) and from what I read Europe is way ahead of America there, you guys can get much more speed for much less prices according to the comments from Europeans I read on Engadget about how bad America's internet is.

Spending $1000 to upgrade my PC every two years is just something I'm probably not going to do anymore, considering how little I play PC games. You might say it's "just" a $300 gfx card (the price of a full console) but the problem is then your CPU is the bottleneck, so you need a new CPU which means new Mobo and RAM and probably power supply and might as well just go whole hog then. Also I'm pretty shocked how high CPU prices remain, it's still $200-$300 for anything decent/with any longevity, just for a bare CPU.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

...what I read Europe is way ahead of America there, you guys can get much more speed for much less prices according to the comments from Europeans I read on Engadget about how bad America's internet is.

You haven't been following the conversation here then! Both this thread and the download-only console discussion I think. It's very sporadic here, hit and miss, with different infrastructures from region to region. The average that most people actually get most of the time is probably more like 4 or 5 mbps than 10, and it can flucuate wildly that come after-work when everyone's want to play OnLive!, they'll be getting maybe 2-3 mbps. Depending on region, and what BB options you have.

Suffice to say, "we get 10 mbps and I hear you Euros get more speed for less money, so OnLine! must be great over there," isn't a valid argument.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

You haven't been following the conversation here then! Both this thread and the download-only console discussion I think. It's very sporadic here, hit and miss, with different infrastructures from region to region. The average that most people actually get most of the time is probably more like 4 or 5 mbps than 10, and it can flucuate wildly that come after-work when everyone's want to play OnLive!, they'll be getting maybe 2-3 mbps. Depending on region, and what BB options you have.

Suffice to say, "we get 10 mbps and I hear you Euros get more speed for less money, so OnLine! must be great over there," isn't a valid argument.

It's a lot better than that in Scandinavia atleast, can't say for others. 24Mbs DSL connection that gives close to 20Mb in real use is pretty much the standard over here and costs between 30-40e per month. Faster options are available in many places for similar cost.

 

[patsu]

I still wonder where you are saving money with onlive. You need a good connection if you don't want blurry gfx (and if you don't mind blurry gfx you might as wel play games with your craptastic IGP) so you already need a extra investment there. I think Holland probably has some of the cheapest high speed connections available. some of the cheapest 20mpbs connections come at 20euro p/m but if you want faster or a different isp you will easily be paying 10 euro's a p/m more. That is already 120 euro's a year and if you add the subsription fee, game prices that are the same as retail (last time I read about prices in this topic) and losing your games if you end your subscription make it seem like a expensive deal to me. Especially if you consider that a pc that can easily play all the games out there at good quality these days won't even cost you 100 euro's more than the cheapest off the shelve pc you can get from dell/hp/etc. I happend to check this a few weeks back and I put together a intel quadcore, 2gb ram, mobo, case, psu and 100 euro gpu for 470 euro's. The specs were a bit higher than my pc and I can play all games att 1680x1050 with everything on high with aa/aaf with the only exeption being crysis.

Given that people buy new pc's every couple of years anyway spending not even 100 euro's more to play games seems like a much better deal than onlive. Both financially and gameplay wise.

Missed your post. I don't visit this thread very much.

For my friend, the first saving comes from unsubscribing cable and Direct TV services. Only subscribe to the Internet (highest tier). You'll be able to spend on Internet and disc videos selectively and cheaply. With that you get *much* better web experience as a bonus. I do notice that with higher bandwidth, some of the people I know show more tendency to pirate movies, especially foreign films since the new ones cannot be rented/purchased here easily.

For gaming, it depends on your eyes vs the selection and price. ^_^
I probably don't care about image quality as much as some of you here. Looks good enough for me.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's a lot better than that in Scandinavia atleast.

Yes, but Scandinavia tend to be very good in services, not needing to service as many people and having high taxes along with high GDP to fund it, as I understand it. Europe is a very mixed bag, even within the same country.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

net is.

Spending $1000 to upgrade my PC every two years is just something I'm probably not going to do anymore, considering how little I play PC games. You might say it's "just" a $300 gfx card (the price of a full console) but the problem is then your CPU is the bottleneck, so you need a new CPU which means new Mobo and RAM and probably power supply and might as well just go whole hog then. Also I'm pretty shocked how high CPU prices remain, it's still $200-$300 for anything decent/with any longevity, just for a bare CPU.

But for some years now there has been no need at all to spend 1000k every 2 years to play games on your pc. I put together a system that will play all games at 1680x1050 with settings on high with aa/aaf (with exeption of crysis) with no problems for 465 euros. Only things not included is the screen and Mouse/keyboard. That system will play every games with better IQ/fps than a console or onlive will do. Given how most pc games are also designed to work on consoles there is no real need to upgrade at a high pace.

I bought my q6600 with 2gb ram about 3 years ago and only upgraded to a h4870 because my old card died but I can still play all games at the settings mentioned above with no problems. Only 2 games that didn't work good at those settings are crysis and gta4 (because that is a shitty port). I'm sure this system will still last me another 2 years without having to lower settings a lot.

Pc gaming really isn't that expensive anymore. It's only expensive if you are one of those persons that wants insane resolutions with insane amounts of aa/aaf and still want 60fps all the time. If you just want to play at normal resolutions (1680x1050 or 1080p) with decent aa/aaf and 30fps+ most of the time these days you can go midrange to budget depending on the parts and easily play all games at such settings.

Anyway, as somebody mentioned if they now got a 10 dollar a month all you can play subsription that it seems like a much better deal (assuming you don't also have to pay another 60 dollars for every game) if you don't game that often. But I still think that given how small the extra investment is to make your pc capable of playing games for anybody that is a bit serious about gaming that would be a much better choice.

 

[patsu]

I guess this is somewhat related:
http://www.engagedigital.com/2010/1...aming-spend-now-spread-across-more-platforms/

Newzoo’s Total Consumer Spend 2010 report finds that gamers in the US and other territories are spending less on consoles and more on MMOs, mobile games, and social games. The report found that total gamer spending in the US was down 2% from the previous year to $24.7 million in 2010. Consumer spending on consoles was down 29% to 10.6 billion. Spending in social games rose 66% to $1.5 billion and in MMOs rose 27% to $2.7 billion. Even spending on casual game portals rose 34% to $3.7 billion.

The report found that total consumer spending on games in the UK was performing similarly to spending in the US. Total spending was down just 3% to 3.7 billion pounds ($5.2 billion) in 2010, but that consumer spending on console games was down 25%. Consumer play in MMORPGs was up 27% and in social games up 66%, driven by the free-to-play nature of these games. As a result, Newzoo Managing Director Peter Warman says that gamers are now “spreading their budget across more platforms.”

… [and some more EU stats] ...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

No PC upgrade fees? There is also 9.99 all you can eat plan now monthly. Also, standard cable connections handle Onlive well. At least mine does (10 MB, $39/month, standard basic plan here in America, you actually cant really buy a lower speed in most places) and from what I read Europe is way ahead of America there, you guys can get much more speed for much less prices according to the comments from Europeans I read on Engadget about how bad America's internet is.

Despite how some countries in Europe may be on average better than the US, that isn't true for all European countries much less all of the world.

And even with that, there are still places in the US where you can't get higher than 1.5 Mbps connections. And cable speeds is highly unreliable in the US with some places getting their advertised speeds all day, some getting it only part of the day (dropping at peak hours), and some never getting remotely close to advertised speeds or latency.

DSL tends to be more stable with regards to not losing bandwidth or increasing latency during peak hours (weekends and evenings) but also has lower top speeds and more areas serviced by 1.5 Mbps connections.

Moving outside of the US. I've been looking at some countries to retire to and the Internet speeds can be quite dire, and bandwidth caps seem to be extremely common and actually growing in popularity. With some countries previously not having bandwidth caps but with most of their telco's and cable companies implementing data caps in the past few years.

Onlive faces an uphill battle either way. But then I've always been strongly anti-cloud computing (not cloud data storage, but cloud computing) and Onlive is just a manifestation of that.

I always think of this quote from Penny Arcade whenever I think of Onlive...

There's been a rash of new OnLive reviews, based now on the MicroConsole - the standalone bit that hooks directly into a television. You already know what we think of the service itself: impressive technology, but not well suited to every genre. The device itself is beyond compact, very Astro in its profile, dense with capability without feeling crowded. When we were using the service on our Macs at work, though, the novelty was amplified considerably. Batman: Arkham Asylum isn't something we can play in OSX, and it's easy to be forgiving of an experience that is wholly enabled by their technology. When you've got it on a television, though, and you try to jump and you guy does it when he's Goddamn good and ready, it mostly makes you wonder why you aren't playing on a regular console.

The bolded part seems to be the general impression I've gotten from friends that have used the service after the novelty has worn off.

Regards,
SB

 

[Rangers]

But for some years now there has been no need at all to spend 1000k every 2 years to play games on your pc. I put together a system that will play all games at 1680x1050 with settings on high with aa/aaf (with exeption of crysis) with no problems for 465 euros. Only things not included is the screen and Mouse/keyboard. That system will play every games with better IQ/fps than a console or onlive will do. Given how most pc games are also designed to work on consoles there is no real need to upgrade at a high pace.

I bought my q6600 with 2gb ram about 3 years ago and only upgraded to a h4870 because my old card died but I can still play all games at the settings mentioned above with no problems. Only 2 games that didn't work good at those settings are crysis and gta4 (because that is a shitty port). I'm sure this system will still last me another 2 years without having to lower settings a lot.

Pc gaming really isn't that expensive anymore. It's only expensive if you are one of those persons that wants insane resolutions with insane amounts of aa/aaf and still want 60fps all the time. If you just want to play at normal resolutions (1680x1050 or 1080p) with decent aa/aaf and 30fps+ most of the time these days you can go midrange to budget depending on the parts and easily play all games at such settings.

Anyway, as somebody mentioned if they now got a 10 dollar a month all you can play subsription that it seems like a much better deal (assuming you don't also have to pay another 60 dollars for every game) if you don't game that often. But I still think that given how small the extra investment is to make your pc capable of playing games for anybody that is a bit serious about gaming that would be a much better choice.

If you want to be a l33t gamer you pretty much do need to spend that much. Anyways then you go on about how you can do something for 465 Euros (which is like 700 US). But for Onlive it's 99 (or free, use your own existing PC with no upgrades) and then buy the games. Also the "insane" resolutions/framerates are the reason most people tout PC gaming over console. If you're gaming at 1680X and 30 FPS and med settings, then you might as well buy a console. And if you might as well buy a console, its 299+60 per game, versus 99+50 per game for Onlive.

Also you're neglecting the sales trends for a long time that laptops have eclipsed desktops in sales. It may not be true for us but "most people" just use laptops now. Which aren't going to be reasonably gaming capable.

If the lag can be manageable and most reviews say it is, this can be a real threat to the multibillion dollar console industry. It wont happen overnight however. And I think their toughest test will be staying alive in 2-3 years when the next gen consoles hit. However there's no indication they have any financial difficulties it seems quite the opposite as they are talking about expanding into online video and seem very well financed.

 

[Rangers]

Despite how some countries in Europe may be on average better than the US, that isn't true for all European countries much less all of the world.

Well, if you're in a market that buys $1000 PC's and $300 consoles, you have decent internet. Yes there are places with poor internet, if they have poor internet infrastructure theyre not buying consoles either. This is stuff limited to the PS360 market, North America and Europe.

And even with that, there are still places in the US where you can't get higher than 1.5 Mbps connections. And cable speeds is highly unreliable in the US with some places getting their advertised speeds all day, some getting it only part of the day (dropping at peak hours), and some never getting remotely close to advertised speeds or latency.

There will always be some places like that. However I dont exactly live in a bustling metropolis. I live in a "suburb" of about 5k people, outside (~5miles) a city of ~80k, which is about 100 miles from DFW metroplex. I can get up to 107MB internet and 10mb is standard. My parents live far more in the boonies, about ten miles from here in rural area five miles from any incorporated city, in an road where there is a couple acres of woods between houses and dogs run free in peoples unfenced yards. Last I heard they get 3MB DSL, and I'm guessing they have the option for faster. The fact is 80-90% of the USA is in reach of very good connections, this isn't really arguable.

Moving outside of the US. I've been looking at some countries to retire to and the Internet speeds can be quite dire, and bandwidth caps seem to be extremely common and actually growing in popularity. With some countries previously not having bandwidth caps but with most of their telco's and cable companies implementing data caps in the past few years.

Well then if you are right it's boo hoo for Onlive. . And netflix, and youtube, and hulu, and google video, and vudu, and zune store. But I dont think it is. The internet is moving to more data usage and streaming video, not less. Caps, I hear a lot about them but I dont have any. I know Comcast has 250GB cap which is just a ridiculous amount (I'm on web and often streaming video about 16 hours a day, and once tested that I use 40GB/month, only heavy newsgroup/torrent pirates will seriously challenge any caps). I know Time Warner, another huge provider, floated caps and were rebuffed by congress. Also as noted, I'm sure Onlive can or has worked out deals with ISP's to deal with this.

 

[tuna]

Sorry if OT, but I think Onlives big source of revenue will be companies looking to get their Windows applications to work in the "Cloud". The company I work for are looking into this.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The fact is 80-90% of the USA is in reach of very good connections, this isn't really arguable.

It depends on what your definition of good is. 80-90% probably are within reach of 512Kbps broadband or better. Far FAR less are in reach of anything close to 10 Mbps.

And while data caps aren't a big deal in the US for most people (glances at Digital Wanderer ), it's far far more of a concern outside of the US. Both Canada to the north and Mexico to the south have far more common place bandwidth caps that are quite restrictive.

Regards,
SB

 

[Arwin]

I tried this a bit yesterday. Right now their servers are too far away from me but it still runs decently. It makes a great try before you buy system, and I could see it work if the servers are hosted by your provider.

 

[mrcorbo]

In my mind OnLive needs 2 things to have a chance to succeed.

Firstly and most importantly, they need to find a way to fix their fundamental performance problems. If they can't do this, everything else is moot.

And secondly, they need to find a way to get their hardware/software integrated into BR Players, TVs and Set Top Boxes as a value-add. Sell it to manufacturers as something to differentiate a particular model from the rest of the crowd. As long as they are only shipping a dedicated Onlive box, they are dead in the water.

Unfortunately for OnLive, I don't think they are going to be able to do either one.

So, 1/2 way there.

Good for them. And a good move for Vizio, as well.

 

[djdev]

So, 1/2 way there.

Good for them. And a good move for Vizio, as well.

This is huge, becuase it will get the ball rolling for more publishers to get on-board. I'm also hoping the cable operators will implement Onlive into their set top boxes.

 

[sfried]

I jumped to OnLive, mostly because I'm not a PC enthusiast (as I'd rather allocate money for actual games instead of hardware, or spend $700 to pay off my student load instead of buy a PC rig), but also partially because I happen to have FiOS. The service is great, and haven't had any significant hiccups so far.

My only qualm is that it will not accept my USB Logitech Dual Action controller, probably because I requires something with XInput. But mostly some of the sales made some titles within the "Steam sale" range ($5), and since most of these games require hardware far beyond what I have, it's nice that there's an outlet for such people who are too poor to afford fancy hardware, but still modest enough to buy the games.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Here's something I found interesting and is going to greatly impact the available pool of potential Onlive users, IMO.

According to the latest Steam survey, over 63% of Steam users have an internet connection of 2 Mbps or less. Roughly 20% don't know how fast their internet speed is, and I'm willing to bet that greater than half of those have 1.5 Mbps or less. So potentially 3 out of 4 internet connected Steam users has a connection that is probably too slow for Online.

As Steam users run the gamut from casual players to hardcore players and includes both Mac and PC users, I'd say that's fairly representative of the households that Online will be targetting.

Word of mouth might quickly sour if someone with a sub 2 Mbps connection signs up and has an unfavorable experience.

Regards,
SB