Remote game services (OnLive, Gaikai, etc.)

The Playpack subscription is optional though. It is mainly for older catalog titles, and it's $9.99 a month. They are up to 61 titles so far with the Borderlands and Just Cause 2 being the much recently released games addded. You can use the service for free. They ditched the mandatory subscription fee before it was even in effect. The service has over 100 titles now.

I got the Microconsole free through a pre-order promotion for Deus Ex Human Revolution. That would probably be the best way to go. I wouldn't hook up the pc to a HDTV unless it was in game mode to reduce latency.

I think the reason is because it's getting displayed on a smaller screen. I would still recommend around 1-3Mbps for tablets anyway even if the minimum was .5mbps.

 

I tried it again this weekend as well, and it certainly has promise. I tried it with Lego Harry Potter, which worked well. If they put the Witcher 2 or something like that on there I'd definitely be tempted to give the full game a go. And for demos it is nearly unbeatable in being able to play it so quickly.

Did anyone notice that Eurogamer is partnering with Gaikai to link articles / previews and reviews to demos on Gaikai that you can then play for yourself by just pressing the link in the article? Clever stuff. There is definitely some future in this technology.

 

well that changes things heh. i played around with it last night, and it ran much better. i played through the metro 2033 trial, while streaming a netflix movie, surprisingly without issue. network problem popped up for a few seconds at one point, but i didnt notice any actual dropped frames or anything.

couldve been on my end earlier yesterday, who knows, i got cable so it mightve been someone in the area hogging all the bandwidth. they have servers in chicago, and alabama maybe i was connected to one of them instead. it would be nice if you could select a preferred server.

but anyway it worked well the second go around, pretty cool stuff.

 

Valve "really likes OnLive (Valve games may appear on service)

http://www.computerandvideogames.co...y-likes-onlive/?cid=OTC-RSS&attr=CVG-News-RSS

It will be awesome if Valve games apear on OnLive and there is cross-platform play. I think OnLive breaking into the tablet market will help them tremendously. However, they are going to have to make some serious deals with ISPs due to caps. There is a rumor going around that they are planning to host servers in ISP datacentres. This is actually true for BT and Belgacom, but we haven't heard about other telcos yet. AT&T was an early investor in OnLive so I wonder if they are going to do the same as well. At least, the tablet/smartphone clients use less bandwidth due to smaller screen.

Walmart.com also has Gaikai demos. I was beta testing some of Gaikai's EA demos (Dead Space 2, Mass Effect 2, Spore, The Sims 3). The expereince is a mixed bag compared to OnLive. When I played DS2, it looked native, but it played in a small window. Mass Effect 2 was the same until I played it a second time when the video quality was worse. I use Verizon FIOS (35UP/35down). Gaikai has a lot more servers, but Onlive overall has better compression tech because you can still play it from long distances. You have to be within 100 miles of Gaikai's server (it was 25 miles in the beta). Since Gaikai is only limited to demos right now. It doesn't really interest me as much.

 

Yeah, the most interesting thing is if MS and Sony really wanted to adopt streaming games like OnLive, there would be no reason to release new hardware. Seems too early for either of them to jump in with both feet based on existing broadband infrastructure, ensuring at least one more generation.

OnLive is probably more of an acquisition target than a partner, though. We won't end up with OnLive selling games through both platforms. One or the other would buy OnLive and more tightly integrate the platform with their own system and branding so, even though you might be running a PC build of a game, you'd get PlayStation button prompts, or whatever.

With Sony or MS the possibilities for exclusives designed to run on hardware far more powerful than the average PC and far too expensive to sell as a console is also there. To a certain degree OnLive is constrained by their dependence on third party PC SKUs. Those games have to scale, and are often built around the 360/PS3 as lowest common denominator anyway. With Sony's or Microsoft's development and engineering expertise, they can establish a baseline standard platform using whatever exotic hardware they choose, upgrade it at will and explicitly target that hardware. There is also nothing stopping them from rack-mounting their current consoles and streaming their current library through the service.

 

2mbps streaming is working (can play over 4G)

Below is a reply from OnLive community manager Matt Jensen in the OnLivefans forum. It confirms that 2mbps streaming is enabled. He recommends 2mbps for netbooks and tablets, 2.5-3mbps for laptops, and 3 and up for HDTVs. He also revealed the the OnLive Viewer and Player apps will run as low as 1mbps. Users have also confirmed that the service works over 4G.

http://onlivefans.com/showthread.php?9154-2Mbps-Streaming-is-Live&p=87808&viewfull=1#post87808

 

So does this work?

 

As long as no one succeeds in smuggling out and cracking onlive builds of a given game, pretty much.

 

It works and looks about the same as youtube hd videos of games, sometimes even better. On my 24/2Mbit adsl the lag is minimal and I wouldn´t complain about it. It´s fast enough that if I would sit a friend on my pc running an onlive trial game, they would not complain about lag, instead they would ask me about the lower than native looking resolution. Then when I tell them the game is being streamed from internet they go like wtf?

I often find myself using this service to trial a game if it is available on onlive rather than downloading and installing a demo to my pc or console. It´s effortless. I use a wired 360 controller on my pc for onlive.

Haven´t actually bought a game for onlive as of yet because for purchased games I prefer sharper graphics with higher resolution and absolutely no video compression.

I may buy one game eventually that comes with the actual console so that I can better use this in the living room

 

It seems that are really trying to expand there userbase. Subscribers to the playpack ($9.99 a month) get 30% of all titles including promotions, pre-orders, etc (except for Playpack itself of course).

http://www.onlive.com/games/playpack#&tab=top_games&sortby=alpha

They just need more titles at this point.

 

How did they measure the 150ms lag in OnLive ? Is it for a 30fps or a 60fps game ? When do they start and stop the stopwatch ? (i.e., What exactly are they measuring ?)

I remember 30fps console games should be around 100-133ms.

 

They measured it like you measure input lag, time from input to action on screen. The games are all PC games and they've said having everything running at 60fps helps them keep the input lag close to a local 30fps game.

 

I just don't see the fun of playing a game with lag and when I play the feed looked kind of fuzzy.

 

Yeah I suspect they were measuring 60fps games ^_^

I wonder if they run the game at even higher framerate, how much further can they lower the perceived lag.

The attractiveness of OnLive is probably the cheap access to a huge library and the community experience (once it's built up).

EDIT: hmm... Also need to know the net speed for the measured lag.

 

I'm thinking that for Onlive&Co is to contract with ISP to implement Onlive serveurs in backbone to reduce lag.
In France, we have many ISP who furnish Set-top-box base on Intel ATOM comprised in the bill. A deal with them can attract people. Don't rely known the equipment situation on other countries.

 

Yes it's a common practise. The web conferencing people strike deals with ISPs to improve lag too. CDNs also offer edge servers for application hosting. Would be insightful to see how the lag changes for an average subscriber.

 

If you are playing on a TV with onlines 'console' you will get the TV input lag as well.