Blog Discussion: “Are You Online with OnLive?” by Phoenix | Forums

[Valkyrie FD]

: Blog: Are You Online with OnLive? by Phoenix

[Valkyrie FD]

Wow, that looks really interesting!! I am lazy so anything involving me not having to leave the house, even to go get a game, is appealing to me!

[Multipathe]

i really like the idea of this, and glad to see alot of the top dogs like ubi,epic and ea backing it. Whether it sucks or not i guess we'll just have to wait and see but it feels like the right direction to be moving in

[Brimtown]

I saw this yesterday while browsing around. It looks very promising, but how well it delivers will remain to be seen. I seem to remember another much-hyped system that would rely on digital distribution - Phantom, I believe it was called. That one didn't really go anywhere at all, although I think it was because the person behind it didn't know what the hell they were doing.

[brookelyn_FD]

Phoenix, you always write the most interesting blogs.

This looks awesome and I'm glad you shared. I was a little sad I didnt get to attend GDC, but this blog gave me a little fix of what I missed out on.

THe interface looks sweet.

[Phoenix_FD]

Originally posted by Anim8rJB:
I think it's vaporware, personally.

I think your right. But since they have been working on this for almost a decade, maybe we will be shocked come the holidays. Time will tell.

[Psyche_FD]

Here is an interesting read http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03...is-unlikely-to-work/

[IversonXover83]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/25/

[Phoenix_FD]

Originally posted by IversonXover83:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/25/

Did you not see this at the bottom of my blog?

[weaselboy]

Some of what's posted in the Joystiq article is really not that big of a hurdle to overcome (comparatively speaking.) Namely, the power and number of PCs needed really isn't that bad IF OnLive takes the approach of having a smaller launch, then ramping up from there. As a comparison, there are render farms available for online use that have 1000+ quad core server processors. If those processors were new when they were bought, a place like OnLive could easily buy two Core i7s and two 1GB nVidia GTXs for every Xeon in a top-end render farm.

And if you extrapolate that to the number of Phenom 2s and 4870 X2s, what we have is win. This is, of course, assuming OnLive handles the games as is stated in the article, with one PC dedicated to a single user at play time.

But at any rate, the main point I'm getting at, is if they start out small, maybe only 5000 nodes just to get their service out there, it's not unreasonable to think they can get the infrastructure for it.

The problem would be the internet connection. In that regards, I completely agree with the Joystiq article and the point Phoenix brought up about streaming. It's no big secret that typical home internet speeds are severely limited below what regular users could be getting without stressing the server. At a basic package, pretty much any node I test that's more than ~400miles away struggles to keep the ping under 200ms. If you look at some of the pricing packages for higher tier services that could help remedy that problem... well, I'd rather just upgrade my computer every two years with parts from Newegg. It'd probably be cheaper.

So, while I don't think OnLive is doomed to fail, I think internet connections and (as Phoenix mentioned) price will be the killer. After all, it won't just be OnLive we're paying for, but internet, too.

Here's hoping it's successful, though!