Onlive

[Thomas]

Onlive, in case you have not hear about it, is a service that runs games for you and sends data i realtime. Pretty much the Game equivalent of digital TV. Here is a quick walkthrough:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0CeHuvw1Fw

I was a bit skeptical about issues like lag and availability, but it actually seems to be working quite nice!

I think this can have huge consequences for games as it increase the reach of games ALOT (anyone with TV + box can play) and it would also allow for shorter time based experiences. For example you could have a virtual museum tour for 5 bucks that lets you walk around in a simulated environment for X hours. With normal software you cannot limit time for the consumer like that + it gives much quicker access (no download time, fiddling with installation, etc). What I wanna get to is that this might actually be a big breakthrough for not-games, as I think this might be a more fitting format (because it allows shorter and different experiences).

Of course Onlive comes with issues (like the whole ownership thingie), it is not yet tested full scale (only alpha probably means not so many people are using it as will later on) and it might turn out to not be profitable... yet! I do think this is what we will see more and more of in the future and that it might even turn out to be as common as cable TV in 10 years or so.

What does everyone else here think?

[Michaël Samyn]

We are looking at this.
But these kinds of services are always so proprietary.
I wouldn't want to go back to the television format for my entertainment.
But I guess it's the only way to get something done in a hyper-capitalist world.

Interesting technology. Let's hope it works. In Europe too.

[ghostwheel]

The whole buying the game plus subscribing thing seems like a bad deal to me. If it was a all-you-can-eat service like Gametap, it would be cool. But as is, I'll pass.

[Utforska]

I think this could be a really cool opportunity for certain types of games, but maybe not all. I'm sure future gaming platforms could distribute the computing between the player's hardware and the server. So the fast, timing sensitive stuff could be executed locally, while the cloud could serve stuff that takes a lot of disk space or requires very specialized hardware. For instance if you had huge amounts of disk space, you could get some pretty advanced combinations of prerendered and real-time graphics... this could make that feasible.

Shouldn't it be nice for developers too? Make the game on what ever platform fits best, yet it can be played on just about everything with a good connection.

[ghostwheel]

I think this could be a really cool opportunity for certain types of games, but maybe not all. I'm sure future gaming platforms could distribute the computing between the player's hardware and the server. So the fast, timing sensitive stuff could be executed locally, while the cloud could serve stuff that takes a lot of disk space or requires very specialized hardware. For instance if you had huge amounts of disk space, you could get some pretty advanced combinations of prerendered and real-time graphics... this could make that feasible.

Shouldn't it be nice for developers too? Make the game on what ever platform fits best, yet it can be played on just about everything with a good connection.

What you describe sounds ridiculously complex. Home PCs are powerful enough now to do realtime or pre-rendered video without much difficulty. I see no benefit to distributing it "in the cloud." The "cloud" is simply yet another in a long line of tech buzzwords. In another few years, it will sound as antiquated as "virtual reality." OnLive would have been a cool if it was a subscription only service. As expensive as it will end up for anyone using the service, you might as well buy a console.

[Michaël Samyn]

That most computers can do streaming video is the basic assumption of this service, I guess. But fewer and fewer computers seem to be able to run high-end 3D graphics anymore, especially because of concerns regarding cost and power consumption. A service like Onlive could reduce the impact of this trend by allowing us to play high end games on low end platforms.

It feels a bit strange to me to move back towards the mainframe concept of networking, where most users simply have a limited terminal machine. But I guess this is the logical conclusion of Web 2.0. It feels very "anti-internet" (which was supposed to be decentralized and non-hierarchical).

[ghostwheel]

That most computers can do streaming video is the basic assumption of this service, I guess. But fewer and fewer computers seem to be able to run high-end 3D graphics anymore, especially because of concerns regarding cost and power consumption. A service like Onlive could reduce the impact of this trend by allowing us to play high end games on low end platforms.

It feels a bit strange to me to move back towards the mainframe concept of networking, where most users simply have a limited terminal machine. But I guess this is the logical conclusion of Web 2.0. It feels very "anti-internet" (which was supposed to be decentralized and non-hierarchical).

I don't disagree. I'm not into conspiracies so don't take it this way. I do believe this sort of thing (including the iPad and iPhone) are part of a progression for companies to have more control. They can't control the internet so they are going to control the hardware you use to get there. I think it sucks but there's nothing I or anyone else here that can do anything about it.

[Kjell]

Understanding next-gen streaming game services

[ghostwheel]

Understanding next-gen streaming game services

What happens when one of these servics goes out of business? You can't play the games anymore, d'oh!

[Kjell]

OnLive is a rental service. The full price licenses give you access "until at least 17th June 2013".