Great Western Forum

http://www.onlive.com/

A new way of playing video games, popping zits, guzzling mountain dew and eating oreos.

Thoughts?

it will revolutionize the video game industry.
i signed up to be a beta tester last fall.

i work with people who know these dudes. its seriously on point.
implications are vast, even outside of the video game industry.

if nintendo were smart they would buy OnLive, or at least license it to use as their online service. sony and ms have nothing to compete against this.

I was thinking of pre-registering but I hesitated. I wasn’t really sure If I wanted to make a monthly commitment when it does come out, or if it would even be appropriate for me as a current PS3 owner.

So do you think the other consoles are going to be toast after this? I’m kind of thinking this OnLive will be swallowed up (wanky wanky) by some other company eventually. I don’t know.

My main problem with this is that I don’t get a hard copy of my games, and If my internet connection goes out on me I’m screwed. Or if the company tanks I’ve lost everything I put into it. But there’s a lot of good points too… Maybe this will fill a niche market like the other consoles/systems have.

Whatever happens it’s going to be interesting. I need to see this in action.

i see your argument and raise you one—
what is different from your internet connection going out on you and your xbox 360 getting the red ring of death?

personally, i have many more reasons to fork over money for the internet. so if my service sucks, or a modem blows then i need to switch it up and find something better. if my 360 RRODs on me (like mine finally did the other week) i have no real reason to go out and get another one other than to play more 360 games.

what im getting at is, there is no fail-safe solution today in either direction. consoles can die. discs can get scratched. internet connections can go out. its all the same result—you can’t play the shit you want to play.

here’s the way i look at it:
we’re moving towards digital distribution anyway. it’s just a matter of time until you’re downloading Modern Warfare 4 through the PlayStation Store. physical media sucks ass. they get scratched, they require lots of moving parts that are just begging to break, they require factories to stamp the games, case makers to encase the games, distributors to distribute the games, and all sorts of middle mens in-between. with digital distribution you cut all that shit out. you can go bean to bar in record time. no more: “The game is done but we have to wait a couple of months until we’ve created 2.5 million copies on DVD so we don’t sell out on Day 1.”

with that said, the only difference between digital downloading and playing games via OnLive is that you wont have the physical file copy on your hard drive. but then why do we even need the physical file? right now i have a shit load of SNES games. but my SNES took a shit on me a few years back. so i have all these games, but i can’t play them. theyre worthless. so you can see how just like in your scenario, i’m screwed—despite having physical copies of 360 and SNES games. but my internet connection is a lot less likely to go out on me than a gaming console. and again, if it did go out on me, i have much more reason to get it back up and working than i do traipsing up to gamestop and looking for a salvage-able SNES. not having the physical media or file is of no concern to me.

even if it was, i believe the pros far outweigh the cons here. you can play OnLive on your TV or your computer—anywhere. you can be in the middle of a level and pick up your game at work on your lunch break. out of town with some downtime at granny’s? get on her computer and resume your match. no need to bring along your system and cables and all the games you think you will want to play. no need to worry that the TSA man wants to see some Hot Coffee in your GTA3 and “confiscates” it. that “play anywhere” functionality is too fucking cool. and the way they go about enabling it is way cooler. youre basically just being fed a video stream at super fast speeds. and that has huge implications.

imagine the boner at&t got seeing this, knowing they could serve down shitloads of content to their phone customers in this fashion freeing up bandwidth in the process. imagine what a company like google was thinking when they saw this. why even need your OS to physically be on your computer? just have it on a server in a google server farm and they can stream down the video to any device you access it from—phone, desktop, laptop, tablet, whatevs. and i think if someone like google were to buy them up, you’d definitely see OnLive remain intact. its a 1-2 punch for google. leap in front of everyone else in the OS space and the video game space.

personally i think this is a golden opportunity for nintendo to get its online act together. its absolutely shameful that in 2010 i can’t talk shit to my cousins while playing Super Smash Bros. or that i cant play them at all in other games. microsoft and sony already have pretty good directions for the online experience so i dont see either of them dropping everything to jump in OnLive’s lap. nintendo needs it the most. just think if they did and you could pay $15/mth and be able to play any of the old games they have in their online store. thats enticing. and then you could pay $30 for any new game and have it streamed over the net to you with crystal precision. what are you going to do? buy a PS4 for $600 again along with Modern Warfare 4 for $70? or pay $150-$200 for a stripped down Nintendo that streams all their games. and oh yeah, you can pick up Modern Warfare 4 for only $30.

as far as the feasibility of OnLive: there was a company a few years back called GameRail that essentially offered dedicated connections to online gamers. the premise was to cut out things like lag. so instead of your connection bouncing all around the country from the time you push up until the time your characters climbs a ladder, you have a direct connection to the game’s servers. no lag. faster frame rates. everyone in your clan is happy. well they made some bad VC decisions and had to fold. a couple of the guys came to work at my place. some of the other guys landed at OnLive. they know their shit. theyre not going to fuck this up. hell, i wouldnt even count them out as a 4th player on the video game field. and if they start getting some big name titles, look out.

so agent, you’re not a big fan of OnLive?

lol, j/k, sounds cool to me.

agent - Mar 11th 2010 @ 09:08 pm

i see your argument and raise you one—
what is different from your internet connection going out on you and your xbox 360 getting the red ring of death?

personally, i have many more reasons to fork over money for the internet. so if my service sucks, or a modem blows then i need to switch it up and find something better. if my 360 RRODs on me (like mine finally did the other week) i have no real reason to go out and get another one other than to play more 360 games.

what im getting at is, there is no fail-safe solution today in either direction. consoles can die. discs can get scratched. internet connections can go out. its all the same result—you can’t play the shit you want to play.

here’s the way i look at it:
we’re moving towards digital distribution anyway. it’s just a matter of time until you’re downloading Modern Warfare 4 through the PlayStation Store. physical media sucks ass. they get scratched, they require lots of moving parts that are just begging to break, they require factories to stamp the games, case makers to encase the games, distributors to distribute the games, and all sorts of middle mens in-between. with digital distribution you cut all that shit out. you can go bean to bar in record time. no more: “The game is done but we have to wait a couple of months until we’ve created 2.5 million copies on DVD so we don’t sell out on Day 1.”

with that said, the only difference between digital downloading and playing games via OnLive is that you wont have the physical file copy on your hard drive. but then why do we even need the physical file? right now i have a shit load of SNES games. but my SNES took a shit on me a few years back. so i have all these games, but i can’t play them. theyre worthless. so you can see how just like in your scenario, i’m screwed—despite having physical copies of 360 and SNES games. but my internet connection is a lot less likely to go out on me than a gaming console. and again, if it did go out on me, i have much more reason to get it back up and working than i do traipsing up to gamestop and looking for a salvage-able SNES. not having the physical media or file is of no concern to me.

even if it was, i believe the pros far outweigh the cons here. you can play OnLive on your TV or your computer—anywhere. you can be in the middle of a level and pick up your game at work on your lunch break. out of town with some downtime at granny’s? get on her computer and resume your match. no need to bring along your system and cables and all the games you think you will want to play. no need to worry that the TSA man wants to see some Hot Coffee in your GTA3 and “confiscates” it. that “play anywhere” functionality is too fucking cool. and the way they go about enabling it is way cooler. youre basically just being fed a video stream at super fast speeds. and that has huge implications.

imagine the boner at&t got seeing this, knowing they could serve down shitloads of content to their phone customers in this fashion freeing up bandwidth in the process. imagine what a company like google was thinking when they saw this. why even need your OS to physically be on your computer? just have it on a server in a google server farm and they can stream down the video to any device you access it from—phone, desktop, laptop, tablet, whatevs. and i think if someone like google were to buy them up, you’d definitely see OnLive remain intact. its a 1-2 punch for google. leap in front of everyone else in the OS space and the video game space.

personally i think this is a golden opportunity for nintendo to get its online act together. its absolutely shameful that in 2010 i can’t talk shit to my cousins while playing Super Smash Bros. or that i cant play them at all in other games. microsoft and sony already have pretty good directions for the online experience so i dont see either of them dropping everything to jump in OnLive’s lap. nintendo needs it the most. just think if they did and you could pay $15/mth and be able to play any of the old games they have in their online store. thats enticing. and then you could pay $30 for any new game and have it streamed over the net to you with crystal precision. what are you going to do? buy a PS4 for $600 again along with Modern Warfare 4 for $70? or pay $150-$200 for a stripped down Nintendo that streams all their games. and oh yeah, you can pick up Modern Warfare 4 for only $30.

as far as the feasibility of OnLive: there was a company a few years back called GameRail that essentially offered dedicated connections to online gamers. the premise was to cut out things like lag. so instead of your connection bouncing all around the country from the time you push up until the time your characters climbs a ladder, you have a direct connection to the game’s servers. no lag. faster frame rates. everyone in your clan is happy. well they made some bad VC decisions and had to fold. a couple of the guys came to work at my place. some of the other guys landed at OnLive. they know their shit. theyre not going to fuck this up. hell, i wouldnt even count them out as a 4th player on the video game field. and if they start getting some big name titles, look out.

Checkmate.

I have preregistered. If my internet connection is up to snuff ( I do live in Moorhead ) then I will play this.

Click thumbnail to see full-size image

it’s supposed to be able to run smoothly on the lowest cable or dsl connection.

The more I think about this thing the better it sounds. Your point about having useless SNES games pretty much sealed it for me. I’ll at least give it a try if I’m able. This will probably just end up being the way of things.

I hope it’s able to run on my Internet that we get here. Cable one is the main provider and their lines are piped from Phoenix to Minneapolis to here, I think. That’s what a friend said when he worked at cable one in Phoenix a few years ago. Could be totally different.

Let’s hope whatever sort of DRM they use is fair and accessable.

I’ve pretty much told everybody I know about this thing and all of my friends hate me now and wish I would shut the fuck up about it.

PS the new site looks dope.

soon this will start, and, <agent>, this is the conversation that made me realize… “agent is fucking dope…”

don’t know if any of you realize this…

hopefully if my abysmal area passes muster i will be able to use this service.

it’s happening

http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/7/2619349/onlive-cloud-gaming-tablet-phone-universal-controller

How did I miss this thread? I like the idea of OnLive. I haven’t checked until if came to retail but then I wasn’t interested in their game selection… I’ll have to go check it out again. I don’t play too terribly often though so it’s hard telling how worth my time it is.

On a similar note, ch1zzuh, I finally got a headset if you are ever up to play something, though my collection of games is more or less the same but add Madden 10, Batman Arkham Assylum, Red Dead Redemption and Saints Row 3…

Yeah, they have to work out that game selection, especially for their 10 buck a month plan. I’d almost be in for that if it wasn’t primarily games that are at least 3 years old… The game selection is terrible.