OnLive responds to bad press, more beta testers speak out

PC Perspective may have broken the End User Licensing Agreement, a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and probably annoyed OnLive to no end when the site borrowed someone's beta account for a detailed write-up on the performance of the service, but with the testing done far outside the beta's supported area, the write-up has caused no small amount of controversy. Yesterday, OnLive responded to the criticism via its official blog.

[Gamer7l]

...should be renamed to OnLifeSupport....and the plug will soon be pulled.

[Blaze929]

oh, i see what you did there ;)

But seriously, I had hopes for this. OnLive is a nice as idea just a few years too soon.

[Close_Second]

...I think this should have emerged half way into the life cycle of the PS4 and Xbox 720, once the infrastructure really exists.

I also reckon we won't see this service in a country like New Zealand any time soon...if ever.

[mauleriscool]

probably would work great in japan

[evrfighter]

I'm pretty sure most expected this to fail.

Onlive interest for me was always meh. fps shooters will never work over remote locations. Even a 20ms ping would be enough to throw off precision aiming on a mouse.

[Kakkoii]

@mauleriscool: Actually it would. Assuming OnLive rented a server space somewhere in Japan also, as they have in the USA. Japan is a highly interconnected with fiber-optic internet flowing all throughout the city. They have one of the highest average consumer internet speeds.

[Rob Hornecker]

This thing seems to be DBR ( Dead Before Release! ) Unless I had a T1 line,I doubt this would ever be lag free. This Idea has been tried before and it bombed. Sega and Atari had tried,but never could perfect it.

I think i'll stick to my xbox 360,ps3 and 6 year old PC. Although onlive did have a interesting presentation at last years E3,but after that the info dried up.

[Redempteur]

Because these countries don't have the internet connexion fast enough for the service to work ...simple as that

not to mention the lack of servers
Quite ridiculous when people in the official range still have lag ...

[masterg]

LEAVE ONLINE ALONE :)

On a serious note. What is up with all the users to seem to wish Onlive to fail. Comments like "This will never work". "Users who believe this will work are stupid".

It might not work. I don't know. All I know is that these guys have spent millions and millions of dollars on this product. It is in Beta. We have no reviews of this product at all.

Why don't we all just wait and see what the final product will look like. If it sucks then it sucks, but right now anyone who passes justment are the fools in my book.

[masterg]

@Redempteur

Com on man. All of Europa. All of Japan and most of USA have connections that are fast enough. This is 90% of the gamers.

[SilentNegotiator]

Even in their controlled demonstrations, they couldn't even get a smooth 30fps on s light game like Burnout. Plus input lag.

When the service takes off, the servers will find themselves crippled daily. Eventually, people will all cancel their subscriptions and another phantom will fall.

[Baka-akaB]

@masterg

You are dead wrong . Many places in europe got a pretty basic dsl and cable connection ( or even worse) , or the proper connection but with silly bandwitdh restrictions from ISPs . And at least judging from our area (mine and redempteur's) even with the proper connexion , with the distance between our home and the isp's servers , plus the fact that some really shady routing and rerouting of bandwith are there .. the commoner wont enjoy this outside of megapoles and a few countries .

and Japan ? Of course japan would run it well , as well as a few hi speed place like the sweden/norway/finland trifecta . So no one was worried about those . If it failed over there , then damn , the service is just beyond crap .

As for your last point 90% gamers ? Out of those gamers i'd bet that 20 to 30% dont even handle the usual games without some issues .
it's not that hard to check , see the numerous people always with red bars or crappy ping in fighting games , fps , or mmos . Even acounting for the best or crappiest netcode , or pinpointing how far or close two players are from each others or the host , you'll still see many people with occasional or recurrent lags , and disconnects .

It's far from perfect with normal games , how do you think it'd fare with a service so reliant on isp/onlive server proximity ?

And how often do you think it will be possible to put an Onlive farm for the smaller locals ?

Anyway no there is no reason to leave onlive alone . they've been very quiet about their technology . All we've seen so far is :

-it running smoothly at a con with journalist 10 feets away from the onsite server ...

-Mostly old and not so bandwith hogs games . They would be obviously scared to try even a 2d fighter on emulator or a street fighter game , since input lag is probably their worst fear .
They could at least hint at a home house solution a la "GGPO" for input lag . So far it seems to be straightforward streaming at low quality and heavy isp/server reliance , wich defeat the purpose .

-Claims of putting servers everywhere , wich wont happen .

-awfully designed console and pad , looked cheap and showing their lack of attention to details .

I have no doubt the tech will be polished and will work at some point , but expect it to come from another company ... be it a small one (liek maybe Gakai from dave Perry , though not holding my breath on that guy) or from giants like sony , microsoft , nintendo , or another one .

[Redempteur]

Sorry but no .
Some places in europe ( FRANCE , a part of UK[just a part] and some place in the north of europe ) have the speed available for common people . Japan too is equipped enough ..and many places in USA still have problems ... That is not 90% of the gamers...

you might be lucky and live in a place where it's available to you , but there are countless countries ( for me ) where the Min 5mb ( for using onlive ) cost too much for a average gamer ..

Even if you have this speed , you'll need servers for it to work and ONLIVE is not even garanteed to be a succes thanks to the condition of access listed above.

And finally EVEN if you can access ONLIVE , numerous people already reported lag ( even in this article ) What will it be when the service be flooded with people ?

[masterg]

@Baka-akaB

You might now have high speed Internet. But your average European does.

This graph is 3 years old.
http://www.worldpoliticsrev...

[Baka-akaB]

My connexion is actually fine thank you , unlike redempteur i made the just toward the rather expensive available ones , and it's actually way better than the national average , wich again kills your point imo .

Your graph only says that 20 megs connection are out there , and you imo dont seems to get my point , so let's not make this about my area .

It is only one example worth of 400 000k citizen . But let me just tell you this actually . Since Redempteur and I work in the field , we can pretty much confirm that our location doesnt even doesnt even rank low compared to other locales of the country . Despite the fact that we arent inland but in Caribbea , and thus get a lot of weird traffic routing but most of all , a big and hefty extra cost for bandwith .

That should tell you the sorry state of many locals wich arent majors cities like Paris ., and with most of the population not living over there , or not always in a big city .

I could also mention Free , of the the 3 major french 20-30 mbs ISP , and how despite offering such theoric speed , things arent at all pretty , with things going from one extreme to another (quality of ping and speed wise , or stability wise) according to the place and how close it would be to a big city .

Many Eu govt has only recently started a proper roadmap for hi-speed internet and massive retooling of the cable/dsl map .

So again no most people dont have the connection you mention , AND when they do , a sizeable portion of them dont actually have what's promised , or are heavily restricted , even in a chokehold from their local isps .

At least that what some of us have noticed in our work in a few places like France , spain , French and Uk west indies .

Anyway the point is you need your connection to not only have the advertised requirement , but have it run good/great (wich is hardly often the case for many) AND an onlive server close to your isp servers ...
That's too many "if" or "and" from such a small company , to say "hey it's only a beta" for my taste . With actual details some of us might have took the bait . but they were secretive and the result are so far as expected , so ... no dice

[MNicholas]

The performance is predictably dreadful. The internet is simply not fast enough for this.

With the cost of retail consumer hardware continuing to drop faster than developers are finding ways to use it effectively, Onlive has to be far cheaper and more convenient than current solutions in order to succeed.

Onlive's best chance of success is as an add-on to ISP services at $15/month and have their service hosted at each ISP's datacenter.

This is the only way to solve the performance problems. There are a lot of ISPs so they better start researching which ISPs have the capacity to host, market, and support such a service and then make those calls.

[orakga]

Holy sh!t, I'm happy I kept on reading through the comments (and mr. masterg, you seem to overlook the fact that latency, lag and bandwidth are three entirely different concepts; FYI baka and redemptur are right)

@MNicholas: Damn dude, all this time I was so focused on the limitations of the technology that this idea never occurred to me. I think you are onto something here, and it makes a whole lot of sense; both from a technical and business point of view.

Since OnLive's limitations are NOT with their own technology, but the infrastructure itself, what you proposed might actually be the best "way out" for them. Sell their tech. to AT&T for 100~200mil (I can see AT&T bidding way more), and let AT&T "enter the videogame field".

God, that'd be awful though...

[RememberThe357]

I feel like I need to give them the benefit of the doubt. Even though I don't think that the U.S. has the infrastructure to handle what they're talking about, I still want to see how this turns out.

[wicko]

I really don't think this will perform that well.. You will need very low latency. According to this article about input lag http://www.anandtech.com/vi... about 100ms input lag from a mouse movement to the display on the screen is where you'll start to notice a delay. They also measured TF2 input lag, and it was always under 100, hitting a maximum of 89ms.

Now, thats just from your mouse, to your computer, to your monitor. Imagine what it would be like traveling from your mouse, to your computer, through your ISP, to the server, back from the server, through your ISP to your PC and then to your monitor. Take for example a really low latency connection between your PC and the server of say 30ms. Worst case, 120ms input lag. Average would probably be around 80ms or so, which is pretty decent. But imagine a more average latency, of around 50-60ms. now you are looking at a minimum of 100ms input lag and 140-150 max.. not looking to good. Also, using V-sync will kill your input lag even further, so if you don't want screen tearing expect some heavy input lag.

This is just one game, I don't know how optimized other games are for input lag, but I've never really heard anyone complain about TF2 for that reason. Fallout 3 is apparently much worse.

Also, this can depend on the type of monitor you use (really high end monitors have much lower latencies and 120hz monitors are also much lower). But I don't see someone who wants to save money by using this service, shelling out cash for a high end monitor.

[champ21]

ping alone for fps games seems to make this service unviable.

Nevermind they will need to get servers in every county for ppl to use this service, not gonna work if someones in europe/middle east and the server is in the usa.

[wicko]

It probably wouldn't work even if they were only a state over.

Ping to other multiplayer servers would be a bit different. It wouldn't apply to input lag in the same way playing from your own PC wouldn't. Reason is that you don't send your keyboard and mouse inputs over to the game server you're connected to, input lag is only the measure of latency between the inputs you're using and seeing the result displayed on your monitor. Input lag is far more frustrating if its noticeable.

Either way, ISPs aren't ready for these kinds of services. ISPs are greedy bastards with their extremely low bandwidth caps and outrageous prices..

[champ21]

i see another complication with this model. even if they do manage to get servers in every state. If there arent too many people using this service in a particular state, then there may not be too many users online to play multiplayer with. Which would suck.

[Marty8370]

Onlive clearly don't work. And where's is it's market.

PC gamers already have better specced PC's.

This has epic failure written all over it.

Jump Out, Play B3yond

[washingmachine]

obviously this type of gaming is the future,but not for awhile. i dont think they will stop making disc based cause the more higher res and and hdness the game the more space is needed and i dont see peeps downloading 25-30gb games,yet

[jjesso1993]

dont think bring my self to to use onlive i just like have physical copy of my game just think this went bust you buy 100's of games of it this went no servers play your game you have lost nearly a grand worth of games and no way of getting them back

[Quadrix]

I still have some hopes for it. It IS a beta, after all. No real harm if it doesn't work, it just means I'll have to shell out a little more cash for a custom PC.