1/21/10 - Onlive BETA previewed: Our Fears might become reality

[Dorfdad]

First Hello to all I am new to the site, but an avid Video Game Journalist and have been interested in Onlive for quite some time. I have had many reservations about OnLive but wanted to give the service a fair shake.

While I understand it will not destroy conventional gaming as others like to think (at least for a few more years) We are seeing the future laid out before us.

PC Perspective has released a multi paged preview of the beta that included videos, images and experiences using the service from right outside California well within the distance of the servers and they had some pretty bad performance issues.

Overall they liked the service for what it was, it's not a replacement for a console or local PC gaming though. However if you have a crap computer, a MAC or no console this is an alternative to buying one of these systems.

Here is the Final Thoughts Quote from their preview and it seems the best games are SLOW playing games, any FPS or fast action games are horrible for this service.

My first hands-on experience with OnLive turned out to be better than I thought it would be going into the experiment. Both Burnout: Paradise and Tom Clancy's HAWX provided an acceptable gaming experience through the streaming game service. Both titles did look a little less impressive when placed side by side with a locally installed copy of each game but that is probably always going to be the case. Unreal Tournament 3 was less impressive - actually it was awful to be blunt about it. Some of that could be a result of our latency warnings every time we started the OnLive client and living outside the southern California area, but regardless, playing UT3 with OnLive was not anything I would recommend to experienced or beginning gamers. I am planning on continuing to play with the OnLive service as newer updates are released and as more games are added to the pile. This is a paradigm shift that we need to monitor very closely as it does have the potential to change nearly everything we know about PC and console gaming.

here is a link to the article, and I have to say Im its a little disappointing that they games I would use this for FPS, Crysis etc played so badly.. Though this is a beta and im on the east coast so maybe my servers will be better?

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=859&type=expert&pid=1


Whats your take on the article?

[keyboardcowb0y]

I wasn't as interested in the actual article as I was in just watching the videos. I must say though, the person who wrote that article should realize that a beta is not a final version. Maybe I missed the part in the article where they mentioned that but if they are used to writing about video games, they should make a point of clarifying that betas dont represent the final quality of a game/service. I am sure that all of their points are valid about the system, I just don't believe a final decision about a game/service can really be made until it actually goes live.

With all that said, I had a feeling from what ive heard already that fps games will be the least enjoyable on onlive which is unfortunate. Hopefully when they release they can have some improvements made on the mouse movements.

[Aph0ticShield]

I think that the review was slightly unfair and baised. I mean, he WAS warned before he opened the service up that there would be a high latency based on his ISP. Obviously, the beta was NOT open in his area. Maybe they haven't turned on the east coast servers or something.

If he noticed latency that much, then it must have been above 100ms. OnLive claims 80ms or less. I tend to believe them until release.

[Perfectionist]

First Hello to all I am new to the site, but an avid Video Game Journalist

Cool !! Where are you published ??

PC Perspective has released a multi paged preview of the beta that included videos, images and experiences using the service from right outside California well within the distance of the servers and they had some pretty bad performance issues.

NOOOOOOOO !!!

here is a link to the article, and I have to say Im its a little disappointing that they games I would use this for FPS, Crysis etc played so badly.. Though this is a beta and im on the east coast so maybe my servers will be better?

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=859&type=expert&pid=1


Whats your take on the article?

Well there can be only one take - that this is only the Beta and will drastically improve by the time it's launched !!

If this really is the best OnLive (or indeed cloud gaming overall) can achieve (right now) then we may as well just file it under "Enron" and wait another decade to see if future technology will make it finally possible !!

I wasn't as interested in the actual article as I was in just watching the videos. I must say though, the person who wrote that article should realize that a beta is not a final version. Maybe I missed the part in the article where they mentioned that but if they are used to writing about video games, they should make a point of clarifying that betas dont represent the final quality of a game/service. I am sure that all of their points are valid about the system, I just don't believe a final decision about a game/service can really be made until it actually goes live.

With all that said, I had a feeling from what ive heard already that fps games will be the least enjoyable on onlive which is unfortunate. Hopefully when they release they can have some improvements made on the mouse movements.

I think OnLive know that FPS gaming is where they will gain the most market share and build up the necessary critical mass to become profitable ...... like you, I'm hoping that this "release" is significantly premature and in no way an indication of the final service !!

[wnsleepy]

1st of all...
"I first have to admit that I don't actually have a beta account with the OnLive service; instead a friend of a friend of a friend passed to me their login information after I requested it in order to write a preview of the technology. Why is this a note-worthy point to make? There is a chance that OnLive is only selecting beta members that are on ISPs close to their current data centers and as I live outside that area that could affect my experiences with cloud-based gaming. I'll touch on that where necessary."

He is not even in the area that you suppose to be able to play... Of course he is going to have lag... what a fucking idiot.

"This is the reason I made the note above about the location of current beta testers; there were even a couple of times when my Internet was particularly sluggish where the client would not let me connect to the service AT ALL! (Note that this only happened on one single evening where my cable provider was providing 1-1.5 Mb/s downstream as opposed to the normal 20-25 Mb/s downstream.) The problem here is that from a scientific stand point I have no idea what my true ping was to the OnLive servers or what they consider to be "high". Regardless, the beta application was willing to let me run the program so the game was on!"

.....Someone should explain to this guy that having fast internet does not mean you are able to break the speed of light limit....

This guy just lost all fucking credibility.....

[Dorfdad]

First I would like to point out he stated it was a beta, and while I have been in many beta's myself over the years I can tell you things don't go from night to day most of the time.

It's not like when Onlive launches that were going to see better graphics quality, or new features added initially. The GUI will mature some bug code will be removed and the speed may slightly increase due to debug code a few FPS, but don't get the idea that it will be night and day.

Secondly he did state that while hes right outside California he should be well into the range of the Onlive servers why he got such crappy connections is a bit concerning it could be his ISP or that Onlives range isn't going to be what they said or that the focused routing isn't live.

While I am not ready to call the service a failure by any means I think there are potential issues when this goes live. Every Game needs to be 100% playable from day one or websites, bloggers etc will blast this thing and it will become known as a joke.

I plan on writing a full review of the service once I get it, as I have a few MAC's and netbooks around the house that could benefit from the service.

Regardless of the outcome it's good to see that the service is running and see some actually video comparisons of the games if nothing else.

[MAG1270]

This is stupid.. he was told that he had a high ping and yet he reviews the service.

Despite how stupid I believe that guy to be, then he actually did a pretty good job :/ He got inside a closed beta and did a bad review of an already criticized service.. "OnLive Failed" sure is gonna kill a big part of the OnLive hopes out there.

Unreal Tournament 3 was less impressive - actually it was awful to be blunt about it. Some of that could be a result of our latency warnings every time we started the OnLive client and living outside the southern California area, but regardless, playing UT3 with OnLive was not anything I would recommend to experienced or beginning gamers.

He does point out the warnings, but then he turns the table and makes it sound like it's the service that's failing.

[Ascii89]

I agree that this review isn't fair at all, however he was still playing at HD quality yet when compared to a local machine it did look brighter and lacked detail. Now this could be because the game was just ported to work on OnLive and future games specifically built for onlive could look much better. I still am a little disappointed though. . .

[MAG1270]

How can you call it HD if he only was using 1 Mbps? HD needs at least 5 Mbps according to Perlman.

[Ascii89]

No actually he took a screen shot of how much bandwidth onlive's client was using and it showed 700Kb/s now doing some maths 700x8/1024 = 5.4Mbps. You need to distinguish Mb/s from Mbps one is the transfer rate the other is the marketed value of an internet connection.