OnLive! The first server-side gaming service!

It's not just an idea anymore, they actually did it!
Imagine how this will change the industry. Maybe not in it's first year, but eventually.
It's hard to just wrap your head around the possibilities...

San Francisco, CA - March 24, 2009, 7:16PM - OnLive, Inc., the pioneer of the on demand era of video games, today emerged from seven years of stealth development within the Rearden incubator to unveil The OnLive Game Service and OnLive MicroConsole™ at the 2009 Game Developers Conference. OnLive is a revolutionary, on demand video game platform delivering the latest and most advanced games instantly, on any TV via a sleek, inexpensive MicroConsole, or on almost any PC or Mac. OnLive is supported by many of the top names in the video games industry including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive Software, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, THQ Inc., Epic Games, Eidos, Atari Interactive and Codemasters.

I think this simplifies the whole gaming industry, from developer to consumer and can attract a lot of new consumers.
It looks like they've gotten over the biggest issues they were faced with, such as lagging and running it on every pc and on mac and even on a plain TV, if you own their (very small) console.
They're focusing on the north-american market as a start, so we here in Europe will have to wait for them to build the server infrastructure. After that, your low-end laptop will do just fine as your main gaming device. Or you just move over to your TV or Beamer and you have exactly the same service.

It's all on their newly launched website and there's a presentation from GDC on Gamespot.

www.onlive.com
http://www.gamespot.com/shows/on-the-spot/?series=on-the-spot&event=on_the_spot20090324

I'm wondering what this means for future advancements in graphics and for game engines.
So far they're running games that have been developed for PC or Console, but when developers start to create games for this service specifically we will get much closer to prerendered quality as you see in feature films today.

Very nice. And great idea btw.
This will also stop pirated games.

//This will also stop pirated games.

i dont think so, they'd find their way anyway

But it's gonna and cheating!
And OMG if this runs fast and free of lags, video game consoles and expensive gamimg pcs will be uncalled-for.
My, this will revolutionize the gaming industries. I hope this will work fine and be affordable!

Yes indeed, this will completely stop piracy in any games that can only be accessed through such services, theres nothing they can do. And will revolutionize the industry, although it may be a bit too soon yet, I had thought it would come 5 years from now, but it doesn't hurt in starting this within a year. Great time to be a developer(you won't need a publisher past their marketing anymore). Gamestop, used games, and game rentals were the developer gets nothing will die to. Although I'm just happy piracy will be gone, because it is killing the PC industry.

It would certainly revive the PC industry, though it hasn't been dead or even dieing I think.
But even more important is that it will bring all the gamers together, consoles and pc's can play against each other, or well at least the ones playing on a PC and the ones playing on a TV (replacing consoles).

I think i all depends on the business models they come up with.

If you still have to buy every game, if you want to play it, then they're kind of stuck in the past.
But they could offer a package, where you pay some amount per month and then you can play every game on their service, and depending on what games are being played the developers get their shear of the monthly fee, much like the Television industry works. That way an indie developer would get as much for the played minute as a big time developer.
It would be all about how many people play your game and how long.

I remember the demoreel showing the technology. Here I come, mobile Unreal!

This thing is going to change alot in the industry. I'm looking to see when first real games start to come out. Think of the MMO possibilites!

Great idea! But as I saw they offer free demos, rentals and buy options... So we'll have to wait for the final strategies.

I don't think that you can copy a game wich you only have the rendered information of... All the gmae logic, etc. pp. is stored and running on a server, you only get send the rendered images or the information for your graphics card how to render it. It makes it really impossible to pirate a game.

But people will still be making console games, unless they expect everyone to be buying this console.

idk... but for such service, they will need a lot servers, probably they will set some contracts with large server companies. Theese companies has employees that maintain the server software and servers. great possibility that game or server software will leak to warez secene.

yeah, i know that is harder than pirating current games but this happens, if softwares that priced at 150k-300k ($) leak to warez scene this can happen too.

talking about piracy, valve announced a software protection technology to replace drm. it's some sort of unique executable per user thing.

i read about that ...
but i dont think this has a great future (at least at europe)...
(here at germany a fast answertime from a server is still a rare thing also with good bandwiths)
and also think of the big players in hardware industries - when no one will buy a PC or Console ...

and there the fact that they would be a big "Monopol" and can do what they want with the pricepolitics makes me think critical about it

(sry for the bad eng .. )

I am wondering how this can be achieved? Is it possible to transfer so much frames over internet to play a game in a resolution like 1680x1050? Or will it look like DIVX videos?

And what will happen to game engines? Do they need a lot of changes to work with this technology?

It might indeed be a revolution and a lot of hardware vendors might jump this train including Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo.

It's possible to transfer very high resolutions already with an average bandwith of today. They're talking about HD resolutions, whatever they mean exactly by that, but that basically means that it's already enough today.
And that's just going go get better. Especially because now internet providers have another reason to upgrade their infrastructure.

So the problem won't be the amount of data transfered, but how fast the response time of the servers is going to be. That's something that can only be made faster by having the servers closer to your home, or slightly by upgrading the wires.

As for the engines. Are they even going to make as big a difference as they do today?
My guess is that they will not visually, but there will still be a hand full of different engines, because it's also about the service and the tools that they come with.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are going to response to this. They could come up with something similar, I think they have to if they want to stay in the business.
Something like a console that can do both, run casual games by itself and stream high-end graphics from servers.

Yes, this sounds very reasonable to me. Something like a Wii console to play sports and family games and the hard core youngster can kill some monsters later via streaming in high resolution graphics if the girls are sleeping

Another thought about the future came up: Do you know that GarageGames with their Torque technology gets funded by Instant Action? They are bought from a company building a web platform to play games very similar like this OnLive promises.
If OnLive wins, and it is more certain because they just have the better games, then will Instant Action die and GarageGames dies with them. Torque technology could be history then, except another company buys it (maybe Conitec ).

I think Nintendo might be allright if it continues innovating through hardware of it's own(motion sensing, ect.). But Sony and Microsoft will have to adopt something similar in the future to survive, as they compete in the graphics and online market, where this new method eliminates the old ways of doing things. However, I still think it'll take at least a few years before this becomes really big to shape the industry, as there are many areas that will bottleneck it yet. Either way, this is power to the developer, and if piracy is killed, and publishers are eliminated, then it's a new golden age of sorts for us independents to do really well.

nothing more then copyright protection and anti pirating by making all tools fake "mmo" like. users wont gain one single advantage because of that.
what would be the benefits anyway?

cheers

- always playing on very high settings (if you had a pc before)
- playing everywhere, on every device that is supported, with exactly the same service and user profile
- lots of multiplayer possibilities. everybody can play against everybody
- almost no restrictions on how many players join a server

I think the multiplayer side has alot of potential once enough people are using the service. And they can render as many views and screens of other players together on one screen as they like. The data is all at the same place...

I see it like this so far.
Although it is somewhat scary to imagine that the industry (the hardware part) could change so drastically and that all the power would be at one place and one company, to me it looks like the advantages of
PC-Gaming and Console-Gaming are combined in this service.

Developers have a specific hardware they can go for, but customers have the freedom to use the display device of their choice and whatever input device they prefer. Like stay with mouse and keyboard or a controller or any special controller. But it could bring the two groups together.

It does bring a notion of one company ruling all. But in the end, this is very unlikely, as ultimately, the power lies in the developers hands, as you choose what you want to distribute your game on. And besides, there are already 2 other companies planning on doing this, but with different methods. Trion Inc. and if I remember right, there was another one showing their tech at CES for server-side gaming. And there will probably be many more when the big guys start up their own services.

-server latency time (click-send-receive-manag-render-manage-compress-send-receive) ever wondered why website dont pop up in realtime

-massive additional hardware needed to render the game (100+ realtime calculation on one machine are more power consuming then 100+ individual machines at home)

-data management neccessery, remote and in realtime for millions of users

-physical limitations of broadband internet connections (cables. nodes and and and)

-massive compression on one side requires massive realtime decompression on the other one.... ever tried to compress a 800/600 video in realtime...good luck!

-pricing, to be able to run the latest games on the rendercluster it needs to be updated frequently....somebody has to pay it

-privacy, monopolizm, data security, data management (what happens with my data), downtimes,......


chess, poker, scrabble, yes
more wont work....but i am happy if they can prove me wrong

cheers

I also believe there are some problems currently, not everyone will be able to use it.
But this is the future for sure. It is way more easy for gamers, they can even play on their TV. And it can be much more rewarding for developers. And I really like the idea to stop piracy.

The opposite direction of this will be mobile gaming and has a good chance to survive. Games for iPhone are a good choice for the future as an example.

But home entertainment could really become such kind of multimedia streaming. It can save a lot of investment for the pure gaming customers. And you can buy the cheapest office pc with 2d card and medium CPU, running very quiet, draining almost no power from the plugs. What a dream. This alone can pay the bill for the streaming service. At the and, the gamer can be the winner.

this wont revolutionize gaming...
what if the servers are down? what if you are going to a place where ther is no internet?
what if you dont have any internet at home?
what if there are bugs, hacker attacks and whatever?
this is just going to be an alternative for game developers, but its not gonna change much. its an addition if any...

im with frank on this one...
the future for multimedia... ive been calling that for years...
movies, songs, msuic videos... THATS the future

Yes. I also think there is still a place for traditional gaming. But as I already wrote: If yo do not have internet or if you are away from home then you can use mobile gaming. Dont underestimate it, these small gaming devices will get more powerful every year.
You can use a game console, able to stream and to run local games (like a hybrid system).

The point is: As you can see right now - publishers more and more develop for consoles and not publish on pc or release it much later. The reason is piracy. And if they will publish more for the streaming services then it will automatically win and it will be the future.

Local gaming devices will be smaller, mobile or aimed towards casual gamers, kids, fun (like the Wii).

If the streaming fee is just like a subscription to WOW then it will win anyway, you dont need expensive hardware and you have only little gaming fees.

At the end you will realize gaming like TV today. You pay your monthly fee, you have a selection of gaming channels and you play as much as you want.
Maybe there are channels for Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Family and mixed channels. Some are payed by advertising and might even be free.
It will be very professional, big publishers or distributors will sell or lend games to the channel providers. And indie developers will have to offer to small channels or some old pc gamers, some 60 years pensioner disliking the new world order

You can see it like watching TV / DVD today. You can pay for the TV channel and hope that the movie (game) appears there. But you also have the option to go for the DVD to own this master piece, given you have the right hardware (DVD-Player / game-console, PC).
But most people will just wait that it appears in their channel. They are paying it anyway and will play the game only once ore maybe twice. And if they really, really like it, then there is still the chance to buy a license for it.

And there will be an exclusive channel, something like a cinema theatre today. This channel releases brand new games, it will be much more expensive. You will not pay per month, you will pay per gaming hour. So this is only an option for games, you really like. Otherwise you wait until they appear to your subscription channel later.

Because of the huge amount of games available and given the limited time of the gamers, you will play only best of the best. High quality will be necessary. Game production will be very expensive.

This will happen, for sure.

There are many people that prefer to have something "physical" - a DVD, a CD, whatever.
Not everyone likes the idea of these concepts.
Take Steam and the whole drm discussion as an example.

"The point is: As you can see right now - publishers more and more develop for consoles and not publish on pc or release it much later."

Imo that´s nothing to worry about:
http://www.teut.net/Web-Site/Teut%20Talks_files/Der_5_Jahreszyklus_en.pdf

Yes. I agree. But again, look at the movie sector: You can go to cinema, buy the DVD and watch TV. Cinema and TV will not ship a physical product and many people are happy with it. And they buy only their favorite movies on DVD.

The same will happen with games.

Steam works fine now even without physical products. They have weeks with very low prices, some sales and they sell a lot then. I have read some articles about it. They have so much success this way that they even told, games are too expensive to be successful. And this will be solved with such subscription channels. Steam is only the beginning and could be a subscription channel as well in the future.

By the way: Most business software already comes without physical product. I sell my software with only delivering codes to unlock. I bought Modo, ZBrush and other tools as downloads only. It is called software and does not need space in my room, only on hdd.
If I want something physically then I buy a book and I indeed do that a lot.

It's true, it all depends on the developers jumping this train or not. And that was the same with Steam.
When it was just Valve selling their games through Steam, nobody believed in its success. Then suddenly publishers started to support it, and not just game by game, but they would put on their whole library and even the newest ones.

It really is the publishers that make this thing work or not. If it's replacing anything is a different question and depends more on how well the service works and the way you pay for your gaming time.
Since they're kind of the new generation and will probably be around for some time to make money, they could go in with very reasonable prices and service plans.

Looking at it from now and comparing it to what people like and prefer today won't matter in a few years.
I can well remember how I liked to physically own a music CD. Put it on my shelf and take it down to listen to it and having the cover and all. But it change a lot. Most devices built for music playback, like IPods, can't even play CDs. Digital musics stores have become numerous and it works well. I haven't bought a music CD in years, but bought trough Itunes mostly. Sure it was a slow change, but again, it was all about the publishers and how good the service works. You worry less about what happens to your owned product in the future, but rather how easy your access and storage has become.

And my guess is that they would add most old games to this service, so you can go back and play through gaming history. I'd like that a lot.

There are many physical problems right now - Massive clusters are needed to process the huge amount of data from thousands of users. Lags are a big problem for the gamers. Internet connections are a lot too slow (If i think of my 3Mbit connection ... ).

But some years in the future this might change. The computing problems will be solved by quantum processors, the internet connections will be unbeliebalby fast and completely free of lags by using physical entanglement. But we will have to wait about 10 to 15 years for these techs. So hold on and be patient

This cannot possibly work. No matter how well they compress video there will ALWAYS be lag. The lag will be doubled too, because first your device must send the inputs to the server before the server sends back the video frame.

Anybody ever use screen-sharing on a video chat like Apple iChat? Have you ever tried to play a game on someone else's machine over the internet this way? It doesn't even work at lower resolutions, so how can we expect OnLive to actually send the frames in time?

The only possible way to make this work would be if they had figured out how to use quantum entanglement for communication... and that sounds pretty far-fetched!

(on the other hand, the makers of OnLive must have reason to believe it works: they've got quite a bit invested into this idea.)

This service might work for online "Desktops" / Officwork,
watching movies and games with low reaction time (roundbased games, classic board and card games,)

maybe also for "low reaction time" games like WoW, RTS Games or
some racing simulations.
But not for quick-reaction time games as FPS.
No matter how advanced their architecture is, they
cant reach a latency-performance as on a local Lan.
The games will always feel laggy.

----

But nevertheless, such a service will be appealing to
"some times" players. As they dont need to invest into gaming hardware. Or people who want to check out a game and
see if they want to buy the real one.

---

To come around the problem of the lag, I have an idea:

The developers actually program a "gamelogic" plugin, wich
runs directly on the client machine.
This plugin calculates some of the gameaction on the client machine (given the userinputs), without the graphical calculation.
Then transmits certain gamestates to the server-"main" game.
This way it should be possible to resuce the lag somewhat,
as the userinput can be directly used to calculate a
part of the gamestate. Just the graphical feedback is slower
as it needs to go over the external server and back.

You have to keep in mind, this isn't some screen-sharing software using a generic video compression codec.. This is the people who created Quicktime, and who've been working 7 years on this special video compressor just for the purpose of extremely fast action content, such as video games.

I was sceptical too, but watch all 6 parts of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nZfEWYt1fA and you may be convinced too as I was. Unless the hid some supercomputer in that GDC room, these guys were actually playing Crysis in 720p and highest settings on a cheap-o mac laptop, and it really seemed like the guy was playing the game locally..

We all knew that the time were all software would be installed on distant servers and we'd only need dummy terminals, would come sometime... I just thought it would still take 5 or 10 more years.. Guess I was wrong..

Simply, wow..

i only beleave it when i can play it...

they made a very important presentation for their company,
i doubt that they would risk any serverproblems at this event,
and probably just had it connected directly to a local server.

In the end its all about network-with and stability. (and partly
the quality of the codec)
The software itself is not that mindblowing after all.

I also belive that one day we will use mainly remote computers,
but they claim to do all the infrastructure now.
This is very risky, especially for high quality content
such as gaming.

Also: 7 years are rather the waiting time for the reqired
broadband infrastructure in the US, than development time,
The software is not really that magical.

I think those 5-10 years is about as long as it will take for this service to really gain momentum and maybe change the industry so that we only use dummy terminals.

So actually I now think that this is not as surprisingly early as I first thought, it's just the first sign that the industry is really going there.

Yeah, but the idea is stupid to some extent. It means paying 50 bucks for a game might mean you won't be able to play it whenever a server goes down permanently. I very much like the fact that I can simply walk to my games collection and pick say Half-life 1 and play years after it got released.

I definitely don't like the idea of games becoming slot machines and the like. I also very much doubt if it would work in practice, seems like 5Mbit/s isn't really a lot to transfer continuous streams of rendering and input / controller data. Don't forget this whole system will need to work with zero latency for it to be even close to playable if it's truly only rendering information.

Also would this not go on your download limit ? therefore meaning ISPs would limit you or charge more

microsoft is working on a new windows version: Windows Cloud.

this is pretty much same idea with onlive, but instead, servers serve OS, all you need is a little device, a monitor and input devices.

5Mbit is plenty. It actually occurred to me the other day that I was watching a movie from Graboid. I have a 4mbit DSL and Graboid will give u all the bandwidth you can take (for me it was 430kb/s), so I was streaming a movie that was 700mb (usual size for a normal divX movie), without having to wait at all for initial buffering, and I was thinking to myself.. I'm now receiving from some distant server 23 good quality images per second.. So, add to that their super video-game codec, and you can realize how the problem of the big volume of data to be sent, can really be solved. So all you got left now is the problem of latency. But if you think about it, if the latency of 50ms that u get everytime you play CS on online servers is good enough for playing a multiplayer game, it will be good enough for OnLive as well. So, what I'm saying is.. they don't cheat and they don't lie.. what they're proposing is very much possible, and I guess we'll all get to try it (well, US citizens only for starters ), in the following months.




Your ISP is charging you per megabyte?? Change ISPs!



Cheers,
Aris

No i meant most uk isp's charge if you go over download limit, or restrict speed or stop internet, and therefore people would need the unlimited package (which all except Sky, have fair use policies which limit download usage)

So in simple terms it would mean you would be limited about how much you can play the games for.

If the UK isps don't change then this system will fail here.

Not sure about other countries

yeah in the us, or at least where i live this isnt an issue, its unlimited dl,

recently more and more isp limit or downgrad their packages because users dare to use it to the limit. unlimited for you aint the same as unlimited for your isp

50ms latency/ping you barly get if you are honest. most of the times you play wiht 100ms+.
ontop of that put rendering time on ther servers, then the compression, then the packing and sending, then you receiving, then you unpacking and displaying. and all of that in hd and 50pictues a second.
no matter how good your codec is, none works without buffering. most of the times you wont recognize it beacuse its just a few ms. but i bet you will once you have a latency limit.


having a operating system or control system on the other hand is a whole other story. controling a spaceship flying towards the moon with 8mins delay might be acceptable. controling a renderfarm, securitysytem and and and with a few seconds delay wont hurt either.
for stuff like this, it makes perfect sense. but anything realtime related doesnt.

the hardware to render the game still has to be somewhere and somebody has to pay for it. and i bet it wont be onlive charging nothing for their services.
also you will pay per play as far as i can tell. one hour ten bucks...any game you like for example. causing a lot of new problems for wow players


instead of wasting time with this shit i would suggest to create better games in the first place. games these days are so bad, people dont even want to pirate them anymore.
try to get a codec for that.

cheese

recently more and more isp limit or downgrad their packages because users dare to use it to the limit. unlimited for you aint the same as unlimited for your isp

50ms latency/ping you barly get if you are honest. most of the times you play wiht 100ms+.
ontop of that put rendering time on ther servers, then the compression, then the packing and sending, then you receiving, then you unpacking and displaying. and all of that in hd and 50pictues a second.
no matter how good your codec is, none works without buffering. most of the times you wont recognize it beacuse its just a few ms. but i bet you will once you have a latency limit.


having a operating system or control system on the other hand is a whole other story. controling a spaceship flying towards the moon with 8mins delay might be acceptable. controling a renderfarm, securitysytem and and and with a few seconds delay wont hurt either.
for stuff like this, it makes perfect sense. but anything realtime related doesnt.

the hardware to render the game still has to be somewhere and somebody has to pay for it. and i bet it wont be onlive charging nothing for their services.
also you will pay per play as far as i can tell. one hour ten bucks...any game you like for example. causing a lot of new problems for wow players


instead of wasting time with this shit i would suggest to create better games in the first place. games these days are so bad, people dont even want to pirate them anymore.
try to get a codec for that.

cheese

we arnt talking about dl speed (the last 3 posts) we are talking about the mount of total space your allowed to dl in a month.

Are you serious about today's games being bad? I really can't relate to that...
And pirating is probably as high as it has ever been.
So yes, new and better games always have to be a priority, but new technologies make new things possible.
For example 200 people playing against each other, like the coming MAG for PS3, is innovative and only possible because of new and faster technology. With OnLive you could raise that to 1000 or more...

As for the latency.
I think the multiplayer analogy is quite good. You could play CS with very little lag a few years ago, when cables, servers and computers where much slower.
Now all that has gotten faster, so more data can be sent. Not much faster I know, but more.
So instead of sending only information about the position of players and the key inputs, they send you the whole picture. I don't see how that is much of a difference, except that everything has to be processed much faster. And that is, or will soon be, possible...

They showed a racing game at GDC and it's supposed to run smooth enough so that it's playable without noticeable lag.
So they're clearly not just going for a certain type of games, but they build it so that you should be able to play any king of game.
We'll see if and when they get to that point.

I watched all 6 videos. Very interesting. Did you see that they got support from all major publishers? This alone is a good sign that it will be reality soon, it is no fake.

And some of you might have a wrong picture of it (e.g. Phemox). You will not buy a game for 50 bucks and play it online. It will probably become something like your television flat-rate. You will pay a fee per month and you will play whatever you want.
But in the beginning it might be that you rent a game for a certain time, maybe for a week. But it will be cheap compared to what we spent today, otherwise it will not succeed.

all the good things about gaming will die, modding, collectors etc.

Download limit is not a issue here too, but need of close servers is. When i play games online(ie. css) i generally have around 60-80 ms latency to server's at Germany, but the amount of data transfarred is small.

For me to get latency(altogether with comression/decompression/sending data)less than 50ms servers should be in Istanbul or closer.

Also there will be latency issues unless they pust servers on every major city on europe. they need a lot of hardware and software(which they look like they already solved.)

Also this wont stop the piracy, they will need vigintillion of servers around the world, and the server software video compressor etc will leak to the scene, people will build cracked OnLive servers.

-Latency:

Playing a multiplayergame on a PC and playing with "remote video" is not the same. The PC games do lots of local direct updates that make the game seem respond immediately. (like the camera movement).
The felt latency with this remote video technique will be much
higher as every user-input action will relate to a delayed visual output action.
There is a reason why multiplayergames dont do everything purely on the server.
(such as in WoW moving the player-avatar directly on the client,
and only passively controlling the correctness by the server)


-Pirating:

The games on OnLive are very save from pirating. Especially if
they would only be ditributed via this service.
There is no way to copy them, unless someone breaks into
the actual Onlive servers. (and this can be avoided much more easily)
The service itself can be recreated by others though, and will
become a standard approach in the future anyhow.
(look at the google "online office" service, or various
videocontrolled online Linux workbenches)

Its more a question about general network infrastructure than software innovation.

Piracy,
i was talking about that there will be a lot of servers thus there will be alot of personnel working on them. Some people won't mind getting fired as price of leaking the OnLive server software(and content) to warez scene.

Yes, that could happen, if OnLive leaves
security holes in their local servers.

But Even when someone has the full server code,
he must also make the server-infrastructure available to
let other use the service.
Hobby pirates will not build huge free server farms,
(you need at least 10.000 high performance computers
to have Crysis work for 10.000 players at the same time)
and commercial pirates (that offer such a service) cant
really use it as they stand in public. - they will rather
develop their own software or licence it.

No, it will not die. But it will become smaller. Only small groups of PC friends will do that.

The standard gamers just want to play a game, have fun and want to spend only little money. Such a streaming service will be a good solution for them.

So it might be that it is a chance for small companies to make games for the hardcore pc-users. But big publishers might publish to online servers.

i think the server based game are the definitive solution for piracy fighting too, you can sell the game online without the cost of cd, printing manuals and covers, also the users can spend more money on extra stuffs, weapons, addons, expansions, and the modders users can be involved for the beta production, that's why i'm testing A7, my hope is just that my know-how is enough to made something like this ^_^

i am also talking about the download limit here. hence "unlimited".
isp cut down speed and volume lately because they pay for every single bit as well. and flatrates are expensive if users really use them.

there is also a small difference between sending and handling a few bit large package like in counterstrike and a several megabyte large one when sending images.


nonetheless its plain useless when it comes to piracy. its easier to handle pirates with systems like steam and server checks. no need to calculate that stuff, just check the lizense.

the only big benefit is that you dont need gaming computers at home anymore.


as for the "it works" phenomenon. first you dont know their set up.
second, ever tried to manage more then 1000 users at the same time on one server...tricky
also you dont need only to have the server next your door but also the renderfarm for the games itself..... might get expensive.

the myth that it will be cheaper only works for people playing less then 2 hours a month. they wont need to by a pc or console and still can play.... doesnt pay off for the provider.
the hardcore gamer on the other hand will realize that pay per view might be more expensive then some new hard and software from time to time

as said, nice add one for remote work and for sure a future part of computers but not like they think. i wouldnt invest my money into that company.

I see it the other way around. Hardcore gamers will not sell their old games and hardware easily. They will be not the first customers of on-live. So it is perfectly right what they are doing, they attract some kind of casual gamers first. Later even hardcore gamers will enter if they offer a flat-rate payment instead a payment per view.



This is not the only advantage. There are some more. As you could see in the demonstration, you can play games instantly, no installation, no searching, all save slots are there. You can play from everywhere, you don't have to carry your pc with you. It will be easy to have some trial periods, demo sessions and similar (all trials and demos with no installation time).
You can see your friends online and you see what they are playing currently.
It is all more transparent and reacts more instantly. Gamers want to play, don't want to wait. This is exactly what they get there.