OnLive - Why Linux Gamers Should Take Notice

[Svartalf]

How about a quick game of Starcraft or AoE2 while you're on a buiness trip or in a cyber cafe(Cafe owners may not like that 1.5Mbs video stream however XD)?

If anything Onlive's marketing strategy is why they're doomed to failure, not the technical limitations of Video on Demand.

Oh, no, we're not missing the licensing issues... There's just no way they can supply enough resources now or in the next 5 or so years minimum to handle more than a small percentage of the entire potential client base.

The technical issues kill it dead right out of the gate.

I've already spelled those out- you're not going to make a lot of money if you're talking about only a couple of thousand per major metropolitan area- and that's all they're going to manage.

It's snake oil. Largely any of the companies selling this are selling that. It's another step in the folly of the "media" industries trying to "protect" their revenue stream.

[pvtcupcakes]

Gaikai looks much better, and AFAIK it supports Linux.
It was started by David Perry, the guy who did Earthworm Jim.

http://www.dperry.com/archives/news/dp_blog/gaikai_-_video/

[gforum]

so you ppl arent satisfied with DRM? we need to go a step further with a system where its not even installed in your pc? crazy talk.

This goes in the opposite direction of current 'development' i say, while the new world tomorrow brings more of linux, companies like gog, woflire,Frictional Games, and of course S2Games(independent, Open Minded), games like in the old days, where u just push and run(and have fun -hassle free-).
These guys are going back into extreme proprietary levels...

funny, but i dont think so. maybe... out of touch?

the funnest game-time i every had was with friends, over LAN(that's L for local). I'll certainly be one to never give up on that, I'm not ready to finance our demise.


cheers

[Aradreth]

A little update if anyone gives a damn it's now under public beta Intel Mac's and Win only, apply 'ere (USA only)

[Milyardo]

I think everyone has missed the bigger licensing issue here with Onlive. If you buy a game with Onlive, do you own that game? If you cancel their service what happens to the games you've bought? Games you already own? Can you install a game you bought off of Onlive at home on your own machine?

World of Warcraft is one game where I think this system could work. The latency issues aren't a big deal, and you don't have the licensing issues I've mentioned above. If reasonably priced I wouldn't mind being able to play WoW or any other MMO from anywhere I'd please.(I'm the gold farmers would love this service, it'd make it difficult for blizzard to ban them by IP)

How about a quick game of Starcraft or AoE2 while you're on a buiness trip or in a cyber cafe(Cafe owners may not like that 1.5Mbs video stream however XD)?

If anything Onlive's marketing strategy is why they're doomed to failure, not the technical limitations of Video on Demand.

[Dragonlord]

Furthermore you can not compress below entropy. Therefore no matter what super algorithm one might find in the future there is a hard limit below which you can not go.

[Aradreth]

What I'd like to know is how this is even feasable? I mean think about the amount of bandwidth this would have to be sucking down toplay a game like Crysis or any other fast paced, super high detail game at a high resolution and 30+ framerate without lagging. We're talking Gigabit fiber optical connection minimum for anything I can think of.

I don't know about any of you but I play my games at 1920x1200 with a minimum frame rate of 60 fps, but usually vsynced to the monitor's 85Hz refreshrate.

I'm sorry, I just don't see how this could possibly work on a large scale unless they've found the holy grail of compression algorithms, allowing them to compress gigabytes into kilobytes.

The amount of data (compression + slight quality reduction to get to the required level) needed to be sent isn't really the problem it's the lag that'll most likely kill it.

[Duo Maxwell]

What I'd like to know is how this is even feasable? I mean think about the amount of bandwidth this would have to be sucking down toplay a game like Crysis or any other fast paced, super high detail game at a high resolution and 30+ framerate without lagging. We're talking Gigabit fiber optical connection minimum for anything I can think of.

I don't know about any of you but I play my games at 1920x1200 with a minimum frame rate of 60 fps, but usually vsynced to the monitor's 85Hz refreshrate.

I'm sorry, I just don't see how this could possibly work on a large scale unless they've found the holy grail of compression algorithms, allowing them to compress gigabytes into kilobytes.

[deanjo]

(and they don't have to be crap).

Ya, you can get very watchable streams nowdays. When I'm out at my farm I usually capture the football games from the stream later on. Granted they are no 1080p but very watchable and better then a VCR recording. Lately I've been using vReveal to "fix them up" afterwards. A great app that really needs to be ported to linux.

[energyman]

and 'Streamed' flash videos are saved on your harddisk anyway (and they don't have to be crap).