Thoughts on this

obo

New Member
I'm not really understanding what the whole idea behind onLive is. I mean, what exactly are they trying to team up with Xbox and ps3 for?
 

Krier023

Useful Poster
I just found it when I was looking around team xecuter forums. Not really sure if their trying to make a cross-platform controller, or actually trying to make cross-platform games. ex. ps3 playing xbox.
I was just wondering if anyone has heard more about it.
 

NYjetsNY1

Active Member
Oh gotcha. I did notice it also said something about a Cloud-based thing ... possibly?

Maybe we'll know more in time.
 

PS3andCOD

Contributor
I know quite a bit about onlive, and it could be one of two things... Onlive is a service that streams games, it's kind of like netflicks. However, it majorly fails because it needs atleast 5 mbps down to work. It also charges for each game, only slightly less than to actualy buy the game for PC, PS3 or 360 instead of a flat fee to do anything like netflicks. The one good thing is that you can stream to any device, their little console thinger, or even netbooks. I'm thinking they're working with Sony and Microsoft to stream their games to their consoles, just like netflicks does. It is also possible they want to let their players play against players on PSN or Live, I think they currently play on PC servers. It seems to me teh first thing would make more sense.
 

PS3andCOD

Contributor
I don't, the internet reqirements are too high. I can't do that using absolutely all my bandwidth. It also has poor selection, and the game doen't actually belong to you, so if they close you get nothing.
 

M1A1xVIKINGxFTW

Active Member
I don't, the internet reqirements are too high. I can't do that using absolutely all my bandwidth. It also has poor selection, and the game doen't actually belong to you, so if they close you get nothing.
im sure there will be some thing in it to cache the games so it requires less bandwith
 

odingalt

Well-Known Member
Staff member
On-Live is a patent holder of certain media/video compression technology. Some news articles claim that On-Live is now the only company with the technology capable of streaming with low-latency. Low-latency would be required for this kind of application, where the console is actually installed at a server farm somewhere far away from your TV set.

On-Live has the same problem as a lot of media-category startups - lack of content. They need game licensing so that they can increase the variety of games offered by the service. Of course there are a lot of other things about On-Live I don't like as a consumer but I won't talk about that here. My guess is that On-Live is trying to play Sony and Microsoft against each other in a game of fear.

On-Live to Sony "This patented technology is really cool. In fact, we are going to use this technology to put you out of business, because it is so cool. If you don't sign an exclusive deal with us, we'll go to Microsoft with it!"
On-Live to MS: "This patented technology is really cool. In fact, we are going to use this technology to put you out of business, because it is so cool. If you don't sign an exclusive deal with us, we'll go to Sony with it!"

Sony and Microsoft have the distribution, the consumer base, the content - pretty much everything they need. On-Live has a patent, no content, no consumers. They pretty much have some shady lawyer that's good at writing patent applications. My guess is that On-Live has found a strategic way to 'hi-jack' Sony/Microsoft into having to deal with them. I.e. On-Live can probably use their patent to interfere with Sony/Microsoft's plans for their next console, and is going to try to strong-arm their way into the market using their lawyers.

If you subscribe to On-Live, you still have to have a big box in your living room connected to your TV and you still have to have high-speed internet. The advantage is that all games would be on-demand with no downloading, as well as any updates, and theoretically gaming could be a better experience as On-Live would have to provide a host computer. Therefore you wouldn't have the scenario you have now with the COD games where the Host gets more kills than everyone else. (No thanks, Microsoft's shitty live service, for charging me $60 a year and not even providing me with a game host server).

Other services (TiVo, Dish Network, DirecTV, even xbox live) are already trying to move towards an on-demand entertainment experience. With hard drives getting bigger and cheaper, and internet speeds getting faster and faster, I'm not sure that this kind of video compression technology is really needed to provide customers with what they would at least perceive to be an on-demand entertainment experience. We already have it for videos and music and TV. This would just bring on-demand to video games, and put a twist on it.

Interesting topic.
 

PS3andCOD

Contributor
Their site still says it needs 5 mbps of bandwidth though... If I wanted to have that I'd need to pay hundreds of dollars a month. It just doesn' work for a lot of people.
 

odingalt

Well-Known Member
Staff member
I personally doubted the "specialness" of their "patented" video compression technology. 5 mbps requirement, to me, indicates that their particular compression technology must be making improvements on the speed of the encoding - not necessarily improving the compression?

I don't know much about how network games work, but it seems like I was able to play RTCW:ET (free game on PC) just fine on a 1.5mbps DSL connection provided the game server was on the west coast (I live in Washington). I guess I'm jsut not 'into' all the pressure from companies telling us that 'cloud computing' is the most awesome thing going right now. Look what happened to the networks of PS Network, XBOX Live, Sega's network, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, CIA, FBI, NPR even lol.... yes, the cloud is totally awesome - for hackers.
 

M1A1xVIKINGxFTW

Active Member
Their site still says it needs 5 mbps of bandwidth though... If I wanted to have that I'd need to pay hundreds of dollars a month. It just doesn' work for a lot of people.
5mbs? thats not alot at all! most providers...for example my comcast brodband cable ISP has a 15mbps download and 6mbps upload and we only pay 50 dollars a month....test your internet PS3andCOD i can guarantee its faster than you think.. http://www.speedtest.net
 

M1A1xVIKINGxFTW

Active Member
I personally doubted the "specialness" of their "patented" video compression technology. 5 mbps requirement, to me, indicates that their particular compression technology must be making improvements on the speed of the encoding - not necessarily improving the compression?

I don't know much about how network games work, but it seems like I was able to play RTCW:ET (free game on PC) just fine on a 1.5mbps DSL connection provided the game server was on the west coast (I live in Washington). I guess I'm jsut not 'into' all the pressure from companies telling us that 'cloud computing' is the most awesome thing going right now. Look what happened to the networks of PS Network, XBOX Live, Sega's network, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, CIA, FBI, NPR even lol.... yes, the cloud is totally awesome - for hackers.
and also the minecraft service went down for a period of time because of those hackers too...aparently there crusade is over....i guess "Lulzsec" went on a 50 day hacking spree.
 

PS3andCOD

Contributor
5mbs? thats not alot at all! most providers...for example my comcast brodband cable ISP has a 15mbps download and 6mbps upload and we only pay 50 dollars a month....test your internet PS3andCOD i can guarantee its faster than you think.. http://www.speedtest.net

Oh, I know exactly what it is... 1.5 mbps. We live in the country, and we have a wireless connection. They overcharge a lot and we have bad pings and a permanently closed NAT type. It's not very good. This is my provider: http://www.silowireless.com/rates we currently can't get the WiMax packages, so we have the best we can get. The best they sell, other than custom packages, is 6mbps down and 2mbps up. This is the only highspeed provider we can get as far as I know, if we don't have them it's dial-up.
 

M1A1xVIKINGxFTW

Active Member
Oh, I know exactly what it is... 1.5 mbps. We live in the country, and we have a wireless connection. They overcharge a lot and we have bad pings and a permanently closed NAT type. It's not very good. This is my provider: http://www.silowireless.com/rates we currently can't get the WiMax packages, so we have the best we can get. The best they sell, other than custom packages, is 6mbps down and 2mbps up. This is the only highspeed provider we can get as far as I know, if we don't have them it's dial-up.
dang that really sucks dude..hey atleast you have the countryside!
 

PS3andCOD

Contributor
Yeah... The really sad thing is that if our house were on the other side of our property we would have a cable line running by. They're just too cheap to bring it out here to us...
 
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