Doubting OnLive’s Potential

onlive1Last week, Warner announced the new micro-console, OnLive. As we all know, OnLive gets rid of the need for a console, as all of the hardware is actually taken care of through cloud servers, which play the game and send a video signal back to your TV. Well, opinions have sounded from gamers far and wide, and while many are skeptical, few doubt that this thing could have potential in the long term.

But what do the experts think? There’s an article over at Eurogamer in which some of OnLive’s claims are analyzed, particularly the ability to encode video at a fast rate and then transmit the signal to your TV from the cloud servers. Apparently, in order to achieve this kind of encode, the encoders would have to be working at 1000 fps. Even the current best encoding technology on the market can’t come close to doing what OnLive claims to do.

Hit the jump to see what the author says on the matter.

It’s like Ford saying that the new Fiesta’s cruising speed is in excess of the speed of sound.To give some idea of the kind of leap OnLive reckons it is delivering, I consulted one of the world’s leading specialists in high-end video encoding, and his response to OnLive’s claims included such gems as ‘Bulls***’ and ‘Hahahahaha!’

It’s definitely an interesting read, and I’d highly recommend checking it out. What do you guys think of this OnLive stuff now that it’s not as fresh? Many are saying cloud computing might be the future of the console business. What about you?

Source- Eurogamer

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11 thoughts on “Doubting OnLive’s Potential”

  1. Oh, how I doubt OnLive. Even if they can encode like that, there’s no way they can achieve 720p, and I doubt they’ll be able to eliminate compression artifacts, either. Heck, Netflix can’t stream in 720p even on FIOS unless the tubes are completely empty. Even in SD, I don’t think it’ll work. OnLive, in my opinion, is doomed to be one of the big flops of gaming. Let’s give cloud rendering more time to mature before making a huge step like this. Also, playing “PC” games on a gamepad…I hope they support mouse & keyboard for RTS titles.

  2. Yeah, I totally agree. It’s just one of those ambitious things that seems like it can’t work for another 10 years, but they’re rolling it out before our broadband capacity can even semi-handle it.

  3. Does this rely on my broadband speed? If so, I’ll get to play one game a year (decade if I want to play MGS4 or something else in the region of 49GB).

  4. They’ll be the first ones to introduce laggs to the single-player experience.

    A fullHD picture weighs about 60mb. You need at least 25 FPS to play a game. So you need a 210 mb/s connection speed. WOW!

  5. You already got my other article on it saying the same thing 😀

    Its sad, the idea and concept are great, but it just wont work. Ahead of its time…

    Dreamcast anyone?

  6. I think connection issues and internet access quality will really limit OnLive. I’m sure OnLive might do well if it keeps to smaller companies, but it probably won’t replace consoles.
    If OnLive makes its own internet access network that’s for the games exclusively, it might cut down on lag and it could set a standard for internet connection levels.

  7. This thing might work on the “Grid” thing they’re setting up in Europe. But on the internet? No way, not unless they plan on all of their customers having their own T1 lines. And that’s without worrying about the encoding.

    I do believe that server side rendering is the future of gaming, but right now the hardware simply isn’t available.

  8. Well dudes, it’s a great idea. One day we could maybe play awesome games, just like finding videos on youtube! But, the time is not right…

    Unless, they downgrade the realistic quality, so they can stream stuff with less fps. Like something like quake live(An awesome free online game, go check it! NOW!). It has low quality than the nextgen games, but has more quality than quake arena had.

  9. If they’re releasing it now, it may not be able to work. But I say give technology 5 years. Maybe even just 2. And it will be possible.

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