[JL2010]

Honest question: is anyone here using onlive? How is the gaming experience? Are the visuals, performance and latency acceptable? How are they doing in terms of their sales/subscribers?

I remember reading about it a long time ago thinking that it would be a sign of the future and something I would definitely want to try. It seems to have fallen off of my radar and I don't know anyone who uses their service, and I would consider myself and my friends "hardcore" gamers.

[scrame]

I played through Arkham Asylum on the PC and Arkham City on the OnLive console, and found it ... adequate.

I tried the beta and it didn't even work, but went back when AA was 99 cents and was impressed that they were even able to make a reality. I pre-ordered AC because it came with the console for free, and it was pretty slick.

However, I subscribed to their "channel" and have been pretty disappointed, the games are mostly old or random indie titles that don't always fit the model, and a good number require a mouse/keyboard which you can make work with the console, but is much clunkier than the slick wireless controller (which is _very_ well done).

There are 2 problems: 1) Anything even smelling like a dropped connection boots you entirely out of the game, and can take a few minutes to get back in. This includes just pausing and walking away for 5-10 minutes.

2) The batman games worked because they have a slower, more deliberate input system, and auto-save constantly. Otherwise it just won't be able to keep up.

So, barring licensing, I just don't see it being able to play something that needs a good twitch response time, multi-player, or something that is hard to recover after an immediate drop. So, no diablo, CoD, real-time strategies, or MMOPRGs.

Without those titles, it won't be able to get a lot of traction.

Still, a really awesome technical achievement. The PC executeable is a couple of _megs_ and can then just stream anything, but a lot of gaming needs either fast response time (which you lose with the server round-trip), or the ability to just stop for a few minutes without losing everything you've got.

[Olreich]

MMOs have lots of potential actually. They are built to deal with lots of lag on input, and hide it well.

[scrame]

Right, except that the problem is the client drops and you have to jump through a ton of hoops to get back to the service, which terminates the connection as soon as you drop. Its not really an issue of 'lag' as it is 'not recovering'

[Olreich]

Yes, but in the context of OnLive, connection drops aren't any more horrible than they would be on a regular MMO client. In fact, since the whole problem with MMOs is the distributed nature of them and unpredictable latency to the clients, services like OnLive that put many clients very close to one another in latency could actually improve MMO lag issues.

[corin_]

As a gamer - I was excited to use the beta as soon as I got access, was keen to order the box as soon as possible (ended up getting sent one so didn't need to buy it, but I definitely would have), and I think the entire concept is incredibly cool. Truthfully I've hardly played it and the box is mostly gathering dust in between showing friends "look how cool this is", but then I haven't played any games for a few months, and even when I do play games I'm a PC guy, so take my thoughts with a pinch of salt. For me the performance wasn't quite good enough - could be my internet, might not be, I'm not sure - but it was good enough that it made me think that at some point it will be good enough. (And I have pretty high standards when it comes to FPS and latency.)

As someone who's talked to the company a fair bit through work - I don't have any figures to give you (not that I could say if I knew them, but I don't know them), all I can say is that I haven't heard of any problems or any negative news from them. As far as I'm aware they're doing pretty well so far.

[nakedgremlin]

I absolutely love it. Two player Harry Potter was glitchy, but other experiences (ie. Borderlands, DarkSiders) all performed perfectly. One of the big bonuses was the fact that it's almost device agnostic -- you can play certain games on touch screen, PCs, Macs, and on the OnLive device itself.

[ondrae]

OnLive has been amazing to me. I've bought a few games on it and rented a handful. I live in San Francisco, so my internet was fast enough for good graphics. When I bought Borderlands, there were plenty of other people to multiplayer with.

I'm kind of hoping to never build a gaming PC again.

[Olreich]

The compression quality is typically rather poor (meaning you get artifacts). The graphical quality as of a few months ago was also poor in comparison to your own rig. It's also got latency issues. They get 80ms or higher on average. So, for fast-paced gameplay, that can be an issue. Also, the stream is only 720p, not 1080p or higher. It's amazing for what it does, and I'm sure that some budget-restricted gamers/families use it, but it's not a replacement for powerful hardware 2-3 feet away from you.