OnLive Will Fall While PS3, Xbox, and Wii Stand Tall
It is no secret that as time changes so does technology, roughly about every 3-4 years. The only thing constant in the world is change. In the gaming world, a technological change breeds competition. Think about it, when there was the Atari, then came NES, then when Genesis came, Super NES appeared, etc… Well it seems as the evolution of gaming has not begun to slow down especially with the upcoming release of the new video game platform OnLive. OnLive looks to steal the thunder from the video game Juggernauts Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, but Playstation ThEvolution believes that OnLive will not stand a chance.
Announced at the Game Developers Conference in 2009, Onlive is an on-demand video game platform. This will give gamers the ability to access PC and console games instantly, without having customer’s pockets sucked dry by other gaming consoles and not to mention the amount of convenience.
The skepticism about OnLive out weighs any chance of it competing with other consoles. It will be technically difficult to transfer a substantial mount of data that a high definition game would require. In order to achieve the necessary graphical performance, OnLive will provide 1 ms latency in compressing 720p 60 frames a second. This will require what Matt Peckham from PC world considers “deterministic broadband”. That is “a guaranteed, non-shared, uninterruptible speed” in which broadband has not fully accomplished just yet. To make matters worse, the game data will be stored on the OnLive servers. What does this mean? This means any games purchased are not actually owned by the user. Are you kidding me?!?! So if OnLive as a company was to go under or if the server was unavailable (as some online game servers do), this means you are just fresh out of luck.
Another reason OnLive will not be able to clash with the titans is the online multi-player feature. Since it was first introduced, the online multi-player feature has pushed games to a higher plateau. Games such as Killzone 2, Halo, Call of Duty, etc.., have really set the precedence with their great online feature. Playstation and Xbox have been able to successfully provide gamers with the ability to enjoy the online multi-player. Unfortunately OnLive is not equipped to duplicate the same experience. In order to prevent any lag, they are limiting online multi-player to ONLY regional servers. This means if you want to play a friend in another state or country in Madden it won’t happen. I think I speak for the majority when I say that playing people thousands and thousands a mile away makes the online experience incredible.
With OnLive’s shortcomings, the 3 headed monsters will continue to dominate the gaming world as they are currently doing. The faster OnLive comes the faster it will be sharing dust bunnies with dreamcast.
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I think your wrong. But Im not surprised of this opinion on a playstation site.
Posted on April 17th, 2009 at 10:54 am
@ tretle
There is no bias, even though its a ps3 website I support Wii and Xbox. I feel that it just cant compete the other consoles.
This is an open forum, please share your thoughts.
Posted on April 17th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Hi Tretle, if you don’t mind could you elaborate on why you believe OnLive will be a success? In all honesty you never can tell with our ever changing society what will happen with most newly introduced products, especially a completely new gaming platform. However, based on our articles argument I am interested in why you think different.
Posted on April 17th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
In the history of consumer technology there is always a point where there’s a paradigm shift, Onlive is just that. We have played video games (at least i have) in the same manner for about 32 years (i’m a true vet), i’ll say that again, 32 years! Thats a lot of consoles, controllers, cartridges, cd’s, memory cards, etc. It is only inevitable that a paradigm shift will happen. A similar example is with music. We went from records, to 8-track, to cassette, to cd, and now digital downloads- music on demand. Of course, video games are a lot more sophisticated then a music file but the principle is the same- ITS ALL DIGITAL.
Whenever something new is introduced you will have people who will fear it and people who will defend the present technology,many of you have showed these responses by reading your post. This is natural and expected but it will not stop the inevitable- VIDEO GAMES WILL BE ON DEMAND IN THE NEAR FUTURE. Lets stop thinking as fans and think like businessmen. If you are a maker of games would you rather pay Sony a licensing fee or cut Sony out of the loop and get paid directly? We all know the answer to that. The reason you hear people in the industry who speak against Onlive is because they DON’T want it to work because it will take away money from a lot of fatcats. The only question that matters at this present time is WILL IT WORK NOW? I don’t know for sure, there are a lot of valid concerns and it may stumble out of the gate but that will not stop this type of service from eventually happening. When Microsoft ushered in Xbox Live Sony and Nintendo brushed the idea off saying it was not time for online service, the infrastructure was not ready, maybe so, but it did not stop Microsoft and look what happened- Xbox Live is the number one online service for game consoles.
Onlive is the start of the inevitable future of video games, you don’t have to embrace it now but one day we all will, just like we did with the microwave oven.
E-MAN
Posted on April 17th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Eman3d, very well said!
Posted on April 17th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
@ Eman3d
I agree that one day games will become digital but I was speakin for the present. If i’m not mistaken the same people who make onlive are the same people who make webtv. I can’t think of anybody who actually owns webtv so I guess its going to take a while for this change to take place.
On a side not you said that when microsoft ushered in Xbox live that nitendo and sony said it wasn’t time. Correct me if i’m wrong but didn’t playstation 2 have online service first?
Posted on April 17th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
R2 DEUCE, I replied to your original article on the OnLiveFans.com discussion board. I’ve addressed the main points you’ve brought against the OnLive service.
With regards to your recent comment. Steve Perlman, the CEO of OnLive, was also involved with Quicktime technology. He has many years of industry experience, and has spent many years working to develop the OnLive technology. While it is not invalid to be skeptical of the OnLive service, I believe you’re shooting it down too quickly.
Posted on April 18th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
We won’t be 100% sure if onlive will be as good as they are saying it will be or if it will even work until it launches but I am optimistic that it will work out. They have been working on it for over 7 years testing it in hundreds of homes with all types of variables such as different internet service providers, routers, etc. They did their homework on this project and then some. Also, they have ea games among other top publishers right by their side, I don’t think they would sign on if they weren’t at least 95% sure that they would be a success. eman3d is right, it is inevitable. And I think there are going to be a lot of people who are going to be surprised happy customers during and years after the launch. But then again, ya never know. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Posted on April 18th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
It’s kind of funny that people are treating this as a revolutionary concept - this is exactly what the Phantom was supposed to do.
I agree that OnLive is going to have a tough time of it, but not for the reasons you describe. It’s going to struggle because the economy sucks and it’s just plain hard to break into the console market with a new machine with an unfamiliar name behind it. There are a lot more Neo-Geos and N-Gages in video game history than there are Xboxes.
I think you’re off base with your other points. For starters, broadband throughput is such an integral part of the concept that it seems a little silly to say that it’s the make-or-break feature. That’s obvious - it’s like saying a game console would be really good, except it can’t play video games. If OnLive can’t deliver the goods, there is no OnLive and it dies a deserved death.
Having said that, I don’t think it’s going to require as much bandwidth as you think it will. One of the selling points for OnLive for the PC crowd has been that you’ll be able to play games at higher resolutions and detail levels than your computer can actually handle. The standalone version is clearly too small to hold the hardware needed to process HD-quality games.
I don’t know yet how OnLive is supposed to work, but the only way I see for them to deliver on that promise is to have the servers do all of the data crunching and then stream the output to you. In other words, you’d only need enough bandwidth to stream video and upload controller inputs.
I also don’t think the regional multiplayer will be a big issue. Obviously, people like playing with their friends online, but it’s also pretty easy to make new online buddies. This isn’t a deal breaker.
Not having access to your games if there are server problems or the company vanishes is a valid issue. There are going to be people who refuse to buy into OnLive because of this, but there are plenty of people who refuse to use Steam for the same reason, and Valve is doing just fine.
Posted on April 19th, 2009 at 4:19 am
@ R2 DEAUCE
I know you are a Sony fanboy but please do your homework when it comes to what sytems did ‘this and that’ first.
Posted on April 19th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
You know Xbox was the before PlayStation and you also know Dreamcast was before Xbox, don’t you?
Posted on April 19th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Eman3d, please enlighten me. When you say Xbox was before Playstation, what are you referring to? If you are referring to who offered the first online service then that would be Sony Playstation 2. In fact the first console gaming online experience was offered on the Playstation 2 in Japan July 19, 2001. Thereafter the U.S. was introduced to the original SOCOM online on the Playstation 2, August 27, 2002. This was officially the first online console experience in the U.S. Thereafter, in the US, Microsoft offered online gaming through their new service, Xbox LIVE Nov 15, 2002.
Just some food for thought.
Posted on April 19th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
That’s not entirely true, Shadowolf: the Dreamcast came equipped with a 56k modem. There wasn’t a tremendous amount you could do with it, and it wasn’t broadband, but it was there.
What Microsoft did that hadn’t been done before was to provide an integrated online solution. With the Dreamcast and PS2, servers were provided and maintained by the publishers of games, so there wasn’t any unified user experience or standard interface. As a longtime computer nerd, I never had problems with the piecemeal approach, but Xbox Live made online play easily accessible to people who never had to worry about TCP/IP configurations and had no desire to replicate the experience on their console.
Maybe OnLive is about to pull off a similar realignment of the online experience, maybe not. It’s important to keep in mind that saying “online distribution is inevitable” isn’t nearly the same thing as saying “OnLive will succeed,” regardless of whether or not the first assertion is actually true.
Posted on April 19th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
@ eman3d
Ok well i’ll stay a fanboy, its all good
Since you know every thing cuz u worked in the “industry” and you can tell people what kind of High Definition Tv to buy when you don’t even own one, please enlighten me cuz if i’m not mistaken the the PS2 came out in 2000 and xbox came out in 02. So how can xbox have the online service before playstation 2 when it didn’t even exist?
Posted on April 19th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Jsnbase, you are right about the Dreamcast coming equipped with 56k however, as you stated there was never a game on the Dreamcast that was enjoyed by the multitude online. Regardless of the independent servers that had not been streamlined by Sony or Sega for that matter, SOCOM was the first online played console game to date.
In regards to the point you made by stating;
[“online distribution is inevitable” isn’t nearly the same thing as saying “OnLive will succeed,” regardless of whether or not the first assertion is actually true.]
I couldn’t agree more.
Posted on April 20th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Phantasy Star Online released in late 2000 in Japan and early 2001 in North America on the Dreamcast. SOCOM shows up in mid-2002.
Posted on April 20th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
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