OnLive Game System cloud gaming console The OnLive cloud gaming service was launched in the UK in September, and I was impressed by the fact that it allowed me to play a wide range of PC games on my Mac – without requiring Boot Camp and a copy of Windows, or any virtualisation trickery. OnLive cloud gaming system microconsole The USB ports are for charging …
They gave these away free at the eurogamer expo this year, tbh I haven't even had it out the box. Played about 5 mins online on my laptop and wasn't to impressed, though my laptop is old and my broadband is sloooooow. (i should also say I was on WiFi which isn't optimal for latency) it has huge potential for social gaming though, you can each others play real time etc so for tourneys it could be awesome. Just needs fibre to make it happen!
If you have the playpack you get a 30% (I think) reduction on the cost of buying the full games.
As a casual gamer I love it, and so do my kids. Being able to play a game for 1/2 hour is great, over Halloween they gave you access to some games for free for 3 days.
But, it chomps through you BB allowance, my daughter played lego harry potter for an hour or so a day for a couple of weeks and managed to rack up about 3-4Gb a day!
Certainly better than Lovefilm - which, while cheap doesn't really fit into my lifestyle... I get a game sent to me and it just sits there for days, even weeks lately because I've got no time to play it. If I send it back, I've only got to put it on my list and wait for a slot all over again.
And it certainly beats downloading, especially on a 4-8Mb/s connection. That's one thing I hate about MMOs - even if you buy a new release retail box, you still have to wait all day before you can play because it invariable has to download (sometimes GBs) of data.
Yeah... instant play, even at reduced quality, has an undeniable attraction. I reckon they'll set lots of these, I'm already thinking of buying a couple as xmas pressies.
I bet this munches through your monthly bandwidth allowance like there is no tomorrow. That needs to be taken into account as will the fact that network connection quality at peak times may be an issue on some lesser service providers.
One thing not mentioned is that if there servers have problems or there are network difficulties then your gaming experience will be wrecked. The Forza XBox servers were having issues last might while I was playing a game with 12 other chums. We had to give up in the end but thankfully I was still able to play single player. However with a "cloud" console you'll be stuffed either way.
It's an interesting concept but it will never reach the market penetration of the main consoles.
Is the back-end infrastructure PCs, or consoles like 360/PS3... they could in theory do either I suppose. Or do they run multiple VMS on a single PC - I imagine that would be quite tricky for resource hogging games so I imagine they need one box for each current player?
I'd love to be able to hire their setup for my own games/software - being able to do rendering & complex logic on a proper PC then pipe the results to an iPad would be great for the scientific/medical training software I work on.
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