OnLive Gaming Service Offers Functional HD Gaming *ANYWHERE*

[DarkPacMan77]

One of the most fantastic gaming devices/ services I recognized from this year's E3 conference was "OnLive". OnLive is a play on the word, "online", and for fully-justifiable reasons. With OnLive, any compatible device that can connect and run the OnLive client with at least a download rate of 5mb/s will be able to play HD gaming content wherever they have internet access. The content is streamed through the client to whatever independent device that is compatible with the service and then is able to play HD content on that device.

At E3, the game shown off as a working title was Borderlands, an exceptional first-person shooter MMO game. The device that the game was played on was none other than Apple's new iPad, a device known for being "just a large iPod touch".

Microsoft has been questioned for a long time about making a hand-held gaming device and have dodged questions. Now, it seems that they are at least a little bit closer to providing such a device. Now, however, it seems any device capable of creating a method of input, like the iPad's touch screen or perhaps a USB peripheral gaming controller (not mentioned, but to be expected) will be able to stream HD gaming content that looks just as great as the modern gaming generation as played on Xbox 360 - but seemingly limitless.

This type of technology truly brings to question the concept of the future of hand-held devices and battery power/ consumption standards. For me, personally, I look at this type of technology and see visions of the 90's when Sega Channel was still pumping.

http://www.fpstime.com/2010/06/onlive-r ... e-e3-2010/

-DarkPacMan77-

Holy Crap this is great. I would totally buy. I just do not want touch conrtolls. this can be amazing. Totally cool.

[DarkPacMan77]

Holy Crap this is great. I would totally buy. I just do not want touch conrtolls. this can be amazing. Totally cool.

Yeah, I agree completely. I think for many titles, touch control would be entirely sufficient and wouldn't cause any problems, but for intense games where you need to be on-time and in-the-moment a touch screen just wouldn't be the best idea. But also keep in mind that this technology is still being developed and is new. They haven't even had time to come up with controller setups and stuff for third party devices. I mean, Microsoft is running their neat bit of technology through a client on their competitor's product because they don't even have a device themselves that can currently support it well enough - that should be an indication of how "early" this technology is on the timeline.

I almost think they should have waited until they had a good enough device made by Microsoft themselves that would support it. As of right now, it almost looks like Microsoft is advertising that people get their competitor's iPad in order to use their technology, which many people may interpret as Microsoft saying, "well, we haven't come out with a device that is cool or good enough to run our technology, but our competitor has!". That's not necessarily the message I'd like to put out to my consumers, but then again, I'm not in charge of that decision either lol.

-DarkPacMan77-

[crait]

By "Anywhere," you actually mean "wherever they have internet access."
See, the problem with this is that it won't work for handhelds such as the PSP or DS or even the iPad and iPhone like I was discussing on another forum unless you actually download the game. I know that cellular signals and WiMax will give a lot more areas OnLive compatibility, but you won't be able to bring games on the road if you're traveling through an area that has little support. This means if you're riding with someone in a car and you're going somewhere where you have to drive through a bunch of tunnels like Dallas has, or if you're going through the Californian mountain range, or you're passing through an area that has a random dead or weak spot... I travel a lot and would rather have a downloaded game on my handheld than rely on a company to stream it to me. And, what if you've bought a lot of games and suddenly the company goes bankrupt or their servers die or some random act of God destroys their headquarters? You would loose the availability of your game... And these companies won't be able to always support streaming the same games to people. Look at what Microsoft did to all of the original XBox titles' online capabilities...

By "Anywhere," you actually mean "wherever they have internet access."
See, the problem with this is that it won't work for handhelds such as the PSP or DS or even the iPad and iPhone like I was discussing on another forum unless you actually download the game. I know that cellular signals and WiMax will give a lot more areas OnLive compatibility, but you won't be able to bring games on the road if you're traveling through an area that has little support. This means if you're riding with someone in a car and you're going somewhere where you have to drive through a bunch of tunnels like Dallas has, or if you're going through the Californian mountain range, or you're passing through an area that has a random dead or weak spot... I travel a lot and would rather have a downloaded game on my handheld than rely on a company to stream it to me. And, what if you've bought a lot of games and suddenly the company goes bankrupt or their servers die or some random act of God destroys their headquarters? You would loose the availability of your game... And these companies won't be able to always support streaming the same games to people. Look at what Microsoft did to all of the original XBox titles' online capabilities...

Still brand new. If you download the game its on your system/console/hand held. so internet access wont matter. 3G or 4G could (doubtfully) be integrated. But its still in dev Micro still needs to make their device that will handle it. I am exctried to the max.

think about if it gets hacked... PS1, PS2, PS3, N64, Gamecube, Xbox 360, Xbox, and more to be played on this beauty. =D

[DarkPacMan77]

No, No, No

The device STREAMS the content. I think they have high-end servers that will RUN the game and then STREAM it to a compatible portable device that has a download rate of over 5mb.

If hacked, that doesn't mean that the device will be able to run other game system emulators. The device hardware can be exceeded because it's like Sony's Location Free device that streams the information to another display using another machine's hardware. There isn't an actual "device" here that "runs" the games. There will be MANY devices that can run this service, including the iPad. So when you talk about "hacking this device", you're really only talking about "hacking the iPad", in which case only things that can run on the iPad's power would be able to be emulated. The iPad doesn't actually have the power to run the Xbox 360, that's why the game content is streamed.

Hope that helps you understand.

-DarkPacMan77-

No, No, No

The device STREAMS the content. I think they have high-end servers that will RUN the game and then STREAM it to a compatible portable device that has a download rate of over 5mb.

If hacked, that doesn't mean that the device will be able to run other game system emulators. The device hardware can be exceeded because it's like Sony's Location Free device that streams the information to another display using another machine's hardware. There isn't an actual "device" here that "runs" the games. There will be MANY devices that can run this service, including the iPad. So when you talk about "hacking this device", you're really only talking about "hacking the iPad", in which case only things that can run on the iPad's power would be able to be emulated. The iPad doesn't actually have the power to run the Xbox 360, that's why the game content is streamed.

Hope that helps you understand.

-DarkPacMan77-

OH okay. dang. I hope Micro releases a true hand held then. this sounds to me like you can play in your house to stream to the device running the program. Still cool idea tho.

[crait]

I don't think they would stream the game and run it on the server.... Opera does that for it's browsing on the iPhone and that means that when new games come out, they are gonna run slower than they would when less people played...
I bet that the system will steam data and process it on the console.

[DarkPacMan77]

I bet that the system will steam data and process it on the console.

I'm not sure exactly HOW it works yet, but the iPad is NOT as powerful as an Xbox 360, so saying the data for the game is processed on the iPad doesn't make sense to me. You can change between titles wirelessly, so the device isn't connecting to your Xbox at home because... well, how can you wirelessly open a game case and swap the discs? So it's not the same as Location Free from Sony, but that means that some sort of virtual machine through the service itself must be running the games. Either that, or the little device you connect to for the service that plugs into the wall would have to be processing that data, and it doesn't look like it's designed as a gaming-capable device with proper ventilation etc.

It's a new tech and I'm not sure how it works, but the only thing that makes sense to me right now is that they have gaming servers/ VM's and that they are able to run the games from files, like ISO's, but from a server that they control. Either way it works, it's still amazing, but why is Microsoft endorsing their SWEEEEEET new gaming service to be used on Apple's iPad? Why won't Microsoft just make their own device? The questions keep coming.

-DarkPacMan77-

What I've always heard about this program is that the game just runs on the machines at the headquarters and it is just streamed to the computer of the user. That's about it right?