

OnLive Game Service Shutdown, Sony Acquirer - shurcooL
http://support.onlive.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/237/

======
shurcooL
OnLive had some of the best tech for cloud gaming that I've experienced, but
it seems like they could not get it to take off (I'd say due to very limited
game selection, nothing new coming).

Sony is clearly going to use the tech to improve their PlayStation Now remote
play. And hopefully have better luck with it, since they have access to many
new and old games.

The idea behind cloud gaming has many advantages, for things like instantly
trying demos, to playing old school games that aren't even available on your
platform, gaming on MacBook Airs, etc.

I was a huge fan of OnLive in the beginning, but given that the service was
semi-dead the last few years (no new games), I hope its tech will be better
utilized by Sony.

~~~
mitchell_h
I would agree their tech was AMAZING. Even on my rather not so hot charter
cable and very outdated 6 year old laptop i was able to play their latest
games. The problem was the connection. I could feel the lag. I really tried to
make it work but the lag was just to much. It wasn't onlive's fault. the ping
time was just to much.

~~~
frik
> I could feel the lag

That's exactly the problem. If the "ping" to the datacenter is too high, the
gaming experience will be not great (lags). As the mouse/keyboard/gamepad
inputs have to do a round-trip to the datacenter that is more problematic than
traditional multiplayer games. You need several data enters around the world,
near the gamers. Even than it will be unsuitable for certain games like high
speed multiplayer ego shooters (Counter Strike, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament
'99) where even a minimal lag of a wireless mouse/keyboard is noticeable and
wired gaming input devices are used.

~~~
yazaddaruvala
So what I always found interesting was that they didn't use the ping to their
advantage.

Most online games have the ping problem anyways. Imagine everything in a [] is
in the same datacenter or house.

[client] ------ [game server] ------ [other_clients]

[client] ------ [onlive server - game server ] ------ [other_clients]

And it doesn't really matter how the other clients are connected, they could
be using OnLive as well. This would work amazingly well for online shooters or
MMOs.

~~~
rasz_pl
yes, shooters with >70ms latency BEFORE data even starts going out of your box
into the display, plus additional 20-50ms before keypresses are even
registered on the game code running hardware is the way of the future

------
tdicola
It's interesting to me that about 5 years ago John Carmack was talking up game
streaming quite a bit in his annual QuakeCon talk. From what I remember he was
pretty confident it would be the future of gaming at the time. However I'd
love to know what went wrong and why game streaming as a whole has pretty much
completely fizzled. Was it just too much hype and optimism that the technology
would improve and latency wasn't an issue, or perhaps bad business models that
doomed it from the start?

IMHO game streaming is pretty much doomed if the future of gaming is ultra low
latency and high framerates for virtual reality. There's just no way a
streamed game could work with Occulus Rift, etc. and have low enough input and
display latency to be believable.

edit: I think it was his 2012 QuakeCon talk: [https://youtu.be/wt-
iVFxgFWk?t=3522](https://youtu.be/wt-iVFxgFWk?t=3522)

~~~
forthefuture
The problem with streaming will always be that computers get better faster
than Comcast (or w/e internet service you have) does. Just going off a quick
search for GPUs, pretty much every metric has doubled in the last 5 years. My
internet speed over the same period has literally not changed. Not to say that
the GPU is directly responsible, but that if memory usage in games is growing
at even a linear rate (which is conservative), it's still impossible for
internet speeds to match that improvement.

------
billconan
I kinda believe in streaming app. Onlive's problem is coming out too early.

music streaming, for example, came out long time ago. only recent attempts
succeeded, such as spotify.

the internet needs to be improved to support streamed gaming.

~~~
mirashii
I think that there's pretty little that can be done in terms of infrastructure
improvements to the internet that will really help. We have more than enough
bandwidth to stream these things at full resolution, but latency will always
be the killer, at least among the less casual gamers. Short of cutting down
the speed of light, what we can do to help there is pretty limited beyond
building out datacenters in physical proximity to anyone who might want to use
it.

~~~
cwyers
Right. The speed of light is a hard limit here. The only way to cut latency is
to move closer to the user. The closest you can possibly be to the user is on
premise.

~~~
yazaddaruvala
Which to be honest is not a bad idea at all...

Imagine playing your PS4 games (rendered and streamed from your PS4) on your
MacBook, or any screen connected to your local network?

I've wanted this for years. Infact in university I even did all the
theoretical design to build myself this server. As is normal, I learnt a lot,
couldn't spend enough time to make it work though :(

~~~
sp332
You can do this but only to other Sony-approved devices. Xperia and Vita I
think. There is an unofficial app to enable this on more Android devices:
[http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-
games/ps4-remot...](http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-
games/ps4-remote-play-android-thread-t3068225)

------
meesterdude
Sad to see them go, but it's been a long time coming.

I played through just cause 2 entirely on onlive, and wouldn't have been able
to play it at all otherwise. And being able to demo any game instantly was
cool too.

Ultimately, it was poor leadership and poor title selection that killed them.
I would have used them a lot more, otherwise.

Some really cool tech - i expect we'll see it become more mainstream over
time.

------
malkia
Sony acquired Gaikai time ago, and now OnLive

[https://www.gaikai.com/](https://www.gaikai.com/)

------
newman314
Too bad they didn't offer a migration path for existing games to either Steam
saves or PSN.

~~~
teamonkey
They often didn't offer a migration path for their own service, as they'd
frequently remove games. OK, contracts expire, but they were also flaky and
didn't look after their existing customer base.

------
cordite
Thr least they could do is hold a patch up for a year that would allow people
to general purpose the hardware they have.

This is one of the reasons why I am reluctant to go with technology that has
almost no hope for an alternate backend when things shut down.

------
curiously
boy I'd hate to have paid full sticker price to manipulate a streaming video
on the screen than buy the actual game itself.

~~~
serf
especially when the company (and your investment in the game they are housing)
goes poof.

that's also a gripe of mine pertaining to any walled-garden, though.

~~~
curiously
I have similar worries about Steam but at least we still get the games. I miss
having the physical case and the cd like the good old 90s and early 2000s.

