

HTC invests $40M in OnLive - pkchen
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704422204576131093457647036.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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danteembermage
I hope Onlive succeeds (they really have some amazing technology) but I would
really hate to have my fate tied to the fickle finger of the big content
publishers. They've already had issues with EA (Mass Effect and Assasins Creed
have been pulled).

Their current library emphasizes shooters when Onlive is really perfect for
casual players with lots of disposable income who may be more interested in
Lego Batman than F.E.A.R. and are much more comfortable with $X per month than
$X _100 for a gaming rig or even $X_ 10 for a console.

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hartror
"To Continue Reading Subscribe Now" I get that the key piece of information is
in the snippet but it is frustrating none the less.

Some coverage we can all read: [http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/htc-to-
invest-40-million-...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/htc-to-
invest-40-million-into-onlive-to-help-with-games-on-smar/)

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pkchen
you can google search the article title and click in from there to access the
whole thing :)

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lowglow
I just don't understand how they're going to conquer the network latency
issue. Latency is everything to gamers. In theory this is an amazing idea with
one huge gaping critical flaw -- I look forward to seeing them solve it.
Quantum entanglement, anyone?

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hartror
Me neither, all the coverage I have seen (and I haven't been following too
closely I have to admit) has pointed to some magical prediction algorithm
they've supposedly developed and having very local servers. Given on a great
day I get a 30ms ping to servers in my city this would mean at best there is a
60ms delay between me hitting fire and seeing the result. Given that[1] is
below the 24fps threshold you need to have to perceive smooth motion I expect
you will be able to perceive the delays.

Perhaps they can colocate their servers with ISPs or telco exchanges or
something but will that be enough and can that truely scale given the
consistent hardware upgrade requirements they're going to have?

[1] 1000ms/60ms = 16.7fps

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sgk284
What does the latency between performing an action and seeing the result have
to do with the FPS at which the game is streaming into my monitor? If OnLive
is sending me 60FPS, but my latency is 60ms, is just means that everything I
see/do will lag by 60 ms... but I'm still seeing 60FPS of action. You likely
won't notice the lag, and if you do then your senses will adjust rapidly to
the slight lag and then you won't notice any more.

Latency is not their problem here.

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winthrowe
It is for me. The round trip lag between moving my mouse and my viewport
moving made it impossible for me to reasonably play Borderlands when I tried
out the OnLive system. It may be ok for casual games, but lag between input
and display is a far worse experience than an equivalent amount of network
lag, which games typically have prediction code to deal with.

