GDC: OnLive’s Cloud-Powered Gaming Service To Launch June 17

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Mar 10, 2010

During the GamesBeat keynote at GDC today, OnLive CEO Steve Perlman took the stage to showcase the company’s game streaming technology, which allows gamers to play high quality 3D games without a console — OnLive does all of the intense rendering in the cloud, then streams it back to a lightweight client that will work on nearly any computer (it will work on TVs as well with an adapter). We’ve been hearing about the service for quite a while now (as well as its competitor, OTOY), but now OnLive finally has a solid release date: June 17, 2010. At launch, the service will be available in the 48 contiguous states.

The service will have a $14.95 per month base service fee, and then users will purchase games and rentals on an a la carte model on top of that. You’ll be able to purchase multiple months at a time to get a discount on the service. As a special for early users, OnLive is going to waive the service fee for three months for the first 25,000 users to pre-register at this page.

OnLive’s demos are always impressive. Today, Perlman showcased the service’s ability to play recent games like Crysis on a large TV, as well as on his mobile phone (because all the processing is done in the cloud, even an iPhone can handle it). He also showed off other features that OnLive will offer, like streaming movies and Xbox Live-like community features. It looks great, but OnLive still faces one very major hurdle: latency. Because gamers aren’t actually playing their games on a local machine, there’s a slight lag whenever they do anything. And in the case of ‘twitchy’ games like first person shooters, even 50 milliseconds of lag time can make the difference between a perfect kill and getting destroyed by your opponent. It’s unclear how much lag will be present once OnLive is deployed on a wide scale.

At launch OnLive will be available for PC and Mac only, and a MicroConsole TV adapter (which lets your TV hook up to the cloud service) will appear later this year. 1080p60 will be available in 2011 (Perlman says bandwidth available to consumers is what’s holding this back). International announcements are coming later this year.

Also be sure to check out our past coverage of OnLive competitor OTOY.

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Joe Brooks

So now we know when the company will go out of business, sometime before June 17th, 2010. I love the concept, I just don’t see it ever becoming a reality.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=556205697 Richard Buckingham

I’m really looking forward to checking out OnLive. I was a sceptic (with many) at first but I’m sold.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1498411521 Michael Boyd

Wait, rendering in the cloud?

What?

So there will be a 300 millisecond delay before you see the bullet about to take your head off?

Good luck OnLive, cause this sounds like a disastrous idea!
sr

> OnLive finally has a solid fail date: June 18, 2010.

Fixed it for you.
Adam Gutterman

Congrats – a GDC post. It’s about time, considering this is a huge event is one of the most important businesses on the interwebs.
Sean

That’s pretty lame that the games aren’t included in the price. I thought that was half the point, the other half being you don’t have to have a high end computer to play these games. Oh well.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1406752053 Namanh Hoang

The concept is pretty simple, you make an action on your controller, that tiny fraction of data is sent up to the servers, the servers in the cloud renders that action and sends the results back to you in a video. like remote access. and this loop is continuous and seamless.

I’m excited and can”t wait to see it when it comes out. I’ll definitely be one of the first to sign up. On another note this is going to have huge repercussions across the hardware industry because it will slow decrease the demand for more local hardware upgrades and perhaps even consoles in the long run. With centralized processing, who will win the GPU wars? Nvidia or ATI. Even though NVIDIA is poised to released the long awaited Fermi Chip, my bet will be on ATI only because AMD (ATI parent company) has been working on their Fusion Chip which sources inside AMD tell me will be call and APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) to be released in 2012. Either way one graphics processor will be left out while the other rises, that is unless another competitor to OnLive comes out of the wood work to pick up the remaining GPU manufacturer. Also many casualties will include the numerous board partners like Sapphire, XFX, BFG and eVGA. However their life line will remain intact as they continue to sell older cards to the rest of the world that has yet to experience cloud gaming.

Please add to our review poll for OnLive, it could really use more of your opinions.
http://www.baduku.com/topics/onlive-on-demand-gaming-service_249
You’re wrong

It works. I’ve seen it.
Jamie

There is a lot of negative feeling out there that this is doomed to fail and I sincerely hope they are all wrong. Every demo they do seems to work fine and I know a couple of people in the states who are in the beta and they have said it works great. I hope they manage to scale it well.

Seems like fairly smart pricing as well. Anyone looking at the cost of a new console, let alone an expensive gaming computer, may well be tempted. If they play it right with the pricing of the games with lots of short discounts and cheap renting to encourage spontaneous purchases then publisers and OnLive could make a killing.

I hope this works because it truly is revolutionary and I can’t wait for the revolution.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=556205697 Richard Buckingham

I was thinking the same thing at first… but if you now don’t have to buy a new Gaming PC or upgrades ever again nor a new console or an Xbox live subscription; the value proposition is very very real, so even $180 per year looks pretty good given all those savings; that’s a lot less than the price of just a new video card.

I think the PC and component manufacturers, the console manufacturers and game distributors should all be very very worried. This is great for gamers and game developers though.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=549800561 Jason Storer

But what happens if you choose to no longer use the service? I’m at work so I haven’t scoured the internet, but a quick search hasn’t yielded any details.

Do you register your product key with them to prove you own the game? Or do you buy the game through them in a Steam type environment where you don’t actually tangibly have it in hand? And if so and you quit, what happens?

I’m sure they’ve figured this out, but the lack of details is concerning.
Jon

In general, it’s a great concept, and when paired with Google’s Cisco powered network with 1 Gigabit per second download speeds, it should rock!

However, I can’t see paying $14.95 per month per user and then having to either buy or rent games a la carte. Imagine paying a monthly subscription for cable TV, but not getting any channels included, thus paying for every channel a la carte.

I have two sons, so for the 3 of us it would cost $45 per month or $540 per year, plus game purchases and rentals — I don’t see this working out too well at these rates. Perhaps they are not targeting families.
Trent Ryan

If it works as well as it did during the beta the I will be really impressed. I was a beta tester and I loved it.
http://playstation3gameconsole.com/?p=776 GDC Playstation 3 Motion Fighter (utilizing PS3 motion controller)

[...] GDC: OnLive’s Cloud-Powered Gaming Service To Launch June 17 [...]
http://www.geekspeakblog.net/blog/?p=103 Geek Speak – 3/11/2010 | Geek Speak

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http://www.eyepartner.com Catalin

Yes I agree with Jon, they have to change the perspective a little bit. Anyway from what I’ve seen looks like a great thing, the service is a game changer. Here are some demos I found:
http://www.thehdstandard.com/streaming-technology/onlive-streaming-video-games-on-demand/

Catalin
Professional Streaming Consultant
Quakkabyte

“… ability to play recent games like Crysis on a large TV, as well as on his mobile phone …”

My question is this: “Why?”

Seriously … so much concern about Crysis and mobile phone gaming really make me believe that Steve Pearlman has his head (literally) in the Cloud.

Lag, scalability issues, and market confusion alone will kill this product. If there’s any traction at all, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony will be sure to take note and will crush any hope of profitability by dropping prices for DLC.

As someone who has money for games, I would not buy into this. Why? Well simply put, it’s more attractive for me to invest in games for the PS3 or XBOX 360 (even though I’m a big PC fan). Buy a game and you own it, you can sell or trade it, it has substance. Not so with online-only content. For the younger demographic, it makes more sense too … and they don’t have credit cards to pay the bill.

Sorry guys, it is a neat technology … but this is another example of “entrepreneurs” trying something without really thinking about the reality of things. Younger gamers are fickle and cheap. Older gamers want more from their experience. And frankly, nobody gives a crap about Crysis.
http://videogame-review.org/gdc-onlive%e2%80%99s-cloud-powered-gaming-service-to-launch-june-17 GDC: ONLIVE’S CLOUD-POWERED GAMING SERVICE TO LAUNCH JUNE 17

[...] GDC: OnLive’s Cloud-Powered Gaming Service To Launch June 17 [...]
Ilan Ben Menachem

I’m really looking forward to checking out OnLive. I was a sceptic (with many) at first but I’m sold.
Marco

I think OnLive has great potential and I can't wait to see what happens with it. If it is successful then it will change our gaming world forever.

Cheers,
Marco (mafia wars strategy)