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Why You Shouldn’t Give up on OnLive Just Yet

Posted 04/01/09 at 02:00:51 AM  by Nathan Grayson

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Doing the impossible can certainly score you all manner of fame and publicity, but as online gaming service OnLive has recently proven, merely alluding to the fact that you intend to do the impossible can earn just as many ears. Last week, after hearing about the service only a few days prior, gamers looked on with a mix of horror and grim satisfaction as OnLive’s big talker received his first stern talking-to, courtesy of Eurogamer’s Richard Leadbetter.

Now, though, OnLive CEO Steve Perlman is firing back. Check out his retorts below.

Problem #1: Servers are too expensive.

“Regarding server costs, [Leadbetter] does not understand server economics. It doesn’t matter how many subscribers you have per server. It matters how much revenue you earn per server.… OnLive servers earn many dollars per user each month (many orders of magnitude more than a CPM-based business), and when one user is offline, another user is online, so even a server that is only serving one user at a time (e.g. for Crysis), is reused by many users each month.”

“And lastly, the cost of a server is much less than a home gamer PC: we don’t have the case, disk drive, optical drive, etc. And we don’t have to worry about retail markup, customer service, etc.”
Problem #2: OnLive’s encoder can’t possibly run at 1000fps.

“He’s confusing compression latency (1ms) with frame time. The frame time is NOT 1ms (which would imply 1000 fps). It’s 16.7ms (which implies 60fps). Just as linear video compression time is much HIGHER latency than one frame time (e.g. 500ms latency does NOT imply a 2fps frame rate), interactive video compression is much LOWER latency that one frame time.”

Perlman also concluded by noting that many “top-tier game publishers” spent years behind the curtain with OnLive, verifying that their technology is more than just smoke and mirrors. Otherwise, one can infer, they wouldn’t have thrown their support behind OnLive in the first place.

Seems pretty air-tight to us. OnLive launches this fall. We’ll be there on day one, slurping down every last bit of pudding, searching tirelessly for the proof.

COMMENTS:11
TAGS: gaming, Software, news, onlive
COMMENTS
avatarBeta

Submitted by Geeksquadmyss on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 1:49pm

The day it was announce they had a beta sign and i signed up as soon as i could, it starts this summer i believe so we should know more about how it works by then.

 As far internet goes how many gamers dont have at least a 4meg connection? hell at the least everyone who plays Xbox live will be able to play this.  I dont pay that much for Comcast and i have a 6meg connection. As far as ISP controlling bandwidth i.e capping and throttling, for the most part throttling is only a problem for torrenting and caps that are in place as few as there may or may not be ( i dont agree with them) but they are not small 250gigs i think for Comcast is what i read in MaxPC a few months back. Which is a lot of porn to download and a lot of playing WoW to max out a cap like that.  

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avatarmmmmm pudding

Submitted by zstadt on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 1:42pm

But in all seriousness, I hope this works.  The idea looks pretty cool.

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avatarI am all for it if it works!

Submitted by zodi on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 8:23am

If it isn't smoke and mirrors as was said in the article then this is could be a great idea.  Now performance has yet to be measured.  The major issue I see with it, is you can't control your back bone to the internet.  So depending on where you are or your ISP, the service will be a flop or a hit.  Also depends if they keep a decent server/client ratio.

 

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avatarEncoding the video isn't the issue

Submitted by Chriscic on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 7:38am

I don't see why essentially real-time encoding of the video steam is considered to be an issue.  There are plenty of consumer-level products (HD camcorders and the Hauppauge HD-PVR for examples) that record MPEG4 video in essentially real-time.  I can't imagine that OnLive can't do this today with dedicated hardware.

 I don't see how they can get around the latency issue for fast-twitch games, but maybe there are ISPs out there which can actually deliver the response time.

 But, my biggest comment is that, if this works, or even COMES CLOSE to working, why do we need powerful home PCs anymore?  I mean, why don't we all just use netbooks or thin clients?  If you can run a FPS on the cloud, you sure as heck can run Excel or Word or even Photoshop or video-editing in the same way.  Isn't this a potential death-nell for Intel?  This doesn't seem to be getting much attention... to me it goes way beyond games.

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avatarNo, just think of all the

Submitted by Pentium 0 on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 12:11pm

No, just think of all the money intel will be making off server procs :)

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avatarWelcome to the Cloud

Submitted by quickone on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 9:58am

I was thinking the same thing.  One will select the programs they want
access to, pay X amount each month for them and just stream them to
your Celeron CPU with integrated graphics.  Especially with the way
wireless is going one could potentially have internet access almost
everywhere between Cell towers and WiFi.

 

Think of the cyber terrorism that will be in the future if all our
processing is done by a couple of companies at a  handful of
locations.  SCARY

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avatarYou people have NO faith

Submitted by I Jedi on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 6:15am

You people have NO faith what so ever... Just wait till the beta testers report in this summer. 

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avatarYa the conflicker worm wrote

Submitted by comptech08 on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 5:21am

Ya the conflicker worm wrote it.

 

 

On the other hand i think this could work.  As a whole the United States is around the slowest in internet speeds compared to the whole world.  We are making strides to catch up and speed continues to go up.  And i think my 10mbs if fast but its like dial up in Japan.  And i think 10mbs is very capable of having great performance with OnLive and i think even 5mbs and mabye a little lower could too.

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avatarThey're honestly going to

Submitted by Vegan on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 5:17am

They're honestly going to devote one server per connected customer? If that's the solution, fine, but I'd love to know where they're getting investment money like at a time like this.

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avatarif you red the blog the

Submitted by nekollx on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 9:10am

if you red the blog the inference was only some games (EG Crysis) would use a 1:1 ratio.

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avatarSo is this an April Fools

Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Tue, 03/31/2009 - 11:42pm

So is this an April Fools Day article?

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