Video : http://www.gametrailers.com/player/47079.html  - Sounds like ridiculously ambitious design! If it works I could totally see MMO's on this service...

Video part II : http://www.gametrailers.com/player/47081.html

Article about OnLIVE: http://kotaku.com/5181300/onlive-makes-pc-upgrades-extinct-lets-you-play-crysis-on-your-tv

Basic explination image: http://i519.photobucket.com/albums/u360/deaconx/onlive.jpg

UPDATE:  GDC Presentation of OnLive, 1 hour long video: http://www.gamespot.com/shows/on-the-spot/?series=on-the-spot&event=on_the_spot20090324

wow, i like seeing something new like this

i think its a great idea... if it works (which hell i personally have no real reason to doubt is as of right now)

I think it might pull console gamers to the PC, but I don't imagine it will affect the PC hardware market much.  I am certain they will be offering this as a service.  Depending on the price the PC gamer may not switch because they spend less on keeping their PC up to date.  Also you have to buy games from their library. 

That and the lag issue.  Just because you say you can maintain sending data at 60 frames a second at 720p doesn't mean its actually going to happen.  First you have the Fiber Optic infrastructure to work with.  This service would need to be setup in multiple locations that are capable of outputting a massive amount of bandwidth.  Also you are not looking at how its done with MMOs now where you send a piece of information and you computer estimates what will happen as you recieve the result.  Instead you will send it and wait doubling the latency which can range but can often be slow enough to make a difference.

All the ISP's starting to throttle monitor your monthly throughput would put a big damper on this sort of thing.  :(

until we get decent internet speeds i doubt it will take off.  Down here in Aus we have big problems with latency due to the distance from servers and our internet infrastructure is crap at best.

It is however a good idea and i think for places like LAN cafe's it would offer a much cheaper alternative to owning and operating a  number of PC's/consoles.

if this works as advertised... and if they can get resolutions as high as a real gaming pc with future improvements in internet connection speeds........    this could pretty much kill off the PC gaming hardware market..  It would be interesting to see the long term repercussions.

As it is this is fantastic for people who cant afford or dont want to invest in a gaming PC...   It would be awesome to be able to play high end titles with friends that have an emachine.

In the US the internet speeds are expected to grow 10 fold as soon as the digital transition takes place.  We are already seeing this with some companies offering 160MB/s connections in the places where the private companies said screw the fed and switched to digital anyway.  Once the switch happens we can start using some things like WiMax-100MB/s city wide wireless.

 Yarrrrg, this program makes pirates sad. D:

Threatens console gaming?  Actually this is a threat to PC gaming, not console gaming.

OnLIVE the exact same thing as a console, it's just transfered entirely over the internet.

For a console user, this will change absolutely nothing. The only thing that changes is that they never have to buy new hardware again and they now get content streamed to them as opposed to a disk.

However PC gamers will now lose a lot of things that set PC gaming apart from consoles. How ironic that after years of accusing console systems trying to be PC, it's now the PC industry becoming fully consolized and the best part of it is that PC gamers are cheering for it.

So what does this means for PC gamers?

- You  won't be able to use user created mods. There is no way OnLIVE is going to let you access their secured servers with your own modded content.

- You will no longer be able to increase your system to get the best results, and apparently resolution is capped at 720p.

It's pretty funny that the future of PC gaming is an online version of the console business.

that is, if this thing is going to work in the first place.

Originally posted by Gameloading

- You  won't be able to use user created mods. There is no way OnLIVE is going to let you access their secured servers with your own modded content.

- You will no longer be able to increase your system to get the best results, and apparently resolution is capped at 720p.

It's pretty funny that the future of PC gaming is an online version of the console business.

that is, if this thing is going to work in the first place.

This is why it won't kill PCs.

It won't kill consoles because Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo like to sell their own hardware so why on earth would they support it?

P.S.: I didn't see Blizzard as one of the companies supporting it and that speaks volumes.

oh my...

this sounds awesome. I wonder how good it will actually be and how much it will cost. surely they have to buy the hardware to run our games instead so it must be very expensive.

Can't see this working very well unless you have AMAZING ping times.  Every single action you take will be subject to lag.  One of the biggest issues they have with VR and head tracking is that the slight lag between turning your head and software picking up the movement causes very bad motion sickness.  You will have this type of lag for every single action you take. 

The other issue is that lag is additive.  Your lag to onlive + onlive lag to game server.  I would rather play with lower graphics settings than be subject all the layers of lag.  More so as I am an aussie and am lucky get get below 300ms to any US servers.

Even without considering the latency issues... They'll probably fix a monthly fee that will equal the sum you would normally put on your computer anyway.

A good idea still...

Originally posted by horrid

Can't see this working very well unless you have AMAZING ping times.  Every single action you take will be subject to lag.  One of the biggest issues they have with VR and head tracking is that the slight lag between turning your head and software picking up the movement causes very bad motion sickness.  You will have this type of lag for every single action you take. 

 

The other issue is that lag is additive.  Your lag to online + online lag to game server.  I would rather play with lower graphics settings than be subject all the layers of lag.  More so as I am an aussie and am lucky get get below 300ms to any US servers.

Well IF they were going to deliver this service to Australia (which is still up in the air as only North America has been confirmed) you will probably get your own server farm. A person has to be within 1000 miles of a server farm to use the service like it was intended.

actually they have some very impressive claims to the speed of it, there wont be any lag.

they said cost simular to what you pay for xbox live (which is £40 a year), which I find hard to imagine.

launching end of this year, but servers only in america. but If they aren't completely lying this thing is going to take off around the world me thinks

There is no way this will catch on until internet speeds increase accross the country/world.

People are already falsly under the assumption that frames are sent over the internet when they play a game online and that is why there is lag, when in fact that isn't true at all. This service would actually be doing that.

Simply put, you would have to have a ridiculously good ping for this to work. While current online games make up for lag by predicting where characters are based on their previous position and velocity, this would not be able to do that since all computation is done over the internet.

So not only would actions you performed be lagged, but actually seeing the screen would be lagged too.

I really can't see this working very well or being very popular.

i posted the same thing as you last night but yours looks better lol. oh well i think its a pretty cool concept but i want to see if it will catch on or not

I see how they are dealing with one of the lag issues - you are playing OnLive games VS OnLive games so they are on a local network.  That removes the double lag issue.

I can see it working in Japan and North Korea.  They have insane broadband speeds - you wouldn't even need to stop your porn downloads. 

The funny thing will be your little brother cheating to make sure you don't get a better high score than him, all he needs to do is start a bittorrent and blamo - you are so lagged out you can't play.  Mwahahahaha.

 Actually its only a matter of time before this happens. Bill Gates has been saying for years that the personal PC is moving to a mobile platform in that we as customers will only require a small box with a internet connection. Then your entire OS and software is streamed from a central set of servers to your small inexpensive box. 

The idea is way out there and looks to fix alot of potential issues that face the PC and Console market. 

Imagine all you are required is to purchase a small $200 box and a monitor, plus a internet connection. Never having to pay fees to keep your hardware up to date. Most people spend around of $200+ a year on PC upgrades anyways. You no longer have to manage CDs or backing up your data. And I imagine a datacenter with a bunch of fat pipelines is going to get way better ping times and connection speeds then any of us at our homes.

Now imagine being able to play any console game on your small $200 desktop box and monitor. You've now saved yourself from having to buy both an expensive $1k+ PC and several $100-$400 consoles. All of that from a $200 box and a $20-$30 subscription to the service (not that that is how OnLIVE does it) but as a generalization of where computeing is headed in the future. Shoot and theres nothing saying they couldn't even toss in streaming TV along with it to sweetin the deal up. An all in one high end box, who wouldn't want that at an affordable cost.

/yawn

Here we go again.

I get as worked up about these theoretically awesome consoles as I do about total sand-box open PvP hardcore MMORPGs and flying cars. In all cases there's a new one every year and they either die in development, or release to great dissapointment and are quickly forgotten.