OnLive Talk

For those that don’t know, the Xbox 360 does one thing very well. That is giving you the red ring of death! The Xbox 360 is well known for hardware problems and the red ring of death basically means your Xbox 360 is now a brick. The failure rate of Xbox 360s is through the roof. I personally have had 3 different Xbox 360s and everyone I know that has a 360 has had to get a new one due to the red ring of death at least once. I and many others are frustrated with this problem. Neither Sony nor Nintendo has these problems, so Microsoft really has no excuse for the absurdly high failure rate of Xbox 360s.

The real question is however; will these hardware problems with the Xbox 360 lead to gamers jumping ship from the Xbox to OnLive? Because of the way OnLive works, there is no console and if there is any hardware failure, it’s up to OnLive to fix it since they own and operate the servers you will be playing on. On top of that, if there are hardware problems with OnLive, they will likely be fixed almost instantly because it could affect a number of users and all OnLive really has to do is not use that particular server. OnLive has a big leg up on other game systems that are expensive and prone to hardware failure.

I think it’s too early to tell if gamers will switch over to OnLive due to Xbox 360 hardware problems, but it is definitely something to think about. I personally won’t trust the reliability of Microsoft’s next console because of their widespread hardware problems on the Xbox 360.

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While watching numerous videos and interviews from GDC about OnLive, a question was asked about how exactly the brag clips work. The best part about it is that you don’t have to press a record button before you do something. All you need to do is press a button and it will automatically save the previous 15 seconds or so of gameplay. This is very neat and useful because it’s usually impossible to predict when you are about to do something “brag worthy” in a video game. The way this is setup is that if you perform something amazing, all you have to do is press a button and it will automatically save what just happened into the brag clips section of your account.

I think this is a great way to capture awesome moments in video games, because very few games today allow you to record gameplay and share them. With OnLive, you will be able to record gameplay from any game on their service and you will be able to do so AFTER you pull off something amazing. Gamers can then share these clips with friends and others online.

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If OnLive actually works, it will really revolutionize the gaming industry and completely change the way that people play and purchase games. The OnLive service is so different because it uses “The Cloud” instead of having gamers buy a physical game console. “The Cloud” is basically a fancy name for a large network of servers. I don’t want to confuse everyone with technically how it all works, but basically instead of your game running on your game console or PC, it is running in a data center miles and miles away from your house. 

Because OnLive is so different and revolutionary, there are naturally many skeptics that don’t believe it will actually work. The skeptics and doubters main concern seem to be about lag. The way that this service is setup is when you press a button on your controller, that information has to be sent to the data center, the server running your game has to apply your input to the game, and then it has to send the video all the way back to your house. This entire process has to be done in less than one second, otherwise there will be noticeable lag and it won’t be very enjoyable.

During the presentation at GDC it was mentioned several times that there would be no noticeable lag and that the gamer would not be able to tell that the game was running in a data center somewhere. However, talk is often cheap, so we will just have to wait until OnLive is actually released to see how it actually performs. Until then, many will continue to have doubts about the service. 

Check out these articles that address the lag and similar issues:

Eurogamer.net -Why onlive cant possibly work

Palgn.com.au – OnLive – Fact or Fiction?

Gamasutra.com – Games as a Service – Why Im Skeptical of OnLive

Joystiq.com – onlive-bosses-talk-bandwidth-caps/

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OnLive Press Conference (About 1 hour long)

Debut Tech Interview (2 Parts)

Developer Walkthrough (4 Parts)

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According to OnLive.com, the following titles will be available on the launch of the OnLive service:

• Burnout Paradise
• Hawx
• F.E.A.R. 2 Project Orign
• Frontlines Fule of War
• Tomb Raider: Underworld
• Grid
• World of Goo
• Riddick
• Crysis Warhead
• Wheelman
• LEGO Batman
• Unreal Tournament 3
• Major League Baseball 2k9
• Mirror’s Edge
• Prince of Persia
• Bioshock

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I just wanted to welcome everyone to our new website, OnLive Talk.com! We hope to create a vibrant community to discuss and blog about the OnLive game service and it’s games. Please to your friends to check us out!

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