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Radioactive IT Some questions for OnLive before I toss out my Xbox 360
Radioactive IT Some questions for OnLive before I toss out my Xbox 360 | Some questions for OnLive before I toss out my Xbox 360 |
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| by Mike Bantick | |
| Thursday, 26 March 2009 | |
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OnLive have taken the cloud computing concept and brought it into the gaming world. What Steve Perlman, Mike McGarvey and his OnLive mates are hoping to achieve is a gaming world free of hardware manufacturer dictatorial dominance. Or to put it another way, freeing consumers from the constraints of home entertainment hardware. OnLive is a game streaming service that can give PC, MAC or even TV owners a choice of state-of-the-art AAA gaming titles that can be played regardless of their hardware set-ups at home. All the processing is done on the OnLive servers, with the network transferring only the visuals and command inputs from the propriety OnLive wireless controller. Fabulous! But there are inevitable questions that arise. Many of these are answered immediately by the FAQ on the OnLive site, but some further questions arise from the answers, or are simply not addressed in the FAQ. The most obvious is around network speed, the stated specs are: OnLive works over nearly any broadband connection (DSL, cable modem, fiber, or through the LAN at your college or office). For Standard-Definition TV resolution, OnLive needs a 1.5 Mbps connection. For HDTV resolution (720p60), OnLive needs 5 Mbps. But does this need to be a synchronous connection? Or can I get away with, what is typical in my country, an asynchronous link with slower up-speed? I suspect the answer is no, and that the 5Mbps required for 720p will need to be both ways – *sigh*. That will add to the cost. While we talk about the important link questions, will games vary on their requirements? More explosions mean larger demand on the video streaming? Multiplayer games requiring multiple input streams to be analysed, processes and delivered, will that result in a poorer experience dependent on all the usual Multiplayer networking quirks of today? Will there be Xbox LIVE features such as Lobbies, Player Matching, Gamer-tag profiles, achievements and so on? CONTINUED on Page 2 |
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