Disclaimer: this article reflects my personal experience using OnLive. Due to many factors, such as Internet speed, there’s every chance your experience will differ. For the games tests I was running OnLive through my laptop using a WiFi connection.
I love my laptop, I really do. It has 4GB of memory, a dual core processor and some funky wizardry that means the area next to the touch pad remains 25% cooler than my body temperature. Essentially it’s my base of operations; however it is useless for gaming. It’s this fact that prompted me to take a look at the cloud based gaming service ‘OnLive’ when it launched last week.
For those who are unaware, OnLive stores games on remote servers which you then stream via the Internet. This means you can play any game on any machine, as long as you a) have an account and b) have fast enough broadband. In theory it sounds like my idea of heaven.
In all honesty I wasn’t even expecting to be able to create an account. My broadband speed runs at “between 1.5 and 3.5mb, with an estimate of 2mb” which is bang on the minimum requirements to access the service from your laptop. Much to my surprise, after spending about a minute creating a free account, OnLive kicked into life!
First up I should probably mention a few things. There has been one particular launch week hiccup which has seen gamers have to wait a few minutes before being able to log on at peak times (probably caused by the thousands of free OnLive consoles given out at the Eurogamer Expo). This issue has been acknowledged, and apparently is being worked on.
The next stumbling block is the whole idea of never actually owning the game you have paid for. What if the service collapses and shuts down? What if my Internet service provider has an outage? I’m left stranded.
There’s also the small matter of Internet usage. Currently I’m on a BT Unlimited package, which is just as well because OnLive reportedly uses 2GB of data per hour. I don’t think that figure has been officially confirmed, but it’s one I’ve seen from several sources who have run tests on their machines.
As you can see there are many hurdles to overcome when it comes to convincing gamers that OnLive is worth a shot. Never-the-less, let us continue.
Once logged on, you are greeted with a rather swish user interface that is split into the following areas:
- Arena
- Profile
- Marketplace
- Showcase
- My Games
- Last Played
- Brag Clips
- Friends
We managed to speak with John Spinale, OnLive’s VP of Games, at the Eurogamer Expo and he was kind enough to go through some of these options for us, as well as put our minds at ease regarding OnLive’s future support of current games. Check it out below.
It looks smooth on the video, but what about in real life using a normal Internet connection? Well, the whole set-up has left me very impressed. The ease at which you jump into a game, purchase content or communicate with friends came as quite a surprise. I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.
Once I had messed about adding friends and admiring the scenery it was time to do some actual games testing, looking at graphical quality and lag. For this I used Borderlands, Trine, The Maw, Flatout 2 and DiRT 3. To make it a fair test I logged on at the following times over the course of three days:
- Between 8 – 10am
- Between 2 – 3pm
- Between 6 – 8pm
- 10pm onwards
Any time between 2 – 9pm saw the “OnLive is full” message appear, followed by a wait of about five minutes before being allowed to log on. Only once, on the launch day at about 6pm was the service what I deem unusable, with a fair amount of pixilation. All other times have been fine.
It’s at this point where I had to switch from mouse and keyboard to a controller, due to a medical condition known as “being cack-handed”. I purchased a Microsoft Wired Controller (basically an Xbox 360 controller) and downloaded this driver (thanks to Wolvogamer1 for the link). After a quick system reboot OnLive automatically recognised the controller and changed the interface so that keyboard prompts were replaced by button prompts.
In terms of visual quality the games were a mixed bag. The car models on DiRT 3 looked fine, but the backgrounds seemed particularly fuzzy. Borderlands, on the other hand, looked absolutely great with no issues that immediately jumped out. The same could be said of The Maw. Trine seemed to be a middle ground, with nice enough graphics albeit with a slightly fuzzy effect. To be honest it’s a matter of taste as to how harshly you judge the games. I was in no way put off, but others might be.
Lag was where the biggest surprise happened. I have suffered none. I couldn’t quite believe it, but cornering in DiRT 3 was perfect, precision platforming in Trine wasn’t a problem, and headshots in Borderlands came with ease. At one point in Borderlands I just span my character in circles, changing direction quickly to try and catch OnLive out. It didn’t work. I have heard that others haven’t had such a smooth experience, but I can’t complain.
[drop2] Borderlands was dragged out once again to test a bit of online co-op. I couldn’t fault OnLive as setting up a bout was easy, it ran effortlessly and there was no lag. Also, Borderlands is great isn’t it? I never really played it much on the consoles, but I can see it becoming a time sink.I haven’t managed to play any full multiplayer games yet, but I have spectated on one of my friends playing Duke Nukem Forever and Homefront (he has a similar Internet connection to mine) and it all seemed fine.
The last few days have been very interesting. I’ve gone from being hopeful yet sceptical, to someone who will use OnLive very frequently. So far, for me, it has worked perfectly (bar the “full” message) and I’ve actually gone as far as to pre-order Saints Row 3 plus the monthly PlayPack.
I can totally understand why some people don’t like the idea of OnLive. As someone who has gamed for 25 years, I too like to have the physical media stacked in a neat pile in my house. That won’t change anytime soon. Instead I’ll be using OnLive more as a supplement to my console gaming, and I can see myself using the game rental facility quite a lot.
I was speaking to Peter about this a couple of days ago, and I quite liked his thoughts on the matter. “Just because you stream a film or two from LOVEFiLM, it doesn’t mean you’re going to give up buying DVDs”. I think the same applies to OnLive, and I see it sharing a space with retail games rather than taking it over.
I really hope the service flourishes, and with EA on board, and titles such as AC: Revelations and Batman: AC on the way, things are looking positive.
stonyk
ignore my ignorance but I thought this was a monthly cost ie £20 a month with unlimited access to every game available. bit like Lovefilm – monthly fee to access to the whole library.
I don’t understand when I see Saints row at 30% off? Could anyone explain please?
Dan Lee
Hi mate, see my previous comment to Peter Rushton.
stonyk
Ah! cheers. Does sound very strange. I’m not sure what the draw is for me if you can buy games at excellent prices on steam and own them. If they offered what I thought – all games available for x mount a month I would consider this. Of course I have a computer capable of playing steam games. i suppose this is for people who have a lower spec PC.
halbpro
There’s no monthly for the whole library, pay £6.99 for the PlayPack and you get a mix of old and new games. There’s 100+ atm.
skibadee
to be fair any proper gamer would have them games or long finished them.
BrendanCalls
Not really, I count myself as a proper gamer and there’s loads of titles on there I’ve just never got round to. Borderlands and Just Cause 2 as prime examples. Just not enough time and money when they were released and never since caught up with them. I am now though as OnLive is giving me the perfect opportunity.
skibadee
most gamers imo would have played them games you just said years ago if you do not buy a lot of new games go for it.
BrendanCalls
That’s definitely me, not often inbuy brand new games. I only really invest in the games I know I’ll get good replayability from
halbpro
Why only play a game once though? It’s nice to come back to them, and in particular for PC games backwards compatibility can be hard to get working. I mean just look at stuff like DOS Box that you need if you want a huge range of games to run.
Sympozium
There are gamers that just don’t leave a game forever… I still play Castlevania and Soul Reaver but really thats more of a Enthusiast which must be me?
So most of the games aren’t new or been played, oh thats old should someone stop its nice to go back? its silly, the choice is nice,, theres some that I wouldn’t even buy. Fear 2, Flatout 2 etc etc
ABlokeCalledDaz
Have had a go a this, my PC spec isn’t great but I have a decent internet connection and I am pretty happy with what I’ve seen so far, almost instant game start, decent selection. Thinking about taking the game pass.
Tuffcub
I’ve had a play and it’s impressive but the audio stream is alwasy distorted when I connect up and the graphics vary between lovely and sharp to superfuzz-o-vision.
Sadly the games list is nice but there are only a couple of recent titles.
Give it a couple of years and it will probably be fab – but give it a couple of years and the PS4 and Xbox 720 will be around and will have similar features.
Filed under: Nice, but not for me just yet.
MegaBonez
I love it. I took advantage of the first game for £1 offer and got F.3.A.R. My laptop has become a gaming beast!
Kaminari
OnLive is to gaming what DivX is to Blu-ray.
It’s a fun piece of tech to examine — and it can eventually be an alternative for people who don’t have a decent PC, but this will never be the ideal way to experience your games in the best presentation possible. Picture quality is, by the very nature of the service, severely compromised (dynamic compression, macroblocking), framerate is very variable and lag is inevitable.
Still, there’s some magic in realizing that you don’t play a game on your local machine, but you’re actually watching a streaming video of yourself playing a game running on a distant server. The geek in me is excited by the gimmicky tech, but the hardcore player is definitely unimpressed.
[For info: I have a 100 Mb fiber connection with a 5 ms ping.]
KeRaSh
“but this will never be the ideal way to experience your games in the best presentation possible.”
Never is a really strong word. Who knows what will be a decade down the line.
halbpro
There’s plenty of people who’ll tell you that CD isn’t the ideal way of listening to music, going from analogue to digital loses a lot. However it’s a lot more convenient, much as OnLive is. They’ll certainly be many who stick with physical media, much as there’s many who will never use Steam/PSN/XBLA for buying games, but I wouldn’t discount the service.
yogdog
Difference is though, with digital copies of stuff like music and games, you still have it there in front of you, albeit on a HDD, ready to access. With this, if your internet gets lag spikes or just plain isn’t fast enough, you’re screwed.
KeRaSh
Nice article. I really hope OnLive launches in Germany soon because I’d love to give it a try. Right now I own a PS3 and a very capable gaming PC but that PC will not last forever with hardware demands raising with every new game and sometime I just want to play a game with a mouse and a keyboard. OnLive would be the perfect addition to my current setup. I love the fact that you can try out any game you like and rent most of them for a short period of time. It’s a nice option especially for people like me who don’t have a rental store around or don’t want to wait for rentals to show up in the mail. If I feel like trying out a new game on a Sunday this is the way to go. I don’t understand why people are so negative. It’s basically free if you own a PC/Laptop and want to try out that new demo without downloading hundreds of MBs before you can start up the game. There are also no disk space problems if you stream everything. ;)
Sympozium
Tried connecting to the servers with the App thing on pc, couldn’t connect which was sad?…. ports..ports.ports D:
The Lone Steven
I won’t be giving Onlive a chance as i prefer to have the physical copy of a game as opposed to a digital one and knowing my luck, the thing would either crash when i’m about to save in a game after getting far or my net cuts out. :-/ I can see it succeeding though.
I just don’t like the idea of having to be connected to the net at all times just to play a single player game.
Sympozium
Being disconnected in the middle of the game can be cruel… but my excuse is too save hard-drive space…hehe
ron_mcphatty
I guess the big appeal will be playing next gen games on creaky old laptops. My Internet isnt up to OnLive so I’ll stick with my black beasts!
Vaile23
looks and sounds amazing, but 2GB of bandwidth is a no-go for me