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SamuelRSmith on 11 December 2011
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Reasonable said:
SamuelRSmith said:
Pjams said:
Great thread, how is the controller latency, and how do the games look compared to console and PC.

I have a fast connection so I am interested in this.


The games look like PC games playing on the best computers money can buy... because that is exactly what they are. As for controller latency... I'm finding a lot of variance, but that's because my connection is varying (wifi, housemate on/off games, other housemate on/off skype, etc).

Just download it and try it, there are no subscription fees (unless you get one of the gamepacks), and there are lots of demos on there. In about two minutes you could be playing a Batman AC demo, or something. You may find your connection is good enough, you may find you get a lot of latency... it's all gonna be about your connection's latency, so it's gonna be hit-miss from person to person.

It's good but when I tried it not that good.  Graphics were good - sometimes comfortably ahead of PS3/360 - but still behind a local high end PC running the game.  Latency on the controller was also higher than a local PC.  Not enough to be an issue on the couple of SP games I played anyway - I suspect it could be enough to cause issues with MP type gameplay.

It was better than I thought though, although at this time with a high end PC, lot's of cheap PC games and 2 HD consoles I'm not switching to this anytime soon yet - but I will be keeping an eye on it to see how it pans out.  For me the big question is estimating if the TCO is truly lower or not that current options.


Yeah, I'm quite out-of-step of what a high-end PC can do.

As for the TCO, the balance is looking pretty good. However, if they introduce a subscription charge, it will go wildly out of favour. The real problem with this service is always going to be catalogue. If you're gaming a lot, anyway, you're going to need a high-end PC just to play games that aren't available on the service... which negates the fundamental selling point.

In essense, what will make or break onlive is the service itself. The technology is more-or-less there  (maybe we need a few years for good multiplayer gaming), cloud gaming is here and real... whether onlive can take the mantle is another question.