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Were we too hard / harsh on OnLive back in 2010?

Elbereth

Member
Absolutely we were. Could not believe Arkham asylum was running incredibly well on my potato laptop with integrated graphics ::shudders::
 

Soodanim

Gold Member
Many things were different 10 years ago, but even 10 years later Stadia didn't have a chance.

It's a mixture of internet speed/stability, more desire for ownership with games over films or music (where you can see or hear anywhere anyway), and quite frankly it being way too early.

Maybe in another 10 years the concept will catch on.
 

MaKTaiL

Member
Yes. It was so nice to see other people playing in real-time too. It was like a more advanced Twitch before Twitch was a thing.
 

kingpotato

Ask me about my Stream Deck
It was ahead of it's time. I had a very fast connection and the Onlive console and it had a lot of input latency. I thought it had some great ideas with streaming gameplay which have since been adopted in various ways. Booting up and seeing the wall of live feeds was very impressive at the time.
 
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Kamina

Golden Boy
Guardians Of The Galaxy GIF
 

Star-Lord

Member
I remember barely being able to play Splinter Cell Conviction on a fairly competent laptop, and being hugely underwhelmed by the entire experience. Cloud gaming was very different back then.
 

CuNi

Member
Tech ages massively in those 10 years.
Laptops evolved into real production series that differentiate between Gaming, Working, Office etc. with more than just a handful products from every manufacturer. Console makers incorporate streaming functionality into their consoles, even Hardware manufacturers like nVidia put a way to utilize the hardware to encode video-capture etc.

But at the same time, Infrastructure barely changed. Yes we have fiber etc. but how many people actually have access to it? How many even have uncapped bandwidth? Or high speed internet connections?
I am from the EU and even here it differs greatly between countries and inside a given country even more with places having 3 competing fiber providers while others have barely one provider that offers shitty speeds. And US is supposedly even more splintered.

I think this discrepancy is the reason why we're even only seeing 1 or 2 game streaming services sprout every now and then. But even if we were to overcome the physical issues of speeds and pricing, you have to consider on top of all that, what "costumers" you try to cater to. You probably won't even consider a competitive player to use your service since they most likely have a way better pc and prefer the lower latency to game. Then you have to cross out every fast paced game like shooters since latency just gives you a massive handicap if you're not living close by to a datacenter. So you're left with either Singleplayer games or games where latency barely matters. And from this subset of gamers, you have to cater to those that don't want to pay for a own pc but still want to invest into a gaming library.

I think game streaming is in general in a predicament on who to cater to and how to monetize that exactly.
 

Wildebeest

Member
I suppose it varied a lot based on your connection to their data center but first impressions for a lot of people were bad. Were they selling video game rentals or a vision of the future? The vision of a future of everyone playing games over streamed video is still not great. I mean, if you want 4k, low response rates, and so on, you can't have it. But now these services are sold as more of an add-on rather than a full replacement.
 

Fat Frog

I advertised for Google Stadia
Maybe in another 10 years the concept will catch on.
The demand for cloud gaming is currently pretty high in Brazil, GFN and Xcloud servers are struggling right now...


Nvidia and Microsoft probably thought South america market would be more or less the same. It's not !

North Americans can easily buy next gen consoles while having limitations for cloud gaming (data cap).
Cloud is not that sexy in America.

On the other hand, south americans cannot purchase PS5 easily and don't have data caps. Cloud gaming makes sense.
 
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Bryank75

Banned
Cloud gaming sucks and will always suck.... it is a tech aimed at suckers in fact!

There is no minimum standard, there is no guaranteed service, you own nothing and you are at the constant mercy of things far far out of your control.

Even if the service is tolerable for 90% of the time... 10 % could be during Christmas or a time when you really really wan to play and you will be able to get nothing.

If your economic circumstances change...and you have to cut costs, you will also have nothing. etc etc.
 

Fat Frog

I advertised for Google Stadia
Even if the service is tolerable for 90% of the time... 10 % could be during Christmas or a time when you really really wan to play and you will be able to get nothing.
Nah, it's clumsy theory.
I had equal or less troubles with cloud gaming than 360 or PC.

Most of the time, if you have only short play sessions, cloud gaming is the best for the lack of updates and installation.

In the real world, if you have server issues with Stadia, you can switch to GFN. If you have cable internet issues, you can switch to mobile data while playing on your phone.

Don't tell me you can have all these issues the same day (server issues with Google, with Nvidia + cable internet issues + mobile data issues). You can even ask your neighbor his wifi for fuck sake 🤪.
 
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Fat Frog

I advertised for Google Stadia
Cloud gaming sucks...when you really wan to play and you will be able to get nothing.
See...

Series X:

Connection Error

Consoles are now bugging like a good old PC from the 90's...

Stadia:

Click(plug) and play.



Theory (blabla so many problems with cloud gaming) ... and reality ! 🥳
 
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Cattlyst

Member
Next up: were we too hard on the Ouya?

I believe OnLive failed mainly because the infrastructure it relied on wasn't ready yet. People tend to look back on failed concepts or hardware with a large degree of rose tintedness. But they failed for a good reason in many cases. Not all, but many.

I still think purely streamed gaming is a bad idea for many reasons. Sure Stadia is a thing, as are cloud versions on Switch and PS Now/Xcloud etc. But does anyone really use those as their main method of gaming?
 

Gp1

Member
Definitely.
It was a almost a prof of concept at the time and their service model was far from ideal, but anyone that tested at a minimal adequate condition could see the potential there. I remember testing Onlive/Arkham City with a good fiber optic connection from Brazil and, beside some "distance lag", it worked. With a good server distribution, and a big "sponsor" behind it could become a new player. No wonder why Sony bought their spoils and launched PS Now.

For games that didn't require low latency, it was very serviceable even at the time.
 
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