Why OnLive won’t work

Now that the euphoria from the OnLive presentation at the GDC has dissipated a bit, there’s been a host of articles today that casts quite a bit of doubt of what OnLive claims it can deliver to what’s physically possible. Here’s a couple of the better ones:

Eurogamer makes three main points in its criticism of OnLive’s technology.

1. OnLive has mastered video compression that outstrips the best that current technologies can achieve by a vast margin. In short, it has outsmarted the smartest compressionists in the world, and not only that, it’s doing it in real-time.
2. OnLive’s unparalleled grasp of psychophysics means that it has all but eliminated the concept of IP lag during its seven years of “stealth development”, succeeding where the best minds in the business have only met with limited success.
3. OnLive has developed a range of affordable PC-compatible super-computers and hardware video encoders that are generations beyond anything on the market at the moment.

Of the three points Eurogamer makes, the most damning one is how to counter the notion of Internet lag. Just because you happen to have a large amount of bandwidth doesn’t make up for the fact that you may be hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away from the OnLive servers.

Matt Peckham of PC World has six criticisms:

1. Fair use policy - Many broadband providers have caps on bandwidth you consume. Such caps may run afoul OnLive’s requirement for fast and large connections.
2. Real versus test performance - Peckham makes a good point that true 720p across a 5 Mbps connection isn’t really possible. OnLive gets away from it by using compression which causes a noticeable blurring effect when playing a game with the service. Also, he makes the point that OnLive isn’t “any time, anywhere” access since it is dependent on a fast broadband connection.
3. My Internet connection’s fallen and it can’t get up - Does OnLive have an answer to what will happen if your Internet connection drops? This is an issue that you won’t encounter when playing a locally installed game.
4. RIP mod scene - OnLive won’t have support for third party modification for games for quite some time, if they do at all. Also, with how their infrastructure is setup, providing support for third parties may prove difficult.
5. Privacy issues - Is it acceptable to players of having a company like OnLive know your gaming habits and possibly pass that information to third parties?
6. You don’t own anything - Peckham makes a point that when you buy a standalone copy today, you own the game and the right to replay it as much as you desire. If you buy a game via Online, what exactly do you get? Do you own the game outright (with the right to get a physical copy) or just rental access via a subscription fee?

I’m actually not as troubled by Mr. Peckham’s arguments. As a long-time MMO player, I’m pretty comfortable with the idea that I don’t own physical copies of the games I play nor troubled that a gaming company may own data that details my play habits. Further, having your ISP conk out on you during play just comes with the territory in MMO play.

I have to admit though that these two articles taken as a whole does take away a little of the luster that was my dream of running a resource intensive game on a 3-year-old PC. I had some skepticism with how OnLive would handle large numbers of users simultaneously. And the two articles brought that thought to the forefront. If playing Crysis on a single PC can max out the resources of even a high end machine, what type of server infrastructure needs to exist to handle say 10,000 player playing all at the same time, at 60 fps settings no less.

I’m still rooting for these guys to succeed and prove the naysayers wrong. Skepticism about something so ground breaking isn’t a bad thing at this point. However, it looks like that only a large scale beta test will ferret out whether the skeptics are right or whether OnLive is truly the stuff of dreams.

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