Dave Perry On OnLive

The good news is that as each user logs off, another can log on, so (using their numbers) if you take the average month has 30.417 days, and you multiply by 24 hours, you get 730 hours of server time per month. They estimate 60 hours per user, per month, so one server covers 12 gamers, with a little bit spare.

So the cost of each server is divided by 12. Let’s say the actual server + GPU cost is $1500 each, using AMD blades for example. They get 36 months to amortize the cost. So they are down to $42 per month, that amount needs to be covered by 12 people. That’s $3.50 per month. With their massive bandwidth discounts added on, they will probably end up around $7-ish per gamer, per month.

-- My "feelings" on Streaming Video Games (via Wonderland)

Dave's co-founder of Gakai, essentially an OnLive competitor. Apparently he got a lot of flak at GDC from the OnLive guys, which seems kinda bad since he comes off as pretty reasonable here.

I'll agree with Dave on a couple of points. Namely that cloud gaming will happen, in some form, at some time. As I said before, there's nothing technically impossible about the concept, most of it not even really being technically difficult - until you factor in the scale of it. So the impressive part isn't one computer logging into one server and playing Mirror's Edge at 60 frames per second ... it's a bit of a neat parlor trick, but it's basically a credit to bandwidth and compression.

The real trick is getting these mythical twelve people per server. Now Dave has done a lot more research on this, since it is apparently his job - I'm just writing based on conjecture and guesswork. But my guess tells me that twelve people on a $1500 piece of hardware seems like pretty curious math.

Server hardware is designed to do some pretty specific things, and it is definitely not allowing twelve people to play games at even 30 fps at the same time. The thing is, I'm not sure what hardware is designed to do that. Remember that once your fancy graphics card is done with all that processing, the data from it has to go somewhere. This is why things like the bus on your motherboard still matter, RAM has to not just be large, but quick, for applications like gaming. An $800 computer with a $300 graphics card can probably reasonably do it well for one person, but most $1500 server blades aren't going to be good at even that task.

The thing people seem to be missing is that games are the most intensive things personal computers can perform. The reason why so many other applications are making successful moves to the cloud is that even the cheapest computers on the planet are about a hundred times more powerful than the apps require. Word processing? I did word processing on a what, an Apple II? My iPhone is what, a gazillion times faster than that? Of course I can do word processing on my phone, or even my browser.

And the truth is - browser still don't even do that very well.

Dave uses this math and comes up with a $7/month subscription figure. That's roughly what I pay for web hosting, so I'm going to have to hit that number with the doubt hammer. I think to be reasonably profitable, we're probably looking at a number about ten times that figure.

I remember being pulled into a meeting about how video on the web was going to be next big thing and we needed to figure out how to be a part of it. That was about a decade ago, and five years later YouTube would launch. But a lot changed in that five years, including high speed adoption, Flash software and compression technology. I'm getting a sense of deja vu from the debate over OnLive.

But as I said before, I'm armchair QB'ing this. So as usual, anyone who wants to correct my logic should feel free with great haste.

OnLive

As of yesterday morning, I had never heard of OnLive. As of now, I've had like three conversations on it and read umpteen blog posts, several comics, etc.

Buzz like that. It's slightly intoxicating, pretty much no matter what.

So, let's preface this with the obvious: I'm not at GDC. I haven't seen this demo. I'm not in touch with OnLive. I have zero technical background information on the product. All I have is hearsay, rumors and third party reports.

It's pretty obvious as to why the world wants to believe in OnLive, but I have to say I'm not really in the excited bunch.

Course, we've been here before - the promise of a console-busting console, all downloadable data, hassle free play, so on and etc. It turned into one of the great vaporware - the wildly aptly name Phantom.

It's entirely possible that OnLive is a similar sort of shenanigans. I'm not saying they're necessarily liars and such, just that it's one thing to produce a decent looking demo based on sound theories and a completely different thing to make a market ready product. So we could easily see a year from now people still poking the burning embers of this red hot hype, but have nothing to actually buy.

Unless OnLive can prove some real world testing, I have to say this is likely. The promise of "zero lag" is something which is really, really hard to deliver because the Internet is, by design, not controlled by anything which can keep that promise.

The premise of OnLive is pretty straightforward. Virtual Network Computing is something like a decade old now and I can run it off my iPhone if needed.

The problem isn't the mechanics, it's downloading frames per second. Let's remember:

So what's not to like? For one thing, the service relies ...

... on a broadband connection with at least 1.5 megabits per second for standard-definition images, or 5 megabits per second for high definition. OnLive estimates that about 71% of U.S. homes have enough bandwidth for standard definition, and 26% have enough for high definition. But effective speeds are often less than advertised.

-- LA Times, GDC: OnLive promises near instant online access to high-end console and PC games

I just did a speed test here at it never hit 2mb/s. So, I'm certainly not playing any games in high def even by OnLive's theoretical standards.

Is there any gamer out there who is going to trade the convenience of cloud-based gaming with significantly lower graphics? I highly doubt it.

But let's play even deeper into the hype and theorize that somehow OnLive is capable of delivering liquid gold into the intertubes and high def video delivery is no longer a problem (which, as an aside, if were true they could be making a killing without bothering with games - just video aside). Would I still want it?

Unlikely.

Look, I'm all for digital delivery, but at the end of the day I like the idea of having software installed that I can play whenever I want. I had enough troubles with Steam, and that's nowhere near this side of spectrum. OnLive would only interest me as a rental, pay as you play, kind of model - possibly a monthly subscription if could deliver the goods. But don't think for a moment that I'm paying anywhere near retail prices for software that someone keeps on the sly and allows access by online means. It took one bad experience from Valve, and I'll never go down that rabbit hole again.

If we're talking convenience, here's the convenience I get through my current means - I pay retail price, I can get access to the title on release day, if anything goes wrong with it, I can return it for a refund or at worst, go to a Best Buy and exchange for store credit.

Cloud based gaming, should it ever really take off, will still need to actually solve a problem I have, be it performance or cost or something. Otherwise it's just a clever parlor trick.

Right now the only problem I could see it solving for me is Windows based gaming on my Mac. If it offered a hassle free solution for that, we might have a deal.