Ah, OnLive. This company is trying to bring streaming gaming to the mainstream, and has has just announced a pretty significant partnership with Vizio, the US’ largest LCD TV seller. Vizo TVs, smartphones, tablets, and Blu-Ray players will all come equipped, out of the box, with OnLive’s streaming service.
I have (old-photo alert) a Vizio LCD TV (one of the few in Europe, probably), and despite all the fancy new stuff I see in stores these days, this TV from 2007 still beats many of the cheaper TVs sold today. Especially its sharpness and upscaling performance is something I simply don’t see in other TVs these days, except, of course, when you plonk down some hard cash. Vizio offers very good quality for its price range, and I must say, I can’t wait until these American guys come shake up the European market. I’m holding off on a TV purchase just in case (I want a bigger one than my current 32″ Vizio) – I’m too satisfied with Vizio to switch to another brand.
Still, the company wants more than just the low-end of LCD TVs, and has been expanding rather aggressively. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, they announced a 4″ smartphone and a 8″ tablet, both running Android. These devices of course integrate nicely with Vizio’s other hardware, in including things like a remote control for your A/V-equipment.
Vizio TVs, Blu-Ray players, smartphones, and tablets will also come with something called VIA Plus, which is powered by Google Tv, and allows for seamless integration between all your Vizio devices, including pausing something on your TV, only to resume it on your tablet of smartphone later on. Part of VIA Plus will be OnLive’s streaming gaming service.
“Just as you can enjoy services such as Netflix and Pandora across virtually all consumer electronic devices, you’ll also be able to enjoy OnLive everywhere,” the OnLive blog states, “The OnLive game experience is generated in the cloud, so as a device ages, the OnLive experience remains state-of-the-art. This is extremely important for long life-cycle devices like TVs: For example, in 5 years, your OnLive-integrated VIZIO TV will still be compatible with the latest, highest-performance games.”
The first reviews of the OnLive micro console were rather positive, noting, obviously, that you do need a decent internet connection. Having technology like this integrated into all your devices – no matter their size – is a major boon for OnLive, and of course, a validation of their concept.
As a gamer myself, I’ll probably stick with old-fashioned consoles for now, but it’s good to see new technology like this getting an honest chance in the market place. Even if OnLive gets games a few months after ‘real’ consoles, more casual gamers, or gamers with a tighter wallet, will still benefit greatly from the service. And the more people playing games, the better games we’ll get.
Interesting and nice to know they’re a good brand, but not personally relevant to me.
The only games I’ve bought in the last half decade were Minecraft and the two Humble Indie Bundles and my Linux MOTD specifically prohibits any and all forms of DRM with the exception of PDFs contingent on the viewer having its “Obey DRM” checkbox unchecked… preferrably permanently at compile time. (Most of my non-productive entertainment comes from replaying ROMs of old SNES and N64 carts sitting in my garage)
It would be interesting to know the kind of video hardware this devices will come to.
IMHO consoles are going the way of the dodo.
Then you’ve never played OnLive. It’s a fantastic concept but the level of input lag you see on various games is completely unacceptable.
The hardware on the user side is the thin client type.
The most powerfull in this micro console will probably be a broadcom or broadcom type processor.
The actual graphics processing takes place on the OnLive servers with vast RAID arrays and SLI typed connected GPU’s which is streamed to you.
My MTOD says “Have a nice day”, but that in no way makes what it says even remotely relevant to the discussion.
Have read many reviews of the Onlive experience. It has very low latency in many parts of the US tied to broadband infrastructure which in itself is improving.
Also OnLive pledged to soon host servers in the UK, Europe and Asia as well.
Edited 2011-01-04 20:12 UTC
In my opinion, the only thing that should be built into a quality television is a quality sound system. Everything else should be a separate device. TVs are expensive, where as settop boxes are cheap. 4 or 5 years down the road Netflix will have evolved, google TV will have evolved, and On-live will have evolved. But your TV will not. So as these services move forward to Version 2.0, your screen and menus will be encumbered by a bunch of legacy services. The other downfall of combining these thin client services into your TV set is that the boot up time for your set is ridiculously slow, and there is the risk that one of these services could bring down your whole TV set.
Additionally, I do warranty repairs for Vizio’s and I’m on the cusp of resigning because their quality is horrendous. 25% of my replacement parts were DOA in the 4th quarter of last year. – it is just too embarrassing for me. Fortunately for Vizio owners, their customer service is darn good.
That’s exactly my thinking.
If I buy a new TV I don’t need crippled internet access because I have a htpc that does that already in the way I want (access to any webpage I want and not only what they offer). The way it is now it’s useless.
Besides Vizio already announced last month that they may charge ($$$) for this service in the future.
Other companies will surely follow.
The sad thing that in a few years we will have problems finding new TVs without build-in 3D and internet services – don’t want to pay for stuff I don’t need!
“Even if OnLive gets games a few months after ‘real’ consoles, more casual gamers, or gamers with a tighter wallet, will still benefit greatly from the service.”
I’m not sure about the “gamers with a tighter wallet” part. For now I don’t see OnLive as a cheaper way to game.
Sure you don’t pay the hardware, but you pay a monthly fee and you still have to pay for the games at full price whereas you don’t have any local copy to play whenever you want (either physical on boxed DVD or digital on your hard disk) whereas the OnLive service will allow you to play the game only as long as they provide it. And be sure that they will stop providing it as soon as the game gets old or unpopular to make room for the newer releases.
OK since the beginning of the year they added a new ‘PlayPack’ plan where you have access to unlimited play to a whole catalog of games for a fixed monthly fee. However the latest releases won’t be part of that plan, so basically it will get you access to games that are already discounted in real-life or digital shops, and you still have to pay full price for the new releases.
Now let’s make myself clear here: I’m now saying that the OnLive service is a scam or anything like that. Far for it. I think it is a wonderful service that I am eager to try as soon as it will be available in Europe.
But I don’t really see as a good deal for the low-budget gamers. From my point of view, the best deal is still to invest your money in only one game-system (be it a reasonably-priced PC or a console) and buy selected games when they gets cheaper.
However the OnLive service is great for:
– gamers looking for mobility: you can play from everywhere with the same experience with no hassle as long as the Internet connexion is good.
– gamers looking for simplicity: no hardware to buy or upgrade, no software to install or update, no DVD case to buy and store or whatever, all digital in the cloud. Some people already prefer buying a DRM-ed game on Steam rather than a DRM-free boxed game, because they can easily install the game on any of their Steam-ready computers.
– casual gamers: from Thom article. Not sure if it will attract casual gamers, I guess it’s definitely a possibility given the simplicity that gives the system (cf. previous point) and since the OnLive catalog is not solely targeted at hardcore gamers. And if money isn’t an issue for them, they may love to just pay monthly fees (the PayPack plan) and don’t care about the rest. Even if it’s not cheaper in the end, it’s much more convenient and hassle free; just wander in the catalog and play what you like. If it doesn’t please you then just change to another game instead of trying to get a refund and be mad at yourself for not giving a look at the demo or reviews of the game before buying.
– high-tech gamers with money: as long as money isn’t an issue, I can see gamers that add OnLive to their existing list of game systems; those people usually have at home at least three game systems from the XBOX 360, PS3, Wii and PC, why wouldn’t they add OnLive? If they can afford it, why not? Maybe at longer term it could replace their gaming PC but I guess they would keep buying regular title when Steam or the local store does exceptional prices on selected titles. Maybe they would buy a mobile PC running OnLive to replace the big gaming desktop PC.
You missed the real killer app potential, namely short-medium term rental services and possibly new content discovery.