EA Sceptical About OnLive Latency

[exfileme]

After getting OnLive's subscription model wrong, EA CFO revealed his concerns over the cloud gaming service's latency.

EA Sceptical About OnLive Latency : Read more

 

[DokkRokken]

I'm not sure EA is the company who should be calling out others over something like gameplay.

 

[gladiator_mohaa]

EA is not perfect, but they did release free map packs for Bad Company 2 all year. Bad Company 2 is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination either but that has to be better than anything Activision would do for their customers I think.

 

[jerreece]

I won't be playing Bad Company 2 via OnLive anytime soon, this I promise you.

 

[rohitbaran]

Well, I think Onlive can coexist with consoles. It is for those people who want to play for sometime, then get busy with their work, then come back again. To some extent, it is like renting a game, only better if you consider that you get a whole lot more. But yes, latency is one hell of a problem, at least for fast paced games.

 

[megahustler]

Exactly my concern. OnLive faces both a bandwidth and a latency problem. Solving a bandwidth problem is often easy - throw a bigger tube at the problem.

Solving a latency problem is often much more tricky. Throwing a bigger tube at a latency problem will sometimes increase latency, rather than decrease it.

Online games, such as Counterstrike and the like, will often use different tricks to hide or at least reduce the players perception of latency. With online delivery of the actual screen image, these methods are impossible.

I think OnLive will have serious issues with FPS games, but will probably work ok for more casual games.

 

[juncture]

"anything less than a response time of 30 or 40 milliseconds is unacceptable"

you mean anything more than?

 

[soundping]

Online gamers with metered internet will be 100% screwed.

 

[Mark Heath]

Here in Aus, often there are no/few local servers and a good ping is less than 200 .

 

[proxy711]

Last time i played Onlive (Im a founding PC owner) there was very noticeable lag. while some single player games would be just fine, others like fps and multiplayer wouldn't be "playable" IMO.

 

[dEAne]

One day gamers will understand this and stop playing it.

 

[wolfseeker2828]

"EA Sceptical"

skeptical?

Spell check is your friend.

 

[kronos_cornelius]

I was agreeing with most comments against the feasibility of OnLive. But I changed my mind. phones and tablets would be able to benefit from this service, and the latency problem can be resolved by having server farms close to where the gamers are.

I just check the RTT from here to a server 300 miles aways, and it came back 8ms.

 

[Trashit]

[citation][nom]Mark Heath[/nom]Here in Aus, often there are no/few local servers and a good ping is less than 200 .[/citation]

Yep I'm with you right there. Trying to play a FPS on a US based server is like running around naked with a target painted on your back yelling "FREE KILL!!!". Even something like WoW/lotro which is rather friendly to high pings can get frustrating at times. Servers between Aus East coast and NZ is about as far away as you can go before the latency demon rears its ugly head. It's for this reason that huge LAN gatherings are still so popular here, aside from that they're huge fun

 

[harth13]

that aint good

 

[gh0st]

They might be ok if they don't have to use hops/routes through comcast...

 

[Guest]

"EA Sceptical"

skeptical?

Spell check is your friend.
..

Sceptical is the same as Skeptical. Google is 'your' friend.

 

[g00fysmiley]

translation... we make more money on consoles than this please but our games on consoles so we can keep selling physical media at hyper inflated prices since peopel have shown they will generally nto wanna pay the same price for a digital copy of the software... when they should see it as a positive because you can't reselll a digital copy its a way of not losing possible sales to the used video game market... once this is done hopefully gamestop will go out of buisness

 

[reggieray]

OnLive, not in my house.

 

[hellwig]

I'm surprised EA is talking this way about OnLive. Yes, latency could be a problem, but EA should be working with OnLive, not against them. How many EA games come with Securom because EA is worried about piracy (even if their invasive DRM stops no one)? OnLive is simply a games platform, a games platform where it is impossible to pirate (since you don't have any copy of the game, you can't crack and distribute anything). The only way to bypass OnLive's security would be to hack into someone's account and play their games, you can't Bittorrent anything or install a mod chip.

I would think EA and other publishers would be more than excited to jump on this platform. Heck, even if the latency is bad, it doesn't cost the companies anything. These are PC games, they don't have to develop for the platform like they do the XBox and PS3. Heck, they can just stick to the same B.S. of porting a console game to the PC that they're already sticking us consumers with.

 

[waethorn]

[citation]Google is 'your' friend.[/citation]

Google is nobodies friend.

 

[Travis Beane]

Hmm.
What about using OnLive to play PC games on a Xbox/PS3?
I still have latency concerns, but I think it's a great option if traveling with a laptop that only has a Intel GPU.

 

[colinl]

He intentionally exaggerated the cost of OnLive as well as the ping/response time that is needed for FPS. 30ms response is absurd; almost no one has that kind of response unless they happen to live in the same town as the game servers.

100-200ms is more reasonable. I would also be concerned about client-side lag inherent to thin client architectures and the amount of internet bandwidth it takes to make this work well. I'm currently using the cheapest my carrier offers and the speed is sufficent for NetFlix HD streaming (not that there is much content). I seriously doubt it will be sufficient for OnLive so that is a significant cost to jump up to the top tiers of my broadband provider.

 

[razor512]

Onlive = a 30-100ms delay for the image to reach you, a few more ms for your brain to react and perform an action in retaliation to the visual stimulus. After that, another delay for the action to be sent to the server. (remember, the lag is both ways, lag in receiving and lag in sending0, if you are playing against someone who has the game installed, so 0 latency, you will be at a serious disadvantage.

Also the onlive lag is compounded with the game server lag. so a 30-100ms delay to talk to onlive then 100+ms delay for onlive to talk to a game server. this means you will artificially be placing your self at a ping that a game server would normally kick you.

onlive delays become most noticeable when you play against someone else who is not on onlive.


Also the full play which is suppose to be unlimited is actually only about a 2 year rental according to their fine print

 

[gallidorn]

You have to discount anything this EA Rep says, because he isn't speaking from the standpoint of someone that has tried the service. He doesn't know the pricing of the service (FREE) and has no hands-on experience to refer to.

Anyone can refer to theoretical bandwidth issues, but until you have actually played the service on a decent internet connection... You shouldn't profess to know anything about the service.