Reviews - OnLive - Cloud-based gaming hits the U.K.

[HEXUS]

No disc, no download, no fuss...but can OnLive revolutionise the gaming scene?

Read more.

[shaithis]

Seems fine for extremely casual gaming.....which is why I can't see many people switching from PC/Console any time soon.

Plus, there is no mention of input lag. A lot of gamers detect it locally when using vsync......I can only imagine what its like while playing it "from the cloud"!

[MadduckUK]

Seems fine for extremely casual gaming.....

extremely casual gamers will have poopy comps, this definetly has a niche... just not us.


have they teamed up with any ISPs yet for cross-promotion?

[.havoc]

Not ISP's but they have a partnership with Game in the works...not sure about anyone else.

I gave it a whirl (since its free to sign up and try) and I was quite impressed too. I found it to be extremely responsive with such little input lag I hardly noticed it (I only ran a demo mind...)

The graphics were rendered nicely and what not, but what it let down for me was the stream quality (not the render quality). It was a little like watching an average Youtube video...where I would of had my pants blown off if they delivered more Vimeo HD. It was fast, no lag, very smooth but just the quality let it down - and it seemed just a little muddy...time will hopefully improve this and bring out the best it has to offer. I think it has potential to be really really good.

[.havoc]

extremely casual gamers will have poopy comps, this definetly has a niche... just not us.

I would of thought the casual gamer is a bigger market segment than the likes of us...

[Noxvayl]

@.havoc

Niche doesn't necessarily mean small, only specialized.

-----------------------------------------------------------

It's a great concept but I would like to know if people using OnLive play with gamers that don't use it? If they don't then I think they have a bottleneck, but otherwise it could encourage more budget concious people to join us gamers, which is a good thing imo.

[wasabi]

On Virgin 20 meg broadband. Tried it at 7 pm yesterday so probably the network was getting hammered but, that is real life for ya.

I tried 20 mins of Arkham Asylum demo as I wan't going to pay for an unknown quantity.

Felt irritatingly laggy at times and graphics were so-so. And I'm used to the relative feel of perceptible lag day in day out as I run a Citrix network for a living. Probably a passable service if you want to play on tablets or the likes very casually. Or good as a demo delivery system. As your primary game platform, too irritating - the lag kills it.

Edit: in balance - tried again tonight at 11pm and it was quite playable. Still a little lag but no jerky and horrible stuttering like yesterday. Graphics still only suited to small screen or the very unfussy though.

[Infinite]

Watching other people play is one of the best parts. Guaranteed HD quality. A lot better than watching JustinTV where quality differed from stream to stream.

[.havoc]

Niche doesn't necessarily mean small, only specialized.

Fair point

[cptwhite_uk]

Well I gave it whirl on my 2.5Mb line last night, good fun but not exactly playable. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone on anything under 5Mb, For my it akin to playing a badly encoded youtube video at 360p.

If you're on a shared connection your housemates would probably be pissed off with you. I think there's a need for at least an unlimited 10Mb connection for a decent experience without restricting other users on a network too serverely.

[Gitch28]

Will never work effectively with the terrible internet speeds in the UK. Someone needs to do something isntit.