Review: OnLive games in the cloud
Posted by Alex Garovi on September 28th 2010 | Discuss
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Software Review
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As PC games become more and more demanding, gamers are often left behind, unable to play the games they want without spending a good amount of money on new computers and/or graphics boards.
What it is
OnLive, an online gaming service launched in March 2009 is trying to make this frustrating element of PC gaming a thing of the past. Founded by entrepreneur Steve Perlman, OnLive is attempting to change the traditional PC gaming experience, by allowing users to play games via cloud computing on any computer that meets the client’s lenient system requirements. All you need is a dual core system and a screen resolution of 1024x576—settings that most modern PCs have. Your system also needs to be connected to the Internet via direct cable. OnLive is also available to Mac users. On paper, OnLive seems to be the perfect solution for your everyday gamer, providing PC games to mainstream casual gamers who don’t have the technological prowess to play the latest releases via installation from clients such as Valve’s Steam or CDs. Sounds good right? Curious to see if the OnLive service is too good to be true, I conducted multiple tests on two different machines, using both cable Internet and DSL.
The first tests were done by running Ubisoft’s “Prince of Persia” on two different systems through a cable internet connection. The first system was an HP Compaq 2610p, equipped with 2GB of RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 1.2GHz processor with Intel 965 IGP-UMA, with 1280 x 800 resolution in a 14.1 inch screen.
Being a pretty low-end laptop for today’s standards, I wanted to see how “Prince of Persia” would perform with OnLive on this mainstream-computing machine. Running at a steady 40 frames per second, “Prince of Persia” ran impressively on the HP laptop. Despite the steady frame rate, performance issues constantly arose whenever the Internet connection was anything less than perfect. Network error messages would appear about once every ten minutes. Whenever there was any sign of connection lag, the in-game music would skip erratically, and the graphics quality would go down the drain, becoming very pixilated and difficult to play. Even with these annoying issues, OnLive’s cloud system allows a demanding PC game to run on a low-end system that isn’t capable of running the game nearly as well if installed directly.
The second game I tested was “Defense Grid Gold,” a tower defense game that doesn’t demand much computing power. “Defense Grid Gold” consistently ran at a stable 41 frames per second, while sometimes going down to 39. OnLive’s Internet streaming system really performed well while running Defense Grid Gold. There weren’t any network problem notifications, graphical issues or moments of the sound skipping.
Now that I tested two OnLive games on a low-end laptop, I put it up against a high end gaming machine, equipped with the Intel Core i7 960 at 3.67GHz, two Nvidia GeForce GTX 480s and 6GB of RAM, with a 23 inch 1920 x 1080 Acer 120Hz monitor. Using this machine’s high-end hardware, “Prince of Persia” consistently ran at 59 frames per second. The graphics quality was clearer, with fewer network connection problems.
“Defense Grid Gold” ran at pretty inconsistent frame rates, going from 60 to 46 to 50 frames per second. Despite the ups and downs of the frame rates, “Defense Grid Gold” ran smoothly, without any network connection problems or issues with the graphics quality. Comparing the frames per second scores of “Prince of Persia” and “Defense Grid Gold” between these two different machines, it’s clear that hardware plays a role with OnLive. Although the HP Laptop played both games at consistent, playable frame rates, the higher-end desktop computer ran both games at higher frame rates, with less hiccups and network problems.
What do we think?
On paper, the concept of OnLive seems like the casual gamer’s dream. Instant access to a multitude of new games, without having to sacrifice hard drive space, or be fully up to date on today’s latest hardware. Despite this concept, there are some practicality issues with the OnLive client. The first: OnLive requires a direct cable Internet connection in order to run. I believe this is the client’s strongest downfall, because the majority of gamers using OnLive will be casual, low-end laptop users who will most likely be connected to WIFI networks the majority of the time—and OnLive does not currently support WiFi operation. It needs too many connection points for smooth delivery—but OnLive says they’re working on a solution.
Nowadays, it’s the big desktop gaming rigs that are typically connected to direct cable connections, computers that would most likely be capable of playing the games that OnLive has, regardless of the client’s streaming features. Although this statement is a generalization, more and more people of the casual computing mainstream are moving to mobile computing, leaving direct cable desktops behind. OnLive’s inability to work with WIFI networks almost makes it impractical to the everyday computer user.
The second issue with OnLive is its hunger for high speed Internet. Although this issue might seem erroneous due to the fact that OnLive streams games, the client’s demand for bandwidth on the fastest of Internet connections makes the service exclusive to only those who have access to such Internet speeds. Testing on an ordinarily fast direct-cable connection, network error notifications still popped up as graphics and sound quality declined.
Testing “Prince of Persia” on a DSL connection, network errors appeared about every five minutes, the graphics quality went down and the sound became garbled. Although “Prince of Persia” mostly ran at 40 frames per second, all of the problems I was having with an already fast cable connection became much more pronounced when I moved to the slower DSL connection.
Both of these problems considered, OnLive’s openness to casual gamers seem to be overshadowed by exclusivity. Once WiFi connectivity becomes available for OnLive, many more casual users will take advantage of its features. Although it’s unlikely that the client’s demand for bandwidth will decrease, progression to faster internet services will also allow more users to gain access to OnLive. OnLive has a lot of potential to grow into a great casual gaming client for the everyday gamer, but seems too far ahead of its time to compete with major game services such as Steam.
Last but not least, there’s no discount for using OnLive. Games cost just as much from OnLive as they do from Steam or a retail store, plus OnLive’s $15 month fee.
What we like
This is a hard one to call. We like the concept.
What we don’t like
We don’t like being tethered, and don’t like the added costs.
Best we can offer is a neutral on OnLive.
