OnLive 2009 GDC Press Conference

[Gowans]

GDC 2009 - Onlive Press Conference



Fake Edit: Bonus Gaikai, PSNow Reveals

• E3 2012 - Gaikai Press Breifing
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ealEV6B2ck
  
  
• E3 2014 - Playstation Now Reveal
  https://youtu.be/D6t8VPn2fIs?t=5596

After the news this week from Google it's felt like Déjà vu for some of us, as a reminder I thought it would be interesting to see how OnLive was revealed a decade ago at GDC 2009 and discuss while we're all talking streaming.

 

[Chivalry]

Onlive was truly ahead of its time.

 

[Dukie85]

I remember this and GameTap like it was yesterday. Never used either one, but I was sorta intrigued back then,

 

[Invisible Cities]

Someone like Crowbcat needs to make a video edit comparing the press releases of these various streaming services.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I remember this and GameTap like it was yesterday. Never used either one, but I was sorta intrigued back then,

Click to shrink...

I did, and that's where my skepticism for streaming as the gaming standard turned in explicit dislike.

 

[Tregard]

OnLive was ahead with a ton of stuff, "Brag Clips" also sticks out. I loved the video grid on the menus.

I think they first show off a game 24 minutes in, btw.

 

[Deleted member 2785]

Thanks for this thread. Good times. I still have the OnLive microconsole. Came with Homefront, heh.

 

[Alucardx23]

I did, and that's where my skepticism for streaming as the gaming standard turned in explicit dislike.

Click to shrink...

Things have gotten a lot better since the OnLive days. If you compare what Geforce Now and others are doing today on regards to image quality and latency, it's day and night the difference.

 

[Danzflor]

Man, I truly loved this concept back then, but I still have the same worries as today. Not everyone has a fast, stable connection to make this truly work, and it's been 10 years since this (and I'm fully aware that by then this tech was a luxury, now Google wants this to be for everyone). Still, loved the passion (no idea the thing was stealth developed in 7 years) and to this day OnLive still has one of my favorite UI in gaming.

 

[Roy]

Big things have small beginnings

 

[Meelow]

I thought it said 2019 conference and I was like "wait what?!"

 

[dreamcast]

I remember it well. I used OnLive a little bit. The game selection pretty much stunk though. They were ahead of the times for sure. It was pretty cool to see a giant grid of games being played and just drop in on someone playing.

 

[Whompa]

Nice to see Google seeing a great idea, from a team that doesn't have the built in infrastructure, and applies it to themselves, a team that DOES have the built in infrastructure, and wants to make it work.

Like the early days of VR, OnLive was a decade too early.

 

[Jarrod38]

Here I thought OnLive was coming back. I had an account but can't remember any of the games.

 

[Namko]

Good times! I completed Mafia 2 on it (still have my MicroConsole). I also used that CloudLift feature (your Steam games linked to Onlive) for a couple of months after Onlive relaunched (2.0).

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Things have gotten a lot better since the OnLive days. If you compare what Geforce Now and others are doing today on regards to image quality and latency, it's day and night the difference.

Click to shrink...

I have an Nvidia Shield tablet, I already used Geforce Now.
I also tried Steam streaming for a while.
No matter how marginally better the tech got over time, it's still a far-from-optimal solution when you can easily access local hardware.

 

[Nestled_Grizzly]

I was all in on OnLive back in the day. I had the micro console and a bunch of games on it. It was pretty awesome to be a part of it. Then bad management allowed it to go away. :(

 

[Komo]

Man I loved using OnLive. It ran on a 2-4 mbps internet back then so it was super optimized for what it was.

 

[Deleted member 2254]

I remember trying OnLive back in the day with some racing game. It worked rather well on what was, I think, a 20mbps connection. I was actually quite surprised that it was that decent, and I thought that in a couple years this could indeed be huge. A decade later we're getting there.

 

[Alucardx23]

Man, I truly loved this concept back then, but I still have the same worries as today. Not everyone has a fast, stable connection to make this truly work, and it's been 10 years since this (and I'm fully aware that by then this tech was a luxury, now Google wants this to be for everyone). Still, loved the passion (no idea the thing was stealth developed in 7 years) and to this day OnLive still has one of my favorite UI in gaming.

Click to shrink...

I'm just about to create a thread just based on the highlighted. What service could you say is accessible to everyone? Is everyone capable of buying a current game console or gaming PC? Isn't more important to actually know the amount of people in the word that are capable of using a service or buying a device? For example, there are 76 countries in the world with an average internet speed of 25Mbps. That is the type of information you actually need to know. There is a reason why Microsoft and Google are talking about reaching 2 billion people in the world, compared to the 300+ million market for console gamers. So yes, let's stop with the "everybody in the world needs to have access to a service in order for it to work" type of comments.

 

[low-G]

OnLive was such a disaster, and had the same exact problems and limitations as Google Stadia, except compression artifacts were much worse in those days. My reaction then was just like today. The economics still don't work out and never will work out. Latency will always be a problem (unless we get data center gaming satellites / space stations).

I did try OnLive in the day, I beta tested it I think. I took screenshots of how terrible Crysis looked.

 

[ghostcrew]

Feels. I played through the entirety of Metro 2033 on OnLive. Got the little console and everything. It felt magic ten years ago.

 

[skeptem]

Tried it multiple times and always found it impressive but unusable. Having also tried PS Now and then Project Stream, it feels like we are getting closer and closer to where we need to be.

 

[Danzflor]

I'm just about to create a thread just based on the highlighted. What service could you say is accessible to everyone? Is everyone capable of buying a current game console or gaming PC? Isn't more important to actually know the amount of people in the word that are capable of using a service or buying a device? For example, there are 76 countries in the world with an average internet speed of 25Mbps. That is the type of information you actually need to know. There is a reason why Microsoft and Google are talking about reaching 2 billion people in the world, compared to the 300+ million market for console gamers. So yes, let's stop with the "everybody in the world needs to have access to a service in order for it to work" type of comments.

Click to shrink...

It is a really valid point, that's why I specified how Google marketed Stadia as "gaming for everybody", but you are right, there's no need to cather to everyone in order to make things work. I mainly see it as this capitalism vision to appeal and target every single person in the planet, to make as much profit as possible. And regarding your question, by this point I could say that mobile gaming is accesible to everyone (at least everyone with the capacity to get debt and buy a modern phone).

 

[Clockblockers]

I remember being interested in the technology for onlive and Gaikai at the time for more than just video games. I wonder if they managed to make any meaningful advancements or if everything was a wasted effort

 

[Ionic]

I remember the menu in Onlive that had like tiles of tons of people playing games and you could select to watch any one. I thought that was cool. Things like Twitch were not as ubiquitous yet so it was pretty novel.

 

[vestan]

I remember I played through the entirety of Arkham City for the first time in one day using OnLive. Good times.

 

[TrashHeap64]

Its crazy that this is pretty much the same exact presentation as the Stadia one

 

[Turnabout Sisters]

Another positive OnLive experience here. I had a decent connection and the latency wasn't too bad for many of the games. I had a blast with Lego Harry Potter with friends (controller setup was effortless iirc) and picture quality was good enough to be enjoyable for simpler looking games.

 

[Mantrox]

This Onlive presentation is better, more in-depth and the presenter itself is much more at ease; you can tell he knows his stuff.
If Stadia ends up on E3, their showing there should be much more compelling than their tepid unveiling at GDC.

Having said that, the main problems are still there to be addressed.
- Latency
- Availability
- Consistency
- Pricing
- Game Library

 

[Necron]

Crazy that it's already been 10 years. Wow...

This is some déjà vu, indeed.

 

[mrtl]

I remember some European provider(s) partnering with this, ironically one from Belgium where data caps were/are rampant.

 

[Jroc]

I played a few hours of Duke Nukem Forever using OnLive.

A game that came out too late on a service that came out too early.

 

[Chuck]

This conference is about 100 times better than googles

 

[Alucardx23]

I have an Nvidia Shield tablet, I already used Geforce Now.
I also tried Steam streaming for a while.
No matter how marginally better the tech got over time, it's still a far-from-optimal solution when you can easily access local hardware.

Click to shrink...

It is not only marginally better, we went from 720P/30fps to 1080P/120fps or 4K/60fps with more efficient compression and latency cut in half. On regards to being an optimal solution that is something subjective. Someone that doesn't have the money to buy a US$400+ console at launch could start playing next gen games day and date with the person that spent that amount of money. Don't know about you, but buying a console downloading or installing a game doesn't seem to be more easy that pressing a button on a web browser and start playing the game in 5 seconds. That is the whole point of how Stadia, Project X and other similar cloud gaming services.

 

[Eoin]

I remember being interested in the technology for onlive and Gaikai at the time for more than just video games. I wonder if they managed to make any meaningful advancements or if everything was a wasted effort

Click to shrink...

The technology was really only needed for video games.

When OnLive was announced, other forms of audiovisual streaming were, practically speaking, approaching the point of having been solved. Video streaming was mainstream with YouTube and about to start a big commercial push with Netflix. Music streaming was a practical reality. Conferencing and telepresence setups were starting to appear. Remote desktop applications meant remote access to computers worked pretty well for everything apart from applications that required absolutely minimal lag (which really just meant games plus a tiny number of super-specialised applications).

So even in the best case scenario for OnLive, I don't think there was much of a chance for the tech behind it to make a difference in other areas.

 

[Radec]

Was there google fibre back in 2009?

 

[JusDoIt]

I played through all of Splinter Cell: Conviction on OnLive. I completed a Borderlands run on it too. All that to say the tech was solid 8 years and having been part of the Project Stream beta, it's solid today.

I didn't see it as a threat to dedicated home hardware gaming at all back then, however. And I still don't see it as one today. I see it as a complement, the way handhelds and mobile complement consoles and PCs.

 

[dallow_bg]

Wow, he even mentions the ability to have games that go beyond what is capable with PC tech at home.
Essentially the Onlive cloud as the platform for more advanced games.

Didn't realize that was something they worked on too.

 

[Bundy]

Here I thought OnLive was coming back. I had an account but can't remember any of the games.

Click to shrink...

How can it come back? ;D Sony bought all of it. First Gaikai, then OnLive.

 

[Deleted member 3897]

I used it to play demos of games I couldn't find anywhere else. :P

 

[Alucardx23]

I used it to play demos of games I couldn't find anywhere else. :P

Click to shrink...

That goes to Phil Harrison's point about game preservation/access with Stadia/cloud gaming in general. Most of the time the discussion goes to how physical games can be more easily preserved than digital, but rarely I see anyone talking about ease of access for digital/cloud games. As a game gets older and physical copies are more difficult to find, it doesn't really matter that someone someone has a copy stored in their basement, what matters for you is to have access to that old game and play it when you want.

 

[Paul]

I thought Onlive was pretty cool. I mean the experience sucked, but it had some cool features and interface and was very forward thinking. Waaaay ahead of its time though.

 

[Deleted member 45130]

Cool concept but even with 50mbps fibre at the time the latency was pretty bad. I think I used it a couple times and then sold it off.

 

[pswii60]

10 years too early, they were the Sega of videogame streaming.

It's just a shame they didn't actually do any real world tests to realise that it wasn't good enough. Does nobody think of doing a blind test of the same game running on two screens (native vs streaming) and see if the player can tell a difference? Until they can't, it's not good enough.

The OnLive user interface was pretty cool though IIRC.

 

[Elfotografoalocado]

Heh, I remember thinking this was the coolest shit back then, and hooking into it with one of the computers in high school to play Bad Company 2 in school. (Or maybe that was Gaikai?)

 

[Council Pop]

I remember playing demos of games on OnLive back in 2011, just after it launched in the UK. I never bought a game on it because it was expensive, but even on my student house internet, the latency was usually pretty much fine. This is what gives me hope for Stadia and the like- the tech sounds like it's come on leaps and bounds since OnLive, so I'm hoping that the latency will be minimal enough for the sort of games I want to play.

 

[.exe]

I really liked the interface and how seamlessly you could jump in to watch other people playing games. Best thing about the service easily.

 

[BradGrenz]

OnLive was the way I played FTL for the first time. They did a cool thing where a number of IGDF (I think) game builds were made available for anyone to try. So I fell in love with that prerelease version of FTL, despite the wonky mouse controls at the time.

 

[TheUnseenTheUnheard]

I still have the app on my phone

Click to shrink...

https://imgur.com/a/Xp3O3lo