GDC09: OnLive bosses talk bandwidth caps

by Justin McElroy on Mar 25th 2009 9:00AM

As much as we love the Utopian vision of the future that OnLive -- which plans to offer game streaming direct to PCs, Macs and set-top boxes -- provides, we're still left with plenty of questions. For one, what does piping in games mean for those with bandwidth caps?

As an example, at the 5 Mbps OnLive requires for HD gaming, a Comcast user capped at 250 GB monthly could expect to get around 3.8 hours per day of game time -- assuming they used their connection for nothing else.

When questioned about it at a press event for the device last night, OnLive founder Steve Perlman didn't seem concerned. First, the console is rarely using the full 5 Mpbs. In fact, he said, it's often far less. Also, Perlman hopes that ISPs will give special consideration to OnLive as the service may well drive cable customers to upgrade their datastream. For now, consider it another challenge for OnLive will have to handle when their product launches in winter of this year.

We'll have more for you regarding OnLive when we give it another hands-on, this time on the GDC show floor.

Tags: gdc-2009, onlive, onlne, reardon-labs

Reader Comments (58)

Should anyone be playing 3.8 hours of gaming a day anyway? You have a job or school or both. You have to eat, sleep, family, maybe girlfriend or boyfriend or both! I am lucky to get 7-9 hours in a week and it would be less than that if i didnt have an iphone and a psp. if you have comcast 250 gigs shouldnt be a problem. i am dying to try this service out and hear about it. it very well could be a huge success and the idea sounds great to me depending on cost of service.

Never heard of summer break? Or layoff?

Yes i did hear of summer break but there is still outdoors, significant other, family and friends, tv, sleeping, eating, and i could go on and on but you get the idea. no one should be playing 3.8 hours a day, unless you never ever watch tv. if your playing 3.8 hours or more a day you need to seriously look in the mirror. even when i was 8 or 10 years old i would only play that much on 1-2 days a week if a friend came over. im just saying.... im not here to judge anyone but come on now

Granted about 4 hours of gaming a day alone is tough, but when you consider many of us who use the internet for almost everything this can cramp up certain ppl who do heavy dl/ing whether its tv shows, music (not as heavy on bandwidth compared to other items), buying games via steam, netflix.

I dont personally think the bandwidth cap will be a overly huuge issue, I just still think this will never see the light of day. For a company to handle ALLL the processing occurring on their end to send to the box to then wait for a users input to then resend the video back seems overly excessive. This console will be a huuge lagfest in my opinion if it even occurs. Another factor other have to keep in mind is how do you know their servers are adequate to begin with to handle a huge consumer base if this becomes in high demand.

No. But that's if you don't use you internet connection for anything else! I would wager that a lot people would be hitting their maxes easily every month gaming on this thing for maybe a couple hours a day while using their internet connection the same way they have in the past.

I don't watch TV, occassionally my other half does (on PlayTV), but she prefers a good book. We watch blu-ray's now and then. I work 9-5 and most days I'll manage to game between 6pm-12pm / 1am. At the weekends i'll easily game for most of the day, and i'm talking from 10am to 2/3 sometimes 5am.

Obviously i have days off, i tend to take breaks to walk the dogs, or to cook dinner, but most days I'll get a good few hours in. my mrs and our housemate watch me playing instead of TV, join in sometimes, we're just not TV people. So uh, yeah, I would max out a limited connection easy.

But that's not OnLive's problem. you need to check your service will be suitable before purchasing / signing up.

i do wonder how much this will cost though, we talking annual fee, plus original layout, plus anything for each game?

I'd rather "have" my games, trade them in, keep my photos, music etc on my console.

Doesn't need saying that I've got a PS3 - i would melt an errorbox in a week. lol.

Johnny you seem to be miss understanding. These figures are if you use the internet for nothing else and if you even have a monthly cap of 280GB. My monthly is 100GB, and I'm torrenting things and streaming stuff all the time. This product would not be viable for the average person.

What does it all mean? It means that this product does not legs to stand on with bandwidth caps and OnLive founder Steve Perlman could give a crap. Bandwidth caps has directly nothing to do with his product. He just going to roll this service out sell a couple million and then walk away leaving everyone with an added service charge because of going over your bandwidth cap.

I'm thinking he doesn't care because they really only can support a certain amount of users. So, only those users that have fiber optic services is fine with him. The server farms, the cloud, only can support so many users. If they max that out, they're happy. They don't need to reach everyone, which boils down to a lot of angry consumers.

*sniff* *snff* .....aaah I can smell the vapors from it already. Gotta love vaporware to show up once or twice within a year.

Ya beat me to the punch.

Plus won.

I don't follow with the assumptions that this is vaporware. They are demonstrating the product and have major studio support. How about we give them a chance and not all act as though any new idea must be vaporware because of the Phantom.

Funny thing is, the Phantom actually called it right... PSN, Live Arcade, WiiWare, Steam, Impulse, etc... are all taking off in a big way.

It seemed a kinda dumb idea at the time, but its the way the industry is going now.

They should have made it a platform and put it on eveyr system...

I don't actually see how this thing could really cost that much less than the 360 or PS3 after you factor in 5 years or more of subscription fees. And the nature of the device suggests that it has far less reliability than a PS3 or 360 (RRoD issues aside). After all, it banks on your internet connection's reliability.

Hmm, lessee...

$400 on a PS3, around 8 games averaging $50 on Blu-Ray, over $120 on the Playststion Store, all within 1 year... That's almost a thousand bucks! Holy crap! I spend too much money on this crap!

Anyway, point being, I don't think this service will cost $100/mo, and you can't include broadband costs unless you include them in the cost of a console too.

A console will typically last you around 5 years. Maybe 6. Figure you can get a 360 for around $250 (refurbished) or $300. You don't count the cost of the games because you still have to pay for games with OnLive. So, over 5 years, the 360 costs you around $5 per month. Throw in Xbox Live gold membership at $50 / year or ~$5 / month and the 360 costs less than $10 per month over 5 years.

For that $10 / month, you get a multimedia center that plays DVDs and streams content from your PC. Plus, you can play games when your internet connection is down and you can bring it to friends houses and not have to worry about their internet connection.

So, this notion that current console gaming is "too expensive" is a bunch of BS.

I think it's more useful to consider this competition with PC gaming than console gaming. The titles I've seen are all on PC, and they mentioned that they're upgrading the hardware every 6 months or so, making the extra cost well worth it, and at the same time ruling out home consoles. For what you're getting (constantly top-of-the-line gaming for a subscription) I think whatever monthly price they come out with will be very reasonable.* Especially since you don't need to buy the box if you've got a computer at home. I think 20-30 a month will be well worth it.

*This comment void and null if they pull some ridiculous pricing scheme with hidden fees and exorbitant monthly fees.

Wait, 250GB a MONTH limit?

Mine is 10 :\

And I thought I had it bad here with 60GB/month...

Mine is only 10 gigs too. Its horrible being throttled back to dialup speed after i go over, the internet is pretty much unusable, 1 minute+ load times for pages.

10 a month? I assume you only pay like 5$ monthly for your internet fee. Mine is 100GB a month, 10Mbps, @50$ a month Canadian.

and that's the problem with monopolization. i guess the fcc doesn't see this and thinks it's fine? It took city council YEARS to allow fios into the city, up until now the only choice we had was Comcast.... DONT EVEN DARE SAY DSL.

Im surprised at all the negative comments on this device so far in here. it could be a failure but all the major developers have signed on for this thing and it is getting all kinds of media attention from blogs and at engadget most of the comments have been people excited for this thing. not sure whats with the negative comments on joystiq?? i remember tons of negativity about wii too and that thing somehow succeeded despite every game looking like its for girls.

Probably because people on joystiq have already invested thousands into their gaming systems and don't want to see that usurped by some unreliable system for casual, wii-style gaming types.

Sugar, this is the second post on this page where you call it unreliable. Since you have spent so much time with the device, please tell us about its lack of reliability. What has it done to fail? How has the data streaming not been reliable? What has made it so worthy of your premature criticism?

I think people get a kick out of definitively predicting an outcome because it makes them feel more intelligent, but all they're really doing is hedging their bets. It is completely true that this service has more obstacles to overcome than proven technology and precedents in its favor, but even if you can list a hundred different reasons why "iTz aWTO fAILz" why can't you also appreciate the cleverness of the concept? Maybe these guys are snake oil salesmen, maybe it is a scheme to bilk these major companies out of capital, but at least it'll get people thinking.

Also, I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the 1 ms claim. I believe they meant that was the time it took to compress the video to their format, not transmission time from server to user. Transmission time will still be dependent on the infrastructure in between, but if they can keep the ping, compression time, and processing time all together under 32 ms, they could achieve ~ 30fps gameplay, which is certainly playable if not ideal, and that's if the games don't utilize a predictive input algorithm.

There's a lot of ifs with this, but I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what they come up with over the next several months.

"Also, Perlman hopes that ISPs will give special consideration to OnLive as the service may well drive cable customers to upgrade their datastream."

Really?
This guy is the founder of OnLive and this is his "solution"? It's not even a solution, it's wishful thinking...

I live in Northern BC, Canada and the maximum amount of gigs I can have is 20 per month, there are no "higher" packages available.

This is one of those products where the hidden costs (in this case, internet fees, overage charges, etc) will probably far outweigh the enjoyment factor.

I'd have to figure out how much this costs before I say whether or not this sort of thing could work. I'm willing to bet this company has put in a bit more thought into this than any of us.

It's E.T. It's alien and like most things we don't understand we naturally fear. My first thought was the bandwidth problem as well but if they've found a way to optimize the connection then maybe it won't be such a big problem.

While I think Sony and MS should be a little concerned I don't see this effecting the next line of consoles but only time will tell. If it is a rousing success expect to see MS make a push to buy OnLive (the name is already close enough to make the transition easy). I don't know if Sony has enough money to do it but either way OnLive has definitely changed the industry whether it's a success or not.

I still don't believe that it is possible to strean stuff like that with little to no lag required for gaming. Even on a local network. Take the PSP/PS3 for example. It streams just fine, but the lag, although minimal, is what kills it for action games, even if you are in the same room. Sure, it's OK enough for Pixel Junk Monsters... but try to stream a PSOne racing game and you're screwed. Your reaction time + minimal lag = complete dysynchronisation.

Exactly! I tried playing Bionic Commando on the PS3 via my PSP and I don't think I could take more than two minutes.

The technology just isn't there yet.

Amazing! You two must be Holmes and Watson, right? If only the developers and investors of OnLive had known to contact you before wasting millions of dollars on research and securing investments for this. They should have known, if the PSP can't do it, then surely this too will fail.

I like the look of that controller. Let's hope they at least put that out. :-p

I live in Ontario, Canada, and I have a monthly 60GB cap, and I pay about $45/month (this is the medium package). The highest cap possible is 100GB before going up to a business account. I don't think this kind of setup would work, especially with the majority of people being on "lite" speed internet (Dial-Up + 1).

Say what? Bandwith caps are common "over there"?

If this works without lag, it would be pretty cool. But I for one am done with unnecessary subscriptions. There are just WAY to many things that require subscriptions these days, and if you don't watch out those $10-$20 subscriptions can really add up.

Does no one remember The Phantom and Infinium Labs?

This is a bad joke of an idea.

Yes, we all remember them and yet this company has nothing to do with them beyond bringing about the typical internet whine fest trashing a product based on assumptions. There is no basis for you to compare this product with those.

I dont want to download/watch a movie of a game im playing, i want my game. I like cracking open a new game after fighting with all the plastic and anti theft crap...then when im done with the game i can proudly display it on my bookshelf and put another notch in the old gaming belt...

Onlive is going to be huge. I can't see why anyone would purchase a new console at this point in time with OnLive set to launch this summer. Who knows. It could be a total flop, but I just have a feeling it will succeed.
Ed - http://OnliveFans.com

http://www.sunflowerbroadband.com/internet/

Check out my crappy (and only) internet provider. The best we can get is 50GB! That won't last a week with this service.

I have to correct my last post on this device. At the time I said this couldn't possibly work because the round-trip lag would be about 80ms. I got this figure by taking normal ping times and doubling them (to make it a round trip). Except ping times are already round trip.

So a normal round trip time is more like 45ms. This is still a very long time. Add in processing lag and you're probably looking at precluding a lot of games right off the bat. But not as many as I thought.

I still think variable latency spikes (like when someone else in the house decides to stream a movie off netflix while you are playing). I mean, if your latency jumps to 100ms every 20 minutes, there's going to be more than a few cases where you die due to lag.

This seems like it'll do great for things like Peggle, but Flash already does a good job with that anyway.

I still think it won't succeed, but I have to back off slightly from what I said before.

I have a 100GB of combined upload-download. Stupid ISP in Canada.

Um, bittorrent is a great reason for people to upgrade their connections too, yet I don't see the ISPs opening up the floodgates for that either.

Bad argument. This would be a legitimate service. Bittorrent, no matter how many companies use it for legitimate purposes, is almost entirely used for and inextricably linked to illegal uses.

But that's not what the ISPs care about. They care about selling people stuff that they won't use (bandwidth), and the more users utilize what they paid for to the maximum amount, the less profits the ISPs get. Look at the whole Net Neutrality argument: it's not because the ISPs want to limit illegal activity, it's because ISPs love the idea of both consumers and providers paying them to use their highways. OnLive will not be viable if it has to pay to get content into people's houses.

250GB???? I've recently moved to where I'm paying a hefty sum to get away from bandwidth caps which around here are 5GB-20GB/mo... What I'd give for 250GB caps or connection speeds faster than 4Mbs that I could afford.

250 GIG! We in South Africa sit with 1-3 gig caps....

Somewhere, a Virgin-Media using Brit is crying...

Those fuckers cap my internet from 10mbps to 2mbps for five hours if I hit as little as 2GB of total download during the so-called "peak times" between 4pm and 10pm so I doubt I'll be use it unless I change the provider. Still given Virgin Media's percentage share OnLive might as well not fucking bother in UK because those asshole sure as hell aren't going to give us a bit more bandwith...

I have no speed caps, but I start being charged $1.00/GB after 10GB. Alas, there aren't any better broadband deals where I live, so I'm pretty much stuck with this crap.

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GDC09: OnLive bosses talk bandwidth caps

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