OnLive lag: not that bad

OnLive has had its fair share of criticism with regards to lag, but science lab results suggest that it’s nowhere near as bad as the early adopters claim.

From the time when the service was in beta, OnLive has been plagued by reports that it is a laggy – and therefore an inferior service – but as reported by Kotaku, OnLive was tested by DigitalFountry, which found a very different experience.

OnLive games tested included Unreal Tournament, Dirt 2 and Assassin’s Creed II, with lag for each game being rated somewhere between 150-216ms. This lag is slower than it would be using a physical copy of each game, but typical of the kinds of delays facing people who play games online, and importantly, playable.

Remembering that OnLive is essentially the first of its kind, the fact it does live up to its pre-release promise of 35-80ms lag is not surprising, but at the same time, it would seem the extreme reports of unplayable games on the service are far fetched - and unfair negative publicity so early in OnLive's life.