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Let’s play games OnLive!

I often wonder where the future of gaming is going. Throughout my gaming life I have lost count how many times I have said to myself , ‘Surely it can’t get any better than this!’. Every time I say it, just around the corner something amazing comes out. How I pine for some more 8-bit action.

It looks as though the next step in gaming is moving into ‘cloud’ technology. OnLive, which is due around winter this year, is going to centralise our gaming experience and also reduce any complications around cost and hardware because you won’t have to provide any of it. The only thing you will need is a phat internet connection that can handle all the streaming that you will be sending and receiving. There should not be any need to upgrade your current laptop or Mac because games will stream through a web browser. If you have neither of these then do no worry because there will be a small box to plug into your television.

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You shall have instant access to a lot of games, or according to OnLive the ‘hottest’ games. Now, you should understand before I say this that I’m not cynical, however these ‘hottest’ games will be made by the companies who back the project. What is good is that these companies include EA, THQ, Eidos, EPIC, Ubisoft and some more and as you know these guys are behind some huge titles.

some-titles

This sort of technology, especially at these early stages, poses a tonne of questions. Surely there is going to be more lag because of the amount of data involved. No longer are you hosting your own client, the OnLive servers will be carrying out this mammoth task. You will no longer have to buy disks, install the games, patch the games or manage disk space. If you are not buying a physical item will it be cheaper? Will there be a subscription to this online service? How much will that be? There will not be the same requirement to build your own machines to keep up with the latest ‘recommended’ requirements so what gamer will still go and buy that stuff?

This could be the first step toward the single gaming platform. I am sure that many companies will be wondering how they can get a piece of the action or whether they will have to move on and provide some other type of service or game enhancing utility. With the reduced need for crazy hardware specs there will not be as much necessity for engineers to push the boundaries when it comes to designing new graphics and sound cards. The market will definitely be narrowed on this side.

I feel as though I could write about this all day and would love to but I have to go and find out more information about it before I can decide if it will be a good thing or not. Just now, I think it will be good but we will have to wait and see.

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7 responses to “Let’s play games OnLive!”

  1. Ben avatar
    Ben

    Will never work in the UK, our aging copper based internet lines wouldn’t be able to deliver decent and consistent(the big one) enough speeds.

    Not sold on it at all, and as you can build a pretty decent rig for £400 ish the saving you’d make wouldn’t be that great I don’t think.

    There’s too much that can go wrong between your computer and the games servers. Even MMO’s still struggle with lag, let alone streaming high quality video at crazy speeds.

  2. GamerGeekGirl avatar
    GamerGeekGirl

    Some of those questions have been answered at GDC – namely, there will be a subscription, and it will be “roughly the same as Xbox Live”

    And the OnLive box is supposed to be “less than a Wii”

    I don’t think there is any way this will replace anything… Partly, the huge first-parties won’t get on board; and also people won’t like buying *only* digital product when it’s not even stored on their hard disk.

  3. Uzi avatar
    Uzi

    Yeah, this just screams “LAG!”, which is more of an issue in FPS’s, my favorite genre.

    Seems suited to today’s economy, though.

    I’m already viewing my movies this way…

  4. Krylon avatar
    Krylon

    This is the future whether we want it or not. I sure that this is only the first step and these services will evolve over the years, but with the ever increasing cost of developing console technologies becoming prohibitively expensive this offers a much cheaper, more viable option. The lag issue will become irrelevant in the very near future as the likes of BT release their FTTH service and other companies such as Velocity 1 already offering 100Mbps download and 50Mbps upload lag won’t even be an issue and beside Xbox live is constantly beset by lag yet that service has gone from strength to strength. All Onlive needs is the games and with several majors already on board the others will follow suit sooner or later.

  5. DemonJ avatar
    DemonJ

    I think, inevitably, this is the way gaming is going. I cant see this working for at least another decade. The reason? Like you have said, Internet speed. In France the average speed is 17mb, over here? less that 4mb, we have to do some substantial work on our lines to not only keep up with our European rivals, but to have the ability to uphold huge data files that OnLive can provide.

    Or i could be completely wrong and OnLive do the unimaginable and have totally lag free, uninterupted servers that can hold, stream and run huge data files… it sounds, too futuristic.

  6. John avatar
    John

    This is interesting in a number of ways. Firstly it’s – to me – a new sector using the term ‘The Cloud’ although this is not actually cloud computing. Secondly it fits with an article I wrote (http://www.silesti.net/home/saas-wow-it-realy-is/) about GameSpace leading the way in Online service definition and delivery. Thirdly the polarisation of the gaming community it is already generating between the owner/players and the downloader/players.

    For me the technologies are going to be interesting. We’re already seeing graphics processing being pushed down to the client for web pages and media access as this is simply the most efficient and effective method which can be used for high-resolution and high-speed graphics work. So, are we going to be seeing the OnLive box being a Super-GPU with a wireless LAN interface? OR will it be the simply a set of IO interfaces handling a very streamlined and optimised set of data flows up and down the wire? What will the client for PC’s and Mac’s look like?

    This is interesting.

  7. markBOSS avatar
    markBOSS

    I think for PC/laptop gaming it could be interesting. Ive always been turned off PC gaming due to the burden of being obsolete.

    If there was no lag on a decent connection, fairly prcied subscription and a game rental service with similar price points to that already offered- then I would be interested in this for PC gaming.

    But what would be better is if they just rented out/ sold the games individually on this service without any yearly/ monthly subscription pricing.

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