Gaming Hits The Cloud - OnLive Platform Revealed

Hardware

In a fascinating announcement at GDC, a company named OnLive has revealed plans for a new gaming platform hosted over the Internet. Set to release at the end of this year, and with a beta scheduled for this winter, it attempts to make current generation games playable on any computer. You can see the trailer for the product at their website.

The way it works is by leaving all the processing up to a massive server farm in the cloud, and then simply tubing the resulting picture to your desktop - either PC or Mac. All you have to do is download what is basically a browser plugin, and you are good to go. There will also be a "microconsole" available for cheap (or possibly free with a contract) that has a couple of USB ports, an HDMI out (for 1080i or 720p output) and a wireless controller if you want to play on your TV.

Of course, your number one concern is going to be lag. Creator Steve Perlman claims that latency will be as good, and probably better than a LAN. There will be multiple server sites established to try and ensure that everyone has a good experience. There is some clever compression going on behind the scenes, but for a 480p (standard definition) resolution, you will need at least a 1.5Mb/s connection, and the upper resolutions will need 5Mb/s.

The best news is that it is not a proprietary platform without big name third-party support. EA, Ubisoft, Take-Two, Warner Bros, THQ, Eidos, Atari, Codemasters, Epic Games and 2D Boy are already on board, and you can bet they are courting Activision-Blizzard. That means you will be playing Burnout Paradise, Hawx, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, Tomb Raider, World of Goo, Crysis Warhead, Unreal Tournament 3, Prince of Persia and more.

The service has some cool community features as well. There is voice chatting, friend lists, and achievements to unlock. You can even save "brag clips" of you pulling off a stunt in a game, which can then be shared with your friends.

Now, clearly most hardcore PC users will want to stick to their own beefed up rigs, but OnLive is trying to bring that performance to the mainstream without the cost. They are looking at an Xbox Live Gold-type yearly subscription price of US$50, but of course that is subject to change. The other major roadblock for us as Australians is that, as we all know, our broadband network is not exactly state of the art. Nevertheless, this is an exciting venture that we here at Sliced will be keeping a close eye on in the coming months. Stay tuned for more.

Reader Comments:

Posted by Julz 26/03/2009 1:42pm

Without unlimited download like in the U.S. I can't imagine this going terribly well here.

Posted by 400 Turtles 26/03/2009 3:44pm

Without unlimited download like in the U.S. I can't imagine this going terribly well here.

Even with unlimited download like in the U.S., the latency from this would just be too much of a bother.

Anyway, in the end it'd just be cheaper to upgrade your computer.

Posted by Master Chief 26/03/2009 4:15pm

DREAMCAST

GIZMONDO

NGAGE

ONLIVE?

I threw that first one in for jollies.

Posted by Predator 26/03/2009 7:49pm

It's gonna be sh*t.. anything streamed through the internet is just not going to work without being unresponsive junk.

I'm sure it sounded good in theory.

Posted by G-Train 26/03/2009 9:30pm

Sounds like a bad april fools joke to me.

The amount of bandwidth and server power required for something like this would be astronomical. It will either cost a rediculous amount, or just lag so bad it won't be worth playing.

Posted by insanopointless 26/03/2009 10:02pm

I'm pumped for it. It certainly wouldn't work without localised servers but if it's a success in the States I'm sure they'll begin working around.

Apparently the lag isn't a problem for people with a broadband connection within 1000 miles of their servers.

Cloud computing will certainly be a part of the future of gaming, at some point. I'd be happy if this was a success.