Hassle-free gaming, that’s what OnLive promised during their press conference last week. Gamers will no longer need to download drivers, install graphics cards, troubleshoot problems or worry about compatibility issues. Hell, they won’t even need a PC or a console in order to play!
All you’ll need is a set-top box that you can connect to your TV or a regular PC (even a nettop) with their software client installed, an internet connection (5 Mbps bandwidth for HD streams) and off you go, playing FPS titles to your heart’s content. A subscription service similar to Netflix, the concept of OnLive can best be described as video streaming on steroids. Instead of running a game on your home PC, you’ll launch it on OnLive’s servers who will then stream your gameplay to your home display via broadband. Let their server farms handle all the processing power, all you do is enjoy the resulting carnage.
Yep, it’s a technology that looks to undercut pretty much every console and high-performance gaming rig in the market – a ridiculously lofty goal that, surprisingly, may be closer than we think. During the demonstration at Game Developers 2009, fans were treated to streamed games of Crysis and Burnout that truly were beyond what anyone expected.
OnLive is gearing up for a beta launch in the summer, at which time we can hopefully judge whether this thing holds any real promise. Providing an even bigger surprise, however, is the fact that another company is also looking to offer the same service soon. A startup called OTOY is looking to bring the same high-speed streaming game experience via a web browser plugin, powered by AMD’s Fusion Render Cloud supercomputer on the backend.
While it’s highly questionable whether either of these two companies will succeed, it’s now undeniable that cloud processing with streamed outputs will be the likely future of the gaming industry. In the meantime, we anxiously await.
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