When I read this article I shuddered. Was my precious console now finally facing the firing squad? According to Palo Alto-based OnLive, it was. Unluckily for our console counterparts OnLive isn’t merely all talk either. Apparently it’s been dropping jaws of the press who’ve seen it working this week at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. GameDaily dubbed the play “fantastic” after seeing Crysis streamed “smooth” off a server to a plain ol’ MacBook laptop. Crysis? Consoles…thee end might be nigh.
See, OnLive claims to have perfected the interactive video compression technique so that latency is low enough to support on-line multi-player setups. Broadband connections of 1.5Mbps (71% of US homes have 2Mbps or greater) dials the image quality down to Wii levels while 4-5Mbps pipes are required for HD resolution.
So in technicality, our consoles are still safe, as most of SA doesn’t even have lines at that speed. However, don’t enjoy that sigh of relief too quickly, with the announcement of SA receiving T3 speed lines in the next year or two, this might still very much be a possibility. At the moment, OnLive is showing 16 high-end titles at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco and expects to be able to release new games within the same window as traditional retail launches.
The games can be played on “any PC (Windows XP or Vista) or Mac” without the heavy cash-burden of a high-end graphics card, fast disk, quad-core and truck-loads of memory. Otherwise, OnLive plans to release what it calls a MicroConsole with Bluetooth (for voice chat) and optical audio-out that can be connected to your HDTV over HDMI — pricing has not been announced but it is said to cost less than a $250 Wii (so maybe this could be the birth of a gaming console that costs…wait for it…only about R2000?)
There’s a community element too, of course, with OnLive reps boasting about it operating on an “unprecedented scale.” This includes the ability to join live games at any point, the creation of “brag clips” (a feature that saves the last 10 seconds of game play for sharing), as well as leaderboards, rankings, and the rest. And if you think publishers will never buy into the model, think again: Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, THQ, Epic Games, Eidos, Atari Interactive and Codemasters are all already on-board.
Expect OnLive to launch this December or maybe sometime next year with monthly subscriptions available in “a variety of different pricing packages and tiers, competitively priced to retail.” So fellow gamers, enjoy your consoles while they last, we might to standing on the edge of a new gaming revolution. And to Sony & Microsoft…lock and load boys. You’re in for a bloodbath. And you’re gonna need all the ammunition you can get.
Find out more about OnLive, by following the link: Gamedaily
Last Updated: May 12, 2009
koldFU5iON
May 12, 2009 at 16:09
still have my doubts on the success of this… but we will see
ToOkieMoNstZA
May 12, 2009 at 16:32
Yea imagine how quickly this thing will cap your line down here… i say its not a plausible solution until we have cheap uncapped fast internet’s… my 2 cents
ChocolateSalty
May 12, 2009 at 17:51
Gents… sooner or later it has to happen. :alien:
ToOkieMoNstZA
May 12, 2009 at 19:10
nu-uh… no it doesn’t 🙂
the device probaly sprays out a wierd hallucinogen that confuses the brain into thinking its working… thats when they activate the mind control, like the riddler :blink:
Onlive Forum
May 12, 2009 at 20:37
There are a lot of doubters of Onlive. However I think they know something the rest of us don’t. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and see how it looks during beta testing.
Fred
May 13, 2009 at 06:37
I think On-Live would be a huge success if isp’s become a central piece on the “colocation” diagram, it would save alot of bandwidth and ping times would also be very solid.
something like IPTV. currently i got my basic IPTV setup for 15$. the signal is running 3MB/s (480p). this is cheap.
WitWolfyZA
May 13, 2009 at 08:15
whats the use of having a full HD tv but playing your games on a SD resolution.. nah i dont think MS and Sony will just stand there and see all their precious customers jump ship to the next best thing.. what this space
the Dude
May 13, 2009 at 08:34
I am curios as to why you bringing this up now. GDC was while ago – even the article you linked to is from March.
Besides Eurogamer has a pretty good feature on why this system wouldn’t work. See here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gdc-why-onlive-cant-possibly-work-article
SlippyMadFrog
May 13, 2009 at 08:43
I like the controler. It looks like a mix between the PS3 and Xbox360 controler. The d-pad looks dodgy though.
Strife Lives
May 13, 2009 at 08:57
Well,it wont work.not for many years to come.truth be told, we’ll see digital distribution of movies become mainstream before this.This is just another stoalen idea made to look more sophisticated than it is.Its just a bigger ‘Remote Play’ between PS3 and PSP.it works exactly the same.
fred
May 13, 2009 at 09:00
Well maybe we get Onlive before Live….. don’t think so
ToOkieMoNstZA
May 13, 2009 at 09:21
right said fred