OnLive: Video Games on Demand Service Demoed [VIDEO]

Video () gaming meets cloud computing in the new OnLive service, which lets you instantly fire up and play a library of popular titles on your PC or Mac — and soon, your TV. The service delivers high-end games to even low-powered machines as well as giving Mac users a way to play a number of PC-only titles — neither of which is no small technical feat.

I’ve been following the OnLive service since it came out of stealth mode, went into beta and got a launch date. During E3 last week the service officially launched, and I had a chance to sit down with CEO Steve Perlman for a hands-on demo of the service.


What I saw was very impressive — not only can you quickly hop into a number of great games like Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed II, Dragon Age: Origins and more, but you can also effortlessly drop in and spectate on other users’ ongoing games via the Arena, a sort of panopticon window into all the current gameplay sessions. Social features allow you to quickly add and connect with friends, plus share and rate Brag Clip videos of favorite gameplay moments from your own and other members’ sessions.
Because all of this gameplay is essentially rendered as a video feed and sent over the Interne, the company acknowledges there is some latency factor involved in the service. However, for the majority of gamers OnLive is most likely going to be “close enough.” The ability to hop in and play these games from older PCs or Macs that otherwise would have little or complicated access is likely going to be a very acceptable tradeoff for many.
During the demo we were also shown OnLive running on an iPad, which again speaks to the powerful platform-agnosticity afforded by cloud-based gaming. For now it’s mostly giving a window into the Arena for spectating matches, but Perlman said game developers are working on custom control schemes to make actual gameplay viable on devices like the iPad and iPhone as well as Androidphones — even the Nexus One can reportedly run the OnLive service already as well.

OnLive is also rewarding early adopter customers with a special offer during its first launch month: you can sign up within this period to get a free year of service for “founding members,” along with a second year of service at $4.95 per month. One thing to note, however: the subscription price doesn’t automatically get you into all the games — you still have to pay to buy or rent individual titles. A purchase price can be as much as a regular box copy, although rental prices for a few days can be as low as $3.99.

After months of hardcore skepticism from gamers and press everywhere, it looks like OnLive is off to a great start on delivering its hefty promise of easy cloud-based gameplay access. Check out the video demo below and let us know: could the age of on-demand gaming be arriving?


Source [Mashable]

Posted in: