New Gaming Service OnLive Doomed To Fail
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on March 24, 2009 at 9:43:01 AM
There is a upcoming internet gaming service that takes the games away from you and places them on a server. OnLive promises to be only $50 per year along with the needed hardware (or PC/Mac, no Linux?). All the real work is done on the servers, the client is a thin piece of hardware. How will this cope with lag (input lag as well)? I doubt this will fly for FPS, perhaps more casual games may find a fit.
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Based here in San Francisco, OnLive timed its formal unveiling to this week's Game Developers Conference, where it will be showcasing the technology and 16 initial games it will launch with. The service is currently in a closed beta, but is expected to go into a public beta this summer, and to launch this winter. According to Perlman, OnLive's technology will make it possible to stream the games in such a manner--high quality, no matter what kind of system the user has--by virtue of a series of patented and patent-pending compression technologies. And instead of requiring users to download the games, OnLive will host them all and stream them from a series of the highest-end servers. Users will have only to download a 1MB plug-in to get the service up and running.