Perhaps you may have forgotten about OnLive already, the digital content distribution and gaming system destined to bring balance to the force change the face of PC gaming forever? It seems like this type of technology could really indeed do such a thing – or fall flat on it’s face. Until now, we’ve only seen bits and pieces of the system in action – and only in controlled environments, but on June 17th consumers will finally have the chance to try the technology for themselves, according to the official OnLive blog.
There are a couple catches, however: the service is only launching for PC and Mac (not the above “mini console”) and the host computer needs to meet specific “network and performance conditions”. On top of that, the service is $15 a month and does not include the cost of the games themselves. I also noticed that launch titles like Assassin’s Creed II are considered “top tier” games – it’s not clear exactly what this means just yet, but perhaps there will be a different pricing structure per game. The $15 gets you access to different rental and purchasing options, but it looks like this is tied to the account you set up with OnLive – meaning if you cancel the account, you’ll no longer be able to stream or play the games.
Call me old fashioned, but I’d rather own my digital goods, and I’d just as soon invest the $150 a year subscription cost into a new video card or similar PC gaming component. But that’s just me. If you’re interested, OnLive has a registration special which gives you a shot at getting the first three months of fees waived.
Onlive, the cloud video game startup based out of Palo Alto, CA is adding some major new players into it’s investor base. Telecommunications giant AT&T.
AT&T Media Holdings Inc. and Lauder Parters LLC, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, are part of this latest volley of support for OnLive. This action also includes three previous investors, Warner Bros, Autodesk Inc., and investment firm Maverick Capital Ltd.
OnLive seems to really be turning some heads in the industry, and with the addition of these very large companies as investors, they must be doing something right. OnLive isn’t disclosing how much money it raised in this round, saying only that the funds will go toward the launch of service sometime this winter.
Steve Perlman, OnLive’s founder and CEO, said the investments “…expands the scope of what we can do. It establishes OnLive as a real player. This is not just some goofy video game delivery company.”
This AT&T investment is pretty significant because OnLive will benefit from having a strategic parter with a stranglehold on the networking and telecommunications industries. That relationship could go far beyond video games as other types of content, from software to high definition video, gets pushed down from the clouds.
If I was a gambling man, I’d be buying stock in this company as soon as it goes public…but that’s just me.
[Courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle]
You might remember OnLive, the streaming game system slated to revolutionize the console and PC gap? Well, I’ll try not to point out all the obvious faults a system like this has, and just say that OnLive has opened up external beta registration, so if you’re actually interested in this type of technology you can have the chance to take an early look at it.
Me? I’m skeptical. I don’t see how a service like this can work without being either absurdly expensive or absurdly shit, at least with the US’s current lack of awesome bandwidth speeds. Most people would argue that a system like OnLive would allow people without “gaming” “rigs” to play higher end computer games – but in reality, this is not always the case. A decent gaming computer isn’t nearly as expensive an investment these days as it has been in the past, and when you factor in OnLive’s monthly subscription costs (whatever they end up being), OnLive could end up costing just as much as a decent PC over time. Not to mention the input and display lag, however slight, something like this would have, and the fact that if you don’t have internets, you don’t have your games.
I guess we’ll see. Who knows? OnLive could end up proving morons like me wrong.
The next major video game platform may be no platform at all.
For the past three decades, the pattern has been the same: every few years, the major game-console makers – these days Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo – come out with newer, slicker players.
Now OnLive, a Silicon Valley start-up, is about to begin large-scale testing of a system that, if it delivers on its promises, may break the cycle and usher in a new era in a video game market estimated at US$21.3 billion ($31.4 billion) in the United States and more than twice that worldwide.
The idea is to run games in “the cloud” – distant servers connected via the internet – and stream them to your television or computer with as much speed and power as if they were running locally.
The service, which has been demonstrated publicly but so far only tested internally, is about to open up for a wider public trial next month, and scheduled to officially start this year.
This isn’t about downloading games; it’s about playing them on computers that might be 1000km away, counting on the internet to deliver an experience indistinguishable from an Xbox or PlayStation.
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I spent some time this morning playing around with the OnLive service and talking to a few representatives at their booth on the GDC show floor. By now, we’ve all heard about the service that is supposed to revolutionize gaming. It certainly has the potential, and based on what I saw, I would get in day 1 (depending on cost of course).
There weren’t too many games available to play as of yet, since the service was just announced. I got a bit of hands on time with Burnout Paradise and Bioshock; both looked and played great at 720p. I’m sure Burnout Paradise was chosen as a showpiece due to its extremely fast paced gameplay where any slowdown would be easily noticeable. According to the reps, everything was running from their server farm off site. With some not-so-fast internet connections here at the Moscone Center, I find that a bit hard to believe. Either way, I noticed absolutely no slowdown or any indication that the game was not running locally, which is the biggest thing that needs to be right about the service.
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