OnLive To Take Over The Video Game Industry
OnLive Screen
OnLive is a fairly new entry to the video game industry that has been talked about for the past couple of months. It boasts of the ability to allow you to play some of the most demanding games on a low end PC or Mac. But how will it be received?
Well, lets take a look at what its capable of. OnLive is a service that uses advanced coding and compression technology in order to allow you to play your video games or movies through the internet, rather then having to download it to your hard drive and play it based on your specs. So since it is played via the internet, it does not depend on your computers specs, but it is being played from data centers that are high end and are being updated every 6 months. These data centers are capable of rendering a playable version of Crysis on an iPhone at 24 fps with max settings. A very impressive feat, which means those of you with netbooks will be playing Crysis smoothly, although on a small screen.
Not only can it play games on the PC and Mac, but it can also stream the games directly to your television. With the use of a small hub, you can connect the necessary hdmi cords and cables in order to have a smooth high definition experience. You are required to have a moderate to fast internet connection for some of the higher qualities such as 780p and 1080p. But regardless, OnLive is still doing something revolutionary in the video game industry.
In the recent Game Developers Conference of 2010, the OnLive dev team announced that there will be a month subscription fee of $15 (just for that month) on top of any costs associated with paying for a video game or renting a video game. There will be multi-monthly subscription plans for those that want to pay for months at a time, which will be at a cheaper price. Some people are turned off by the pricing of this service, now, because that is a bit steep. But think about it this way, since the databases and technology being used to run your games at the highest performance possible are being updated twice a year, it ensures a smooth experience for you.
Another worry of potential OnLive customers is that they want to physically own their games. When you purchase a
onLive Specs
game on OnLive, the games are stored on the database, and everything is managed virtually. This can be a problem, because if their is a black out or an issue with their servers or databases, there can be mass information lost. Such as payment history, video game data, and more. So backups would need to be made on a constant basis, which I am not sure if they do it or not. They most likely have a fail safe for such an event, or I hope so, at least.
There are beta testers of OnLive who claimed that there is a bit of lag when playing the fast paced Epic Games title Unreal Tournament 3, which sort of ruins the experience. However, he was at an unfavorable location that was not near one of the OnLive centers. This brings up another issue of geographical location. If you are not near their points of interest, then you may be getting a gimped service. However, if you are in a great location you should be fine. They are looking to expand internationally, so data centers across the whole world will be erected, which will eventually lead to flawless online play.
All in all, OnLive will end up taking over the Video Game Industry. Simply because you do not need to purchase an expensive console. You simply depend on the developers to continually update their high-tech workstations in order to allow you to play games that will eventually reach movie quality. I bring up that point because using OnLive, you can essentially play a game that has the same level of detail as a Pixar movie such as The Incredibles, this can happen due to all the power that the data centers hold.
Keep an eye out for OnLive, which will be seeing a release date some time in early June of 2010.
