OnLive has been in development for seven years now is planning on changing the way people buy and play video games.  

The company, started up by WebTV founder Steve Perlman and former Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey, plans to stream games to its users, effectively nullifying the user’s need to install and run the game on their PC, Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii.

Instead of running from a user’s hard drive and making use of their individual system components such as the CPU, graphics card and memory to render the game, OnLive will run the game on an internet, “cloud”-like, server, effectively rendering the game on its own hardware and streaming it in real time to the user on the other end. This means that users with low end PCs will be able to enjoy high-end games such as Crysis on settings that their own PC could never render.

The OnLive system will not be limited to PC gaming an, if implemented correctly, could replace all current generation consoles with a small OnLive transmitter and gaming controller.
 
The service is currently in closed beta, but is expected to go into public beta in June with a launch planned for sometime around October. It is currently set to go live with 16 launch titles, including Burnout Paradise, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, Crysis Wars and F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin.
 
Perlman has said that using OnLive’s advanced compression technology, users will be able to stream games running on high quality visual setting at acceptable frame rates. Unlike traditional digital distribution networks such as STEAM, OnLive will not require massive downloads. Users will simply need to download a 1MB plug-in in order to get the service up and running.
 
In order to enjoy OnLive gaming, users will need a minimum connection speed of 1.5Mbps. In order to enjoy games on high settings at high resolutions, users will need to have an effective bandwidth speed of 5Mbps.

This means that it will be a long time before we see OnLive in South Africa, but places such as Korea will be able to take full advantage of the service using their high speed fibre internet infrastructure.

Although there have been no details regarding OnLive’s business model, we are sure that the service will carry some sort of subscription fee.
 
If OnLive does work the way it is intended to, it could also effectively negate piracy. The service obviously poses a significant threat to current players in the gaming hardware space such as Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, not to mention graphics card makers ATi and Nvidia.

 

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