In March last year, a previously unknown company founded by former Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey and WebTV founder Steve Perlman announced a revolution in gaming that would supposedly change the face of the industry.
We currently play video games off our own physical storage medium, whether it be a PC harddrive, or console disk drive. We buy the game, install it, and play it. It’s a system we have all become quite accustomed to, so when Onlive announced their plans to dramatically change this model, most gamers struggled to come to terms with it, or at least believe that it could eventually eclipse the current method of distribution.
The basic concept behind Onlive is that instead of running a game off your harddrive, you will play it streaming over a broadband connection linking you to a server farm somewhere. You can read the full lowdown here.
It looks like we will find out fairly soon if Onlive is destined to be the disruptive technological innovation it promises to, or another nifty idea that fails to gain traction in the market.
After much open and closed beta testing, Onlive is now scheduled to go live on June 17 2010. In order to access the Onlive network, subscribers will have to pay a fee of $14.95 (R110) per month. This fee will not cover the cost of the games you want to play; those will have to be paid for separately.
Of course, whether or not it is a cool idea is still largely irrelevant for us in SA, as our broadband speeds and bandwidth prices are miles off being anywhere close to a level which could handle the streaming requirements of Onlive. Still, it is an interesting innovation that may yet have a massive affect on the game industry at large.
Discuss Onlive in the forums
Loading ...
