{"id":3711,"date":"2009-03-26T00:33:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-25T22:33:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T22:00:00","slug":"onlive-has-a-way-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/3711-onlive-has-a-way-to-go","title":{"rendered":"Onlive has a way to go"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Breckon of Shacknews<\/a> recently reported on his hands-on time with Onlive<\/a>, the technology that is set to change the way we buy and play games.<\/p>\n

The video game streamer was announced earlier this week and promises to bring the effective streaming of video games to market. Onlive uses revolutionary compression technology that promises to negate lag and produce an experience virtually indistinguishable from playing a game off a hard drive or DVD.<\/p>\n

By running the game on a massive cloud server database and streaming the footage to the gamer on the other end, Onlive aims to enable gamers to experience highly demanding games on low end PCs.<\/p>\n

Many have voiced their skepticism, with the general consensus being that bandwidth constraints and lag will render the technology useless.<\/p>\n

Journalists at the Game Developers Conference currently being held in San Francisco have been getting hands on time with the technology, and the reports have not been particularly positive.<\/p>\n

Breckon experienced Bioshock on Onlive and had this to say:<\/p>\n

“Loading the title up, I at first had no sense the game was being streamed to the small PC laptop next to me. Menu response was fast”<\/p>\n

“But unfortunately, the illusion faded along with the loading screen. Once I was in the game itself, I immediately noticed the unwelcome signs of blocky compression. It wasn’t so compressed that it was entirely distracting from the gameplay, but it was also worse than I expected. The visual quality was high, but the experience was marred by the considerable amount of splotchy pixels.”<\/p>\n

“Playing around in Rapture, I found that response-time lag was mostly unnoticeable–mostly.”<\/p>\n

From his comments, it seems that lag is not the primary shortcoming of Onlive at this point, but the real Achilles heel lies in the manner in which textures are compressed and re-rendered, resulting in subpar visual quality.<\/p>\n

Bear in mind that Onlive is still in its very early stages, and we should reserve judgment on the technology as a whole for the time being.<\/p>\n

Even if Onlive does iron out its current bugs and does manage to take off in places like South Korea and Europe, it is highly unlikely that the technology will be a viable solution in South Africa for at least the next 6 to 10 years.<\/p>\n

However, if it does take off, then it will have a dramatic affect on the gaming industry. Most major developers have already signed up with Onlive, with one notable exception being Activision Blizzard.<\/p>\n

Discuss Onlive<\/a> on the forums<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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