If you have been paying attention to anything that has come out of this year's GDC, or at least following the Total Meltdown Podcast, you most likely heard some bit on the new service called OnLive that is being worked on. Some say it is the future of digital downloading, and others are skeptical about this new system that has been proposed. Which of course is why I went out to ask a few things from the people behind this service to get a few answers and information to give out.
For those of you who have no clue what OnLive is, here is a an overview of it and in simpler terms for everyone.
OnLive is an online service that will let you buy, rent, and play games over a broadband connection without requiring you to own an actual gaming machine, or even the right platform to run the game. That is you will be able to play any PC game on your Mac or even your TV just by using their little box and web browser. All of the game run off their local machines, which are suppose to be the highest grade gaming machines, and view the game output on which ever screen you may have their little black box hooked up to. In fact, I saw them run games known to be graphics intensive, Crysis, off of one of their $700 Costco laptops. Which is a little impressive, even though they were all on a local network and not truly running over a broadband connection.
The entire service is run through their web application and "social" network that they are still ironing out for the service's beta and then future launch. From this application you will be able to link up with friends on the service, play games with them, take video clips or replay the last 15 seconds of game play, place those clips in a Bragging area, surf their catalog, and many other small functions.
The Brag clips and Spectating being two of the social aspects they were really trying to pimp out to the gaming community. As mentioned, the brag clips are just clips of awesome things you have captured while playing a game and then displayed on your user page much like a small personal youtube of you showing off. No gargling required. Then there is the spectating aspect, where you friends or even strangers can just sit back and watch you play the game. Sounds a little creepy at first, but then they continued on to explain that it could be used for developers to watch how players are going through betas or even gold games and see about patching them. Which of course show that they are thoughts of using it as a pay to do QA for a company type system.
All that aside, I will say that this whole thing looks good and promising, on paper. As far as actual display and functionality, that will really be up in the air as of now. Let me explain why.
First, they are definitely marketing this system towards people who don't know how to set up a gaming rig or anything about computer hardware. On top of that, also people who can not afford the parts for these rigs. But what this reads to me is that they are looking for people who also most likely do not have the broadband connection this system will need. Granted there is a scaling system based off what connection the user has, lowering game settings and video output based on this, but the main target (speculation) will not have the connection speeds to keep up with anyone playing the game from their home game rig.
Second, there have also been no details on if you will be able to game with people from outside of the service or not. I would like to say that you will be able to do so, no clue why they would hamstring themselves by not. But even at their big announcement, there was no information on this capability. Having that capability would be a good selling point for people who don't have the best gaming machine but want to play with friends who do. It would be cost effective for them to get this service in that case. But like I said, no word on that.
To go another step further, there is also no word how, if it all, it could be used to play online against console games if for by some miracle they have a game that allows for such. In fact they were also quick to comment on that they didn't even think about solid inclusion of console games into this system. No word on support or even if they were something thought of in the far off future. Something that could also help a system like this up and going. At least in my own thoughts. But who am I right?
I could go on a bit more about this whole system/service, but I will save you from my ramblings. As time will only tell in this instance.
I will leave you with one little further bit. They are taking beta sign ups on their site as of last week. So if you want to try and give this whole thing a try, and have the luck of the Irish to get chosen for their beta program, you can go to their site below and sign up. Beta for this system is suppose to begin this summer with a full launch by this winter. We'll see if they can meet their dates for now, but this was what they were projecting as of the Game Developer's Conference.
Here are some shots of their web application, how it works, and the hardware that would be required.
