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OnLive to change the face of PC gaming?
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Will OnLive change how the PC is viewed as a game platform?
There have been lots of arguments against the PC as a legitimate gaming platform in this console-heavy era. One of the biggest consumer concerns of the day is price, as well as constantly fluctuating costs of parts as obsolescence ebbs at the beach of current technology, which threatens the sand castles we have constructed to entertain us. I have stood at that beach. I have used a broom to try and push back the incoming tides, and for a moment, the tide retreats far back into it's basin, seeming to acknowledge my efforts, leaving my demesnes unmolested. I planted my broom in the soft sands beneath my feet, and gazed upon what I had done, satisfied that, yes, I had won the day.
Did you know that before a tidal wave, the tide retreats far back into the ocean? Yeah, I didn't either.
Lets face it, PC gaming can come with a high price tag. With high-end video cards that cost as much as the consoles we try to abstain from, it's not always easy to keep a top-of-the-line PC in the State-of-the-art. It's downright costly. There are stopgap measures you can take, like picking up a cheaper, slightly more powerful video card once the technology becomes cheaper, buying another stick of ram, or cleaning off some of those pesky background applications that cost us valuable FPS, but they only buy you time at best. And then some pretentious PC game developer decides to put in just a little more HDR than your once decadent PC can handle, and you either play the game at 640x480 with all the settings turned down, or you don't play it at all.
An upcoming service called "OnLive" threatens to upset the balance that has so long held back low-budget PC Gamers by allowing them to play brand new mainstream games on virtually any low-end PC. With technology seven years in the making, the project appears to use a complete form of server-side processing in which the game is actually run, rendered, and polished, on powerful servers (like running a remote desktop), and only a real-time video (like a streaming video from youtube) and your inputs are sent back and forth between the server and your computer respectively.
What does this mean, in layman's terms? The defining system requirement to play benchmark-breaking titles like Crysis will, with the OnLive service, be bandwidth. Since most currently available low-end PCs (which run Windows XP or Vista) are capable of playing high-definition video without any serious problem, a user can download a one-megabyte browser plug-in onto nearly any PC, and hit the ground running with their favorite games, without any additional download. A user with a relatively slow High-Speed internet to play at the (hopefully) delivered 60 frames per-second (say around 1.5mb per second) will still be able to play their games on their PC or TV at "standard definition", which will not impress PC gamers one bit. However, a 5mb per-second connection will be able to run the game at a much higher resolution, such as 1280x720, which is still nothing ground-breaking, but since the server will be doing all of the rendering, it's pretty good compared to trying to run the game on an outdated PC.
However, will the stipulation of bandwidth make it an impractical solution to upgrading your computer? A new data-compression technology has been developed to help ensure that users experience no time-lag between their input and the incoming view of the game, but internet hiccups, normal data delay, and annoying roommates with BitTorrent could be game breakers. Testers and players who have seen the service in action so far have reported that no lag was experienced, but will it be so on less-than-ideal conditions?
The product will be usable from any XP/Vista PC, or a Macintosh computer, as well as any TV (with a small micro-console box that will be for sale relatively cheaply). It will feature a very in-depth community system, with voice chat as well as the ability to spectate games from friends, or strangers, as well as allowing any gamer to show off their skills by broadcasting their own games to whoever else will watch. Games can be purchased in the OnLive store, and there have been hints that Xbox 360 as well as potentially PS3 games may be ported to the service as well. An interview with Steve Perlman, the President and CEO of OnLive Inc. expands upon more details than I could write about all day, so if this sounds like something you want to know more about, you should consider watching it.
Will having a monthly fee make it a cost-effective solution to upgrading a computer to run newer games? It's hard to say, not knowing yet how much the service will cost gamers. Over time, of course, it will have been cheaper to buy a new computer, but with the OnLive service, you will never need to upgrade your computer for gaming reasons, which may end up being more economical than trying to maintain a high-end PC. We'll have to wait and see what the monthly fee is.
OnLive currently has the support of some of the top-names in game development, including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive Software, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, THQ Inc., Epic Games, Eidos, and Atari Interactive.
This is a product that PC gamers, as well as console gamers, will want to keep their eyes on. If executed effectively, and if the internet providers are keeping their promises on the speeds they deliver, this could very certainly change gaming in a very radical way. I'm not sure I'm going to get my hopes up yet, but you can be sure that I've already signed up for the beta coming this summer.
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