OnLive! The Next Generation of Gaming!

We as avid gamers expect all the usual things from GDC such as tech demos and the new adjustments to the Unreal Engine 3. But one thing that came out of this years’ GDC was definitely not what some of us expected, at least not for a couple of more years! OnLive, the new revolutionary game streaming service, has been announced at this years’ GDC, and it looks amazing. OnLive streams games through your broadband connection to your PC, Mac, or TV with a little box the size of your cell phone. Valve has been trying to do the same sort of thing with information on “The Cloud”, but this is gaming on “The Cloud”. OnLive works with supposedly any PC game and requires at least a 5megabit down broadband connection (which is a bummer for me because the highest I can get out here is .3megabit down and .5 up, as well as many other people living in small towns). OnLive is also going to require a “low” monthly subscription fee. Once subscribed, users will be able to run any of the service’s games, regardless of system requirements — Gamasutra (Thank you Gamasutra for testing that out) was able to try the system out with graphical powerhouses like Crytek’s Crysis and Codemasters’ GRID. One of the main concerns is multiplayer games, because streaming a 6GB game is one thing, but connecting with at least 15 other people without Internet and streaming latency will be tough. OnLive will have a closed beta set up hopefully by summer (they better not pull off a Sony and have this like Home) so G.I.N will try to get in that. I really do hope OnLive works, because this will be the future of PC gaming, at the very least.