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Onlive gaming system launched
X86 PC BASED Onlive, the virtual gaming system for console less PC and Mac owners, has been launched.
First talked about last year, Onlive was launched at E3, where those involved were offering to give it away.
In a blog post Steve Perlman, OnLive founder and CEO said that for US users at least the service will be free, so long as they order early and with AT&T. A recurring monthly $4.95 charge is quoted for the second year, so we can only assume that this is what other users will have to pay for the first year.
This founding members programme deal runs until it runs out, as Perlman has it. "It's an awesome deal delivered on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to availability," he said. Last month the firm announced that BT will carry its service in the UK, yet no equivalently fantastic deal has been announced here, and nor has a definite availability date.
In the meantime we can enjoy the news that US gamers will have twenty titles to choose from at launch, including Assassin's Creed 2, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction, Mass Effect 2, Borderlands, Fear 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Dragon Age.
Despite people being quite happy to buy consoles, the firm is sticking with its notion that we will clamber over each other to snap up its service.
Perlman called it "the emergence of a new era in videogames that stands to utterly transform the way we create, distribute and play games and interact with each other when playing them."
Onlive will also include social networking type features, such as the ability to create a video network, while non-players will be able to log in and watch games as they happen. µ
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Might be interesting for me. I don't want to spend craploads of cash ivery year updating graphics cards, RAM etc to keep up with the latest 3D shooter reuirements. Or the obscene power drain and noise.
I happen to have decent cable internet access anyway so bandwidth unliekly to be a problem. I realise this isn't the norm in the UK though thanks to BT. Whether the games feel playable or a bit 'floaty' like some thin-client type stuff remains to be seen.
Onlive wont last long, the servers wont be able to cope and in many places internet wont be fast enough. People with the money to afford a net connection fast enough to support a decent res and the data requirements for long periods of play will be the kind of people that have enough money to spend on consoles, games and a decent computer.
Countries like us down here in the land of kangaroos and drop-bears (that's Australia to you unenlightened folk) where the majority of the populous cant even get a high speed broadband connection, just wont be able to support it, and our internet is slow enough as it is without the net filter on it's way.
This will lead to people realizing it's a technology that sure it sounds good in theory and probably works on the small scale, just isn't suited to large scale across a large populous with varying internet speeds and random network bottlenecks.
I suspect this product might be ahead of its time. Or more specifically our internet connections, iirc the average connection is 2mb which isn't good enough to stream any decent res