GDC 09: Video Interview - Onlive Will Let You Play Crysis On Your Crappy PC
One of the more interesting bits of information to come out of GDC yesterday was the announcement of Onlive, a subscription-based service which will allow you to play the latest PC games on max settings from any TV, Mac, or entry level PC. Through the magic of the internet the game will actually be played on Onlive servers with the controls and video feed outsourced to your home computer. My own computer hobbles when trying to play anything more demanding than Half-Life 2, so this is looking like a very attractive offer.
They claim that all of this happens lag free, but I have my doubts. At least they have some good ideas for how to help reduce lag, like having the resolution of the game scale depending on your broadband connection speed.
The verdict's still out on Onlive, since they're just announcing the service now and will be conducting beta testing over the summer. The price is still up in the air, although in the video interview many options are mentioned such as a flat subscription rate, paying on a per game basis, or letting publishers bundle games together. Onlive should be up and running by the end of the year, and if they can actually pull it off lag free then I'll be the first to sign up.
Be sure to check out part 2 of the video interview after the jump.
It reminds me of the Phantom console that Infinium Labs was set to release for about five years. Of course, there's a key difference in that this looks to actually be moving forward.
All you have is streaming video.
This is evil incarnate. You thought DRM was bad? This takes it to the worst possible extreme.
Imagine never owning your games, at all, in any form. You're at the whim of the game developer and when they choose to retire your favourite games, because you have no copy at all. You really do only rent them with a monthly fee.
Every game developer you see onboard with this...? Make note. those are the ones to beware of and boycott.
@kwyibo
We already deal with this "evil" when people play MMOs. It aint the biggest deal.
Happy April Fools Day
I am in agreement with Josh.
The guy being interviewed says they have found a way to get lag down from milliseconds to nanoseconds, but lag is a very real thing; electrons only travel so fast and they certainly haven't solved the travelling salesman problem.