OnLive Game Service Announced
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 933
Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, look out. Your traditional video game console business model may be in danger.I really don't see how they're going to reliably stream modern video games (spanning as much as 30 GB worth of data) to even the fastest Internet connections. And I highly doubt a hardware-intensive game like Fallout 3 is going to run without a hitch over the 'net on anything but the lowest resolutions.
It's too early to tell how much danger, of course, but a start-up called OnLive announced a brand-new game distribution system Monday night that, if it works as planned, could change the games game forever.
OnLive, which was started by WebTV founder Steve Perlman and former Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey, is aiming to launch a system--seven years in the works--that will digitally distribute first-run, AAA games from publishers like Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Atari, and others, all at the same time as those titles are released into retail channels. The system is designed to allow players to stream on-demand games at the highest quality onto any Intel-based Mac or PC running XP or Vista, regardless of how powerful the computer.
Personally, even if it's only $20 to "rent" the game, I'd much rather pay $50+ to own it and play it locally using uncompressed, lag-free data.
