It wasn’t all that long ago that if you used the words ‘Cloud’
and ‘video games’ in the same sentence you were obviously referring the titular
hero of Final Fantasy VII and nothing else. But if Rearden Studios have their
way ‘cloud gaming’ just might be the future of the burgeoning billion dollar
industry. Making its debut at this year’s Game Developers Conference is OnLive,
an ambitious project that would see PC games streamed over networks to
televisions across the United States.
Prior to GDC ’09, OnLive was virtually unknown. The concept
was developed by Steve Perlman, founder of Rearden Studios and a former
employee of Atari, Apple, and WebTV. Along with Mike McGarvey, formerly of
Eidos, the two have crafted one of the most ambitious business models perhaps
in the history of gaming. But ambition is nothing without the means to
accomplish.
At its core, OnLive is a simple concept. Rather than having
consumers shell out potentially thousands of dollars every four or five years
to keep up with the latest graphics OnLive provides high-end hardware that can
stream games at a ping of less than one millisecond. On the receiving end a
user would have a relatively low-end PC (think base line Dell unit) that will
simply act as a video decoding control hub, as well as requisite audio and
video outputs. If you don’t already own such a PC, OnLive is offering their own
low-cost, base model.
From this point it’s simply a matter of streaming controller
input over the network and streaming back the video and audio components. In
other words, cloud gaming.
The service will support up to 720p resolution and 60 frames
per second. Unlike the majority of PCs out there, OnLive’s gaming rigs will
support high-end titles, like Crysis.
At this point you may be saying to yourself ‘This sounds too
good to be true’ and quite frankly, the majority of industry critics would
agree. However, along with the announcement of the service at GDC, Rearden
Studios is providing live demos of 16 games streaming over the service and as a
result skepticism is down. Bolstering the service’s image is the impressive
list of well respected publishers OnLive has managed to recruit, including Atari,
Codemasters, EA, Epic Games, Take-Two, Ubisoft, and Warner Bros., among others.
Perhaps the most important detail of the service was left unspoken
at GDC: the price. The subscription-based services are said to be on par with
that of Xbox Live (though why PC gamers would essentially consent to spending
$10 a month for something they already enjoy for free is beyond me). Games
themselves will be available for purchase or rent and all titles are supposedly
open for demoing. However the exact pricing is to be left to the developer and
games, once purchased, are not open to transference. So no game swapping once
you’ve beat a title.
OnLive is certainly an interesting project and
the upcoming closed beta testing will determine how successful its launch will
be later this year. Developers would certainly appreciate a model that deters
piracy but consumers may not necessarily consent to forgoing a purchased hardcopy
unless financially enticed to do so.
