There have been quite a few interesting, and exciting announcements to come out of this week’s GDC, but none so mind-blowing as the announcement of OnLive. For those that haven’t heard about it yet, OnLive is a service that will allow gamers to stream current, high profile video games to just about any PC or Mac, as well as a tiny microconsole that you can connect to a TV. If you’ve got the bandwidth, then games will stream down to you in 1280×720 resolution at 60 fps. This could have a drastic impact on the face of the gaming industry over the course of the coming years.

Before we talk about the future, let’s look at the present. Currently, console gaming is on the rise, while PC gaming (still a lucrative industry) has seen it’s share of troubles. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo make their money by licensing games to run on their consoles. Consumers enjoy a hassle free experience on the console side of things. With no hardware upgrades, no invasive DRM, and a wide library of big budget, high quality games at their disposal, console gamers have a straight forward, and enjoyable gaming experience. On the PC side of gaming, things are a little more complicated. In order to run the latest games on the best settings, frequent hardware upgrades are required. While DRM on consoles is transparent to the end user, that’s just no the case on the PC. Most games implement some third party DRM software that has to be installed, and remains ever present on your computer. In some cases, that software runs constantly, degrading the overall performance of your computer. Don’t get me wrong - there’s a rich and enjoyable gaming experience available to PC gamers that console gamers can’t even begin to tap into, but the work involved in getting that experience is a significant deterrent for many gamers.

That’s how the gaming industry has worked for years now. Console gamers enjoyed a simple put-the-disc-in-and-go experience, while PC gamers toiled to keep their rig up to date. That’s all about to change. OnLive is poised to deliver that high end PC experience on any computer, or on any TV. Over the past seven years, the people behind OnLive have been working hard to create new hardware and software capable of encoding, and streaming 720p video of a game in less than a millisecond, essentially allowing the end user to control a game running on a distant server with no perceivable lag.  Despite some small kinks, it seems like they’re on the verge of doing just that. So just what does all that mean for the future of gaming? Well, assuming OnLive delivers on all the promises it’s made, things will almost certainly change drastically in the next five years or so. The current console cycle will most likely continue unaffected by OnLive, but OnLive will start to pick up steam. When it comes time for the Xbox 720, and PS4 to launch, they’ll have to contend with whatever share of the market OnLive has managed to gain. Since all of the work is done remotely, you won’t need to replace the microconsole attached to your TV to play the latest games over OnLive - they’ll just work on your existing OnLive enabled device. That puts the console manufacturers at a significant disadvantage. Why spend hundreds of dollars on a new console when you can already play many of the games coming out for it on a device already in your home?

OnLive is just as attractive to developers as it is to gamers. Since all of your games are installed and running on a remote server, the issue of piracy would be completely eliminated on OnLive. Furthermore, many developers and publishers have grown bitter towards the used games market. As the cost of development rises, developers and publishers are forced to sit back and watch as retailers….. okay, Gamestop make piles of money selling the same disc over and over again. There’s no physical media to resell with OnLive - when you buy a game, it’s yours forever. Publishers and developers alike will see increased profits as physical media begins to go the way of the dinosaur.

Is OnLive perfect? No. If your internet is down, your games go with it. Also, OnLive comes with a small subscription fee. On it’s own, that’s not a big deal, but what happens when you cancel? Do you just lose all the games you paid for while you were a member? Do they send you physical copies of the games, or allow you to download them? What about your game saves? There are still some questions that remain unanswered, and some potential issues with the service, but one way or another, it’s safe to say OnLive will make some big waves in the gaming industry when it drops this winter.

-Mike Kurz

Tags: cloud computing, featured, OnLive, PC, the future

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