OnLive promises better laptop gaming

[Tyleh]

OnLive promises laptop gamers of all degrees better functionality for lower cost. Instead of actually having game data directly on your HDD, OnLive's servers process the game for you, compress the video with their extremely compact compression algorithm, and stream that data to you over the internet where a tiny application (a few megabytes, so I hear) decompresses the video and displays it. But OnLive doesn't stop there. It promises support for all major PC releases, and will even include multiplayer functions and live feeds of people already playing the game.

What this means for PC gamers, especially laptop gamers, is that by downloading the client, you no longer have to spend your hard-earned money on expensive PC hardware to play the games you enjoy.

Skepticism has arisen, however, that it isn't possible to stream HD video to your PC fast enough to be plausible for games that require lightning-fast reactions like FPSs. And, although faster connections might experience no problems, speculators think anyone with less than a 2MB/s connection speed may run into problems.

Despite its setbacks, OnLive should have you excited for its huge possibilities for people with lower-end laptop PCs.

OnLive also has a "microconsole" that connects to your TV if you wish.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5oIr4o_MIk"]YouTube - OnLive Video Demo - (GDC 2009) OnLive Demo Video HD[/ame]

OnLive's E3 and GDC reports have stated that NONE of the video seen in that clip is prerendered. It's all gameplay feeds from someone actually playing!

[FOXECHO]

Yeah I dunno I kinda agree with the skepticism. I do videoconferencing over IP and ISDN for a living and looking at their plans I just don't see how this will get done with a high enough quality to make it worthwhile.

There's too many factors that could make the FPS be off on some games. The 2Mbps MINIMUM speed kills it for most people as well.