OnLive Seems Like a Good Idea: It Might Be 5 Years Too Early

There seems to be a new online streaming game system that might be a serious competitor to console and computer games.


What if you could stream top-end games to your TV, just like a Youtube video that you can control? You'd never need to buy a console again.

That's the future envisaged by Palo Alto startup OnLive, which plans to launch a groundbreaking gaming service this winter. OnLive will supply players with a small set-top box, not much bigger than a Nintendo DS, which will plug into your TV and your home broadband connection. From there, you can start playing games just like those on the Xbox 360, PS3 or PC -- but with no install time, no waiting for downloads, and no need for big, noisy, expensive consoles cluttering up your living room. OnLive's service can be continually upgraded, too, so you'll never be stuck with obsolete hardware again.


The article goes on to say that the system is only as good as your broadband connection since it will stream both the game and the netcode for online play. I complain about lag all the time and I am running the game off of the console. Imagine if I had to stream an HD game as well as run the netcode. I would be a sitting duck in a game like Call of Duty 4.


They also point out that your ISP might throttle your connection if you are a heavy user of this device. That is where I think this thing is 5 years too early. Right now I would guarantee that your connection will start to degrade as soon as you plug this thing in and they inspect your packets. Any way you slice it you will be hogging a ton of bandwidth and your ISP will come down hard on you.


However, in 5 years ISPs will most likely have faster networks that will be able to handle streaming HD gaming over the net. I hope this thing survives until that time because we *will* be seeing Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony try to stream games since it kills the pirating problem dead. The odd man out will be GameStop who ends up looking like Blockbuster if they don't plan for this thing.


Here is a pic of the setup. The controller looks kind of clunky but if all you need to connect to the thing is that little card then it is quite an elegant solution.