Onlive Aims to Make Game Consoles Obsolete

Jacksonville – The future of gaming consoles could be cloudy if the upstart video game company OnLive’s new offering is successful.

Steve Perlman, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur whose previous exploits include the launch of WebTV is OnLive’s founder and chief executive.

His company plans to offer “cloud-based”, on-demand gaming available on any TV using personal computers rather than dedicated machines or gaming consoles.

Perlman claims that OnLive allows complex and graphically intensive games to be played on broadband connected PCs and Macs. Several large game manufacturers have already announced their support.

If OnLive is successful it will have a major impact on both game console manufacturers and game players.

The first and most obvious casualty will be the companies selling game specific hardware.

This includes Microsoft and Sony, manufacturers of the Xbox and Playstation game consoles. Manufacturers of custom gaming computers such as Alienware will also be affected as demand for their product decreases.

The effects on the gaming community will be more diverse. The culture of gaming has spawned many users who are well versed in their computers graphics capabilities and are always striving for increased performance.

This obsession will need to be replaced if game specific platforms become obsolete.

The positive effects are likely to outweigh this lifestyle change. Gamers will not have to choose a specific platform and will be able to play new games without upgrading to a new platform.

OnLive plans to have the product commercially available in winter of 2009. Users will need to download a 1 MB Web browser plug-in allowing them to shop for games. Once games are launched they will fill the screen with high resolution video.

The key to Onlive’s ability to deliver this service is their use of proprietary compression techniques to stream the 3-D games.

OnLive’s developers promise gamers that there will be no need to ever upgrade their hardware as advances in game technology will be accommodated by upgrading the data servers providing the video feeds.

Games seem poised to join music and movies as media that no longer need to be physically purchased in order to be enjoyed.