OnLive “Microconsole” service to be free?Written By Roy
OnLive was announced last year at the GDC, but since then we’ve not really heard all that much about the service, which could potentially set the gaming world on fire. If you haven’t already heard of the company, OnLive is a game streaming service that will allow you to play the latest games on just about system by streaming the game through the internet much like how a service like internet TV works today, with no need to purchase the actual console or run a high end gaming PC.
The idea sounds great in theory, but there have been plenty of sceptics – just how laggy are the games going to be, how much is the service going to cost and what sort of bandwidth will you need to play? With the UK average net speed at around 4 Mbps and many people with even slower connections it just doesn’t seem very likely that such a service will be available to that many people – at least in this country.
So where does the Microconsole come in? It’s a ‘console’ the size of a normal console controller that will allow you to play games via a streaming service on their television. You can also download a program and run them on your computer but we’re betting that many people will be much happier in front of their televisions on their couches than at their desks.
IGN have previously guessed the Microconsole part of the service would cost around $100 to buy, although in a recently leaked video on YouTube CEO Steve Perlman stated that the console was very cheap to make and that the actual plastic casing on the outside costs more than the gadgets inside.
This could mean the Microconsole which be available to consumers at a much cheaper price than originally thought – perhaps even for free for those who sign up to a certain length of subscription for the service.
That’s about the only news available about OnLive right now, and when and where it will surface in the UK and proper betas will be available we – and the gaming community in general – have no idea.
What do you think? Gaming through the internet using a ‘console’ that could cost you absolutely nothing at all. Are cloud gaming services like OnLive a pipe dream or the best thing to happen to gaming in the last decade?
The News Release was written by: Roy who produces professional