Execs behind OnLive gaming service reveal more details

The founders of the just-announced "in the cloud" gaming service took to a San Francisco stage Tuesday, hoping to convince a skeptical audience that OnLive—which (they claim) will bring high-end, 3D gaming to entry level PCs and Macs—is the real deal.

Personally, I wish I was there—I'm stuck here in New York, and had to settle for watching the Tuesday's press conference over streaming video (courtesy of GameSpot). Even worse, I won't get to try OnLive's service in person on the GDC show floor today, where 16 titles—including "BioShock," "Prince of Persia," "Tom Clancy's Hawx," and "Mirror's Edge"—will be on display and available for test driving.

But so far, I've been impressed with what I've seen and heard—especially Tuesday night's demo of "Crysis," an ultra high-end PC game that ran (apparently, anyway) like a dream on an OnLive-enabled $600 Dell laptop.

So, just to recap: Unveiled on Tuesday and set to go live this winter, OnLive is an "in the cloud" gaming service that promises to stream cutting-edge 3D gaming to entry level PC and Mac systems—no dedicated graphics chipset needed—all with the help of a 1MB browser plug-in. OnLive will also offer a pocket-sized (and potentially free) "micro-console" that you can hook up to your TV via HDMI. The compact console will also handle wireless controllers and a mouse/keyboard combo.

OnLive execs say they've signed up 10 major game publishers, including such names as EA, Eidos, Ubisoft, Atari, THQ, and Take-Two, and they plan to demo 16 games in San Francisco today. The titles: "Tomb Raider: Underworld," "Unreal Tournament 3," "Grid," "Crysis" "Fear 2," "Prince of Persia," "Tom Clancy's Hawx," "Mirror's Edge," "Burnout Paradise," "Lego Batman: The Video Game," "Frontlines: Fuels of War," "Wheelman," "BioShock," "Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts," "World of Goo," and "Chronicles of Riddick."

OnLive CEO Steve Perlman (one of the guys behind Quicktime, WebTV, and Mova—the motion-capture firm that just won an Oscar for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") only discussed pricing in broad strokes, noting that gamers would probably pay a monthly subscription fee, then either buy or rent individual games.

Perlman's big pitch to the assembled crowd of journalists Tuesday night: With OnLive, gamers won't have to worry about forking over hundreds of dollars for the latest gaming consoles or upgrades for (already pricey) multimedia PCs. As gaming hardware and technology improves, so will OnLive's servers; likewise, all game patches will be installed on the server side, so gamers won't even notice.

Well, that's the pitch, anyway; what about the details though? Well, for starters, OnLive will launch with three U.S. server locations (one on each coast, and a third—still under construction—in the mid-west), each with GPU-equipped "high-performance" servers that'll run the various games and compress video (using a newly developed compression algorithm) on the fly.

Perlman said that OnLive's new video compression technology should manage to reduce lag to just a millisecond or so, or "below the level of human perception" (his words, not mine). The low latency should hold for anyone within 1,000 miles of an OnLive server, Perman claimed, and you should be able to get 720p-quality video over a 5MB/second broadband connection (or else standard-def video with a 1.5MB connection).

Next came the demo: "Crysis," played using OnLive on a Dell Studio 15 laptop (which goes for about $600 these days) and over an OnLive server in Santa Clara, about 50 miles from San Francisco. "Crysis" is notorious for it's sky-high system requirements, but from what I could tell, it ran just fine on the Dell, smooth and (apparently) lag-free. Of course, that's just a demo, without the strain of thousands of other online gamers; still, I'm curious to read what GDC-goers think once they try the system for themselves today.

The OnLive interface also looks impressive. After a typically swooshing, swooping intro, you zoom in to a block of nine panels, surrounded by a series of windows showing live games in progress. You click the Games panel to browse OnLive's game collection, or on Arena to look in on hundreds of live games; a Friends panel lets you check out your OnLive pals, including their recently-played games and activity. You can also show off your most impressive kills under the Brag Clips panel.

All very promising, but obviously, OnLive will succeed or fail based on a few key factors, such as the number of titles available (how many more will arrive at launch, and what about such high-profile exclusives as "Halo" and "Metal Gear Solid?), and whether Perlman and his team can pull off the minimal-lag streaming technology that they're promising.

Now, what if OnLive does manage to deliver its speedy video compression technology as advertised (a big "if"), and it becomes a real threat to the Xbox 360/PS3> Well, if I were running Microsoft and Sony, I'd fight off OnLive with my exclusives—no "Halo 3" or "Killzone 2" for OnLive, for example.

Then again, Perlman raised a key point that should appeal to gaming publishers: By keeping all its games on the server side, OnLive could help cut down on piracy, a factor that could help offset the payday publishers get from signing exclusivity deals.

Obviously, this is all just academic if OnLive can't deliver on its lofty promises … but I think we may really have something here. Stay tuned.

So, what do you think: Does OnLive have promise? Is it all smoke and mirrors? Sound off below.

Related:
OnLive's GDC 2009 press conference video [GameSpot]