OnLive: Future of Gaming

Is this the new face of gaming?

One thing I hate about being a gamer is that you'll constantly have the need to upgrade your rig, whether you're a console gamer, portable gamer, or computer gamer. It's inevitable that your platform and game developers will find ways to up-man the competition by improving their technology. Hence, you always end up throwing your $2000 or $400 rig into the can and replace it with another $2000 or $400 rig that you'll eventually throw in the can. Hopefully, however, OnLive will put an end to that.

OnLive is perhaps the latest craze amongst gamers right now, and with good reason too. Straight from the presses of Game Developers Conference '09 (or GDC 09), OnLive is a Games on Demand service that delivers rented or purchased games to your PC, Mac or TV via high-speed internet. In short, OnLive are for games as YouTube are for video. You're actually streaming games instead of installing them into your PC (kinda like playing flash games except you're playing games like Crysis or BioShock). Which means you won't need high-end video cards or having to deal with Vista to play your game.

Right now, I'm pretty much sold. I like the idea of not having to deal with system requirements anymore. Also, the fact that big name publishers like EA Games, Ubisoft and Atari are supporting it could also mean more games. The only downside to it is that the graphics quality will be really poor. But I don't really care about the graphics. So I'll be watching this thing real close.

Anyways, if you're interested about OnLive, and live in the US, you can participate in their beta testing program. You can sign in here. I already did.

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