Gamers in the UK who do not have access to an Xbox or PlayStation 3 will soon have a new alternative for playing games in their living room, when the cloud console system Onlive is released on 22nd September.
The system has already been available in the US for over a year, and is operated via a tablet device or home computer such as a PC or Mac.
There is also a micro console that can be bought to play Onlive which can be plugged directly into an HD television . In essence, Onlive is a games console that is accessed from a central hub of servers (in Europe, this hub will be based in Luxembourg). A user logs into the server and can play the games on offer without the need to have their own specific games console.
Online gaming has been around for many years now, but this is the first real attempt to bring a cloud-based gaming service, akin to a console, to the UK market. Executive Editor of IGN, Scott Lowe, had mixed impressions of the system when reviewing it, noting that “there are some sacrifices” when playing. “You lose a little bit of the clarity and the graphics don’t stack up as well as something like a PC or a console,” he stated.
However, Mr Lowe did point out that gamers still got the “gist of the experience” and also pointed out that there was no time wasted installing software or having to download updates as the Onlive service is instantaneous.
One of the major issues of the online gaming is latency, or ‘lag’ as it is also known. Onlive games, however, have been specifically designed to avoid these issues and provide a pause and glitch-free gaming experience as much as possible.
Onlive hopes to strike deals with broadband providers to ensure that people who use their service do not exceed their monthly download limits quickly by playing their games online. A user playing a streaming game online would typically use 450MB an hour, and this would quickly use up all their available time online well before they reached the end of the month.