May 15th, 2010

Not everyone wants their hand held when PC gaming

One of the bigger stories this past week was OnLive heading to the UK. The service promises to make PC gaming more accessible by hosting all of the hardware—you simply supply a broadband connection and a Web browser, and you’ll be playing the likes of Mass Effect 2 in no time. If it works as described, great. There’s nothing wrong with exposing PC gaming to more people. → Read More

May 13th, 2010

OnLive strikes deal with BT in the UK, brings streaming video game service across the pond

OnLive, the streaming video game service that threatens to change the way people perceive gaming, has signed a deal with with British Telecommunications. The deal means that Britons will be able to play games like Mass Effect 2 and Assassin’s Creed II over their broadband connection (and it also means that BT will buy a small stake in the company). No UK launch date has been announced. The U.S. → Read More

March 10th, 2010

GDC: OnLive's Cloud-Powered Gaming Service To Launch June 17

During the GamesBeat keynote at GDC today, OnLive CEO Steve Perlman took the stage to showcase the company’s game streaming technology, which allows gamers to play high quality 3D games without a console — OnLive does all of the intense rendering in the cloud, then streams it back to a lightweight client that will work on nearly any computer (it will work on TVs as well with an adapter). We’ve… → Read More

January 21st, 2010

OnLive demoed; lag and image quality may indeed be an issue

There are people beta testing OnLive out there, and of course after our various looks at the remote gaming service (and my repeated statements of skepticism) we try to keep up to date. PC Perspective has a nice, lengthy write-up of the beta, which you should read in its entirety if you’re particularly interested. However, the reduction of PC Per’s sauce is this: for certain games, and for certain… → Read More

December 29th, 2009

Video: OnLive demonstrated at Columbia University

You remember OnLive. The service, which lets you play any game remotely on a distant server, has produced much skepticism and much interest, and is now in public beta. We got a good look at it back in March when we were at GDC, and it appears that things are much the same. However, the combination of crowd noise and my bad playing made for a less-than-optimal viewing experience. This video is much… → Read More

September 14th, 2009

TC50: Spawn Labs Is Slingbox For Video Games

Slingbox owners love their devices. They allow you to watch your home television content anywhere you are in the world with an Internet connection. A new startup, Spawn Labs, launching today at TechCrunch50 wants to extend that concept to video games.

But Spawn Labs offering is actually a bit more robust because it includes a social element as well. A key part to playing video games is playing… → Read More

September 3rd, 2009

OnLive internet gaming service enters public beta

Cast your memory back to late March of this year and you may recall news of an on-demand, internet-based gaming service called OnLive (here’s the original post). Think of it like GameTap (remember GameTap?) except that nothing actually gets installed on your computer. All the games can apparently be streamed at up to 720p resolution over a 5Mbps connection, or standard definition over a 1.5Mbps… → Read More

June 16th, 2009

Videos: OTOY In Action. You Have To See This.

When we first looked at OTOY about a year ago, the small company was trying to deliver a server-side 3D rendering technology that could allow modern video games to be played on basically any client. A lofty goal, for sure. Then OnLive was unveiled in March at GDC, and it sent ripples around much of the gaming world with a similar concept of cloud-based gaming (both good and bad). But OTOY believes… → Read More

March 26th, 2009

Is OnLive OnCrack?

We just tried out OnLive, and of course it worked perfectly, being a demonstration on the order of 8-10 machines set up by the company itself. The people we talked to were naturally very optimistic, and my concerns over the availability and reliability of multi-megabit connections were waved away. That isn’t the only problem, though. OnLive will need a top-tier computer for every player at… → Read More

March 25th, 2009

Video: Demo of OnLive

Douglas did a fine job detailing what OnLive is yesterday and today we’re bringing you a hands-on demo of the cloud gaming service from the GDC show floor. The chap who gave us the demo does a find job of explaining how OnLive works in case you missed yesterday’s post. Sit tight and watch Devin suck at GRID.

We questioned one of the OnLive developers about possible bandwidth issues because of… → Read More

March 24th, 2009

Can OnLive’s cloud gaming service threaten traditional consoles?

A very interesting gaming service called OnLive was introduced at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco last night. OnLive consists of a small browser plug-in that lets you play games online, with all the heavy lifting done by OnLive’s servers – effectively meaning that if the service can live up to its promises, you’d have yourself a gaming platform that never gets obsolete and… → Read More