Is the age of expensive consoles and PCs over?

It might be.

Meet OnLive.

You may never buy a new video card ever again. Actually, the only PC gaming hardware you might ever need will cost you less than a Wii, should OnLive's potential live up to its promise.

OnLive is a new video games on demand service that may just change the way you play PC games. The brainchild of Rearden Studios founder Steve Perlman, formerly of Atari, Apple, WebTV and more, and Mike McGarvey, formerly of Eidos, the technology looks to revolutionize the way computer games are brought home. Instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on the latest video game hardware that will make games like Crysis playable at nearly maxed settings, let OnLive's servers handle the processing. All that's required is a low cost "micro console" or a low end PC and a broadband internet connection.

Yes, even your sub $500 netbook or MacBook can play processor intensive, GPU demanding PC games. In fact, that's the whole point. How does it work?

The concept is simple. Your controller input isn't going from your hand to the controller to the machine in front of you, it's going from your hand to the controller through the internet to OnLive's machines then back again as streamed video. Whether you're using a USB gamepad, Bluetooth wireless controller, or tried and true keyboard and mouse, the processing and output happens on OnLive's side, then is fed back to your terminal, with the game "perceptually" played locally.

In other words, it's cloud computed gaming.

Using patented video compression in tandem with algorithms that compensate for lag, jitter and packet loss, OnLive delivers video at up to 720p resolution at frame rates up to 60 frames per second. Of course, the quality of the video feed relies on your connection.

For standard definition television quality, a broadband connection of at least 1.5 megabits per second is required. For HDTV resolution, a connection of at least 5 mbps is needed.

What about lag, you say? OnLive's technology "incubator" Rearden Studios claims that its servers will deliver video feeds that have a ping of less than one millisecond. Its patented video compression technique is also advertised as blazing fast, with video compression taking about one millisecond to process.

That speedy delivery of video game content means more than just video games on demand, it means no install times. It also means cross-platform compatibility, the ability to try demos instantly, and an opportunity to rent or play games almost instantaneously.

It also means real-time streaming of video feeds from players far and wide playing their own games at home via OnLive which could ultimately mean broadcast style feeds to observers. Up to a million, according to OnLive reps.

The best part? It already has serious buy-in from major publishers, including EA, THQ, Codemasters, Ubisoft, Atari, Warner Bros., Take-Two, and Epic Games. Oh, and 2D Boy.

The appeal on the publisher side is that it essentially means less opportunity for profit-whittling piracy. There's little modification on the developer side to make a game run with OnLive. There's even an SDK available. On the consumer side, the prospect of no cheating—or at least heavily reduced cheating—is also desirable.

OnLive is showing 16 of the games planned for the service this week at GDC, some of them playable on low-spec machines, the kind of Dell your grandmother might buy.

Of course, they'll also be playable on OnLive's micro console, a simple, low-cost device that's about the size of your hand. It's simple tech—there's not even a GPU in the device. It simply acts as a video decoding control hub, with two USB inputs and support for four Bluetooth devices, and outputs audio and video via optical and HDMI connections. The micro console is expected to be priced competitively, "significantly less" than any current generation console on the market and potentially "free" with an OnLive service contract.

Plans for a monthly subscription are in the works, said to be priced on par with Xbox Live fees, offering the same community and multiplayer features popularized by Microsoft's gaming service. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the unified OnLive community is the option to save and upload Brag Clips, a 15 second replay of, well, whatever just happened in-game.

We too were a little suspicious of OnLive's capability to deliver perceptually lag-free on-demand games. But then we played a hasty online game of Crysis Wars on the service today and became a little less suspicious. It seemed to work. Obviously, it was in a controlled environment with only a few hundred internal beta testers populating the system. But it worked.

Will it work in the wild? It might. OnLive is currently beta testing internally, with an external beta planned for Summer and a launch later this year. Expected to be deployed by launch will be five server centers hosting the latest and greatest games—OnLive isn't aiming to be GameTap, with no immediate plans to host archival PC games. Server clusters will be located in Santa Clara, Texas, Virginia and elsewhere, hoping to offer OnLive subscribers within 1,000 miles a seemingly lag-free experience.

We'll be testing the service later this week, letting you know what we thought.

This could be amazing. If it works as well as it sounds like it does, this could completely revolutionize the gaming industry. Crysis on your TV at a price point lower than the Wii? Count me in.

I really hope it lives up to the hype, because if it does, I'll go for this in a heartbeat.

I heard an online podcast talking about this kind of thing just yesterday. With the economy slum going going on, making retails games entirely DLC without cases and discs is looking more and more likely. I'd miss the novelty of going out to buy a game in a store though, which is the only downside for me.

Wow, that'd be amazing, I'd just kick back and play Total War on my laptop. Yes please!

let's hope it works out as good as they say it is.

Yah I read a story about this on IGN earlier. I was rather impressed. If it works as well as it claims it will, I think it'll make many gamers very happy.

Looks like a console with monthly subscription fees.

And exactly that, nothing else. A console. With Solitaire, Minesweeper, and Hearts. That's it's library if your Internet connection goes down, or isn't fast enough.

While this is a great idea, I think it should be developed in tandem with the concept that games aren't supposed to look pretty. They're supposed to be fun regardless.

And thus, the PC gaming market was turned upside down.

Originally Posted by Jodd

And exactly that, nothing else. A console. With Solitaire, Minesweeper, and Hearts. That's it's library if your Internet connection goes down, or isn't fast enough.

Which is why companies like Nintendo would never utilize this. for PC's however, mmmm...

FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE U.S. DOLLARS!

Sorry.. just had to. Onlive looks pretty cool.

I don't have broadband, so I'm not getting OnLive, but it sounds awesome.

Isn't that like steam or whatever?

Originally Posted by Hack&Slash

Isn't that like Steam or whatever?

Steam is basically a game download service, but with Onlive, the games are essentially streamed to you, like a youtube of videogames. This way, you won't have to worry about having a high end system to be able to play more visually robust games.

Ah. Sorry, just too much reading to do in the op XD

But with my internet, streaming big games is impossible.

Originally Posted by Hack&Slash

Ah. Sorry, just too much reading to do in the op XD

But with my internet, streaming big games is impossible.

Supposively all that's need is a 1.5Mbps connection to play smoothly in standard definition. Don't know if that helps, but I doubt there are many broadband connections slower than that out there.

Wow, this is great. I recently had to spend $600 getting new graphics and sound cards because any game made after about 2004 wouldn't work. My most recent game up until that point was Starcraft.

This might finally make PC gaming just as user friendly and cheap as console gaming.

I posted this already in the GDC thread, but 5Mbps required for High Definition equals come back in five or ten years. That audience just isn't big enough yet. That, and I'm not convinced that they would be able to get the lag down to an acceptable level. People complain about 15ms on LCDs with Game Mode on, let alone sending HD data up and downstream.

I should love this, but for whatever reason, a part of me hates it. I don't know if that hate is at all warranted.

Originally Posted by Jehanne

Looks like a console with monthly subscription fees.

Agreed. I for one won't do anything I have to pay monthly for. I have a pretty random life. So class etc could be really easy and I have hours of free time (like 8 a night) to spend doing whatever. Then the next week I have no free time at all. Paying for something I may not end up using just pisses me off.

Originally Posted by SheikahSage

Wow, this is great. I recently had to spend $600 getting new graphics and sound cards because any game made after about 2004 wouldn't work. My most recent game up until that point was Starcraft.

This might finally make PC gaming just as user friendly and cheap as console gaming.

Did you use newegg.com? That seems way to high for just new graphics and sound cards. Unless you went all out, in which case I would guess a new power supply would have been needed as well.

I still need the money to build my new PC. I'm tired of dealing with this **** Dell "makes". I want power in a computer, and nobody makes one that's any good. As a programmer I need the ability to upgrade without having to buy a new computer every 2 years. That being said I need the money to start the build

I really like the concept of this. I am amazed that they could actually do something like this. Streaming a video feed of what your doing LIVE so it's like your playing it as you would with a regular console or pc game.

This is definitely cool. They tried that with a different service that made original games.

This...um...actually sounds kinda pointless, counter-productive, and expensive.

Here me out.

First, pointless and counter-productive - what's the point of an internet service that lets you run high-end games on low-end machines when the low-end machines can't support the necessary internet connection? It just wouldn't work, and until someone can physcially prove otherwise right in front of me, I'm not going to believe their hype.

Second, expensive - it's got a frickin' monthly subscription attached. Do you know what that means? You won't be paying much per month, sure, but by the time you've had it running for a few years, odds're pretty good you will've spent more on it than you would on hard copy games or the PC to play them on. It's a bit like the difference between contact lenses and glasses - the contact lenses don't cost much per month, but by the time you've been using them as long as a pair of glasses, it'll cost you two ro three times as much.

So, personally, I'm really not interested.