Was very bored yesterday afternoon so I checked out onlive free sign up version. For first generation tech it was impressive and I can see this being the way the console generation will go in the future. The one thing that impressed me most was the spec mode. Now I like to have twitchtv on my second screen as a tv program. Twitchtv is poor compared to onlives way of doing things. Watching games is instant on onlive and got me to thinking how the way we communicate will change in the next 5-10 years. I can see ts being replaced with onlives kind of enviroment. You join the boon control room and you can instantly talk but also see what others are playing. I could watch doodle/tvar playing diablo then swap over to fizzee/aspira playing mincraft in a instant. I don't think onlives main purpose will take off for pc gamers but accidentally my have stumbled on a hit.
But you would be connected to the internet. As you would need to be like with onlive. I not techie enough to know how onlive gaming works. So the way I imagine it would work would be like this. Boon control would have its own server running a program that can process video and sounds etc. Players can then upload gaming feeds to it. Players with the client program can then access everything within boon with one program. I'm talking a mass guild portal. With voice, video, chat, LAN networks, website and live streams all in one program.
that must have took some really hard maths equations to work out dudie, you've come a long way since working out what a quarter of 8 is
I didn't like onlive a whole lot. Mostly due to latency and locked resolution/graphic options as well as picture distortion due to video compression. This also means no modding of games is possible. And the fact that this is the ultimate DRM worries me. It's awesome that any device can play any games (that are available on onlive) and it's great you can try all of these for free. However they have a lot of flaws to iron out before this goes mainstream. And alot of people would need better internet connections. Especially when we look at the future streaming games in 4k resolution or even thinking about multi-monitor game streaming. You are right about the social part hough, It's amazing and I do believe we will see some form of this in the future. Edit: I disagree with your console vision though. I and most people I know see console gaming as a (mainly) offline thing.
For the serious gamer I believe hardware will always be on point simply because of control reasons. Also I believe in 10 years all front room gaming will be dominated by cloud gaming. If NVIDIA are to be believed they have developed a new chip for cloud gaming that can play 4 games per server box instead of 1. From there its a simple case of economics. Do you build expensive consoles and take a loss on each one in the hope games sell well? Or will you build cheap servers you didn't have to r & d then charge customers for line rental, games and that cheaply made piece of tat that goes between router and tv? Also on the discussion of resolution. I bet if you asked the majority of console owners what res they played in you wouldn't get a number but the letters us.
