Guys, OnLive still exists! Do you remember it, one of the first online streaming game services ever made? It was big in the press until Sony teamed up with Gaikai, and the PS4’s streaming capabilities totally dwarfed everything that OnLive had to offer. Well now the original streaming service is looking to innovate on the medium once again. Could this bring it back into the gaming spotlight?
The first new service that OnLive is going to offer is OnLive Cloudlift. It’s a service that will allow you to stream games to devices that wouldn’t otherwise support them. Cloudlift, essentially, allows you to take a game that you purchased on Steam and play it wherever you can get Onlive service. This includes PCs, tablets, mobile phones, smart TVs, and if business works out, even consoles. The Cloudlift service currently supports only 20 games, though it does have some hits like Saints Row 4 and Batman: Arkham City .
That being said, OnLive says that they will expand the service over time, adding more titles and allowing it to function in parallel with existing digital distribution services. So, say you log on to a new computer while on vacation or something. Instead of downloading your game to the new computer’s harddrive, you can just stream it. This will give us totally new ways to slack off at work.
The second new feature that OnLive will be integrating is OnLive Go, which is specifically targeted to games such as MMOs. The idea Is that it will reduce the hassle of keeping these games up to date, as OnLive will simply update them on their servers. Games won’t have to install updates, or even load new areas, because they will all be pre-loaded server side. This means the only wait times you’ll have to suffer through are any wait times caused by the latency of your internet connection. This functionality was demonstrated using Second Life, which was accessed using an Android tablet. Great, now people can play World of Warcraft using their 4G connections… yet more ways to get us addicted to grinding.
The big question is, is OnLive still relevant in our current world of next generation consoles. Gaikai only became relevant by partnering with Sony. Perhaps Microsoft could scoop up OnLive to bring it into public focus as well. Unfortunately, the idea of having to pay a monthly fee in addition to your standard game fee, just to be able to stream your games, is not very appealing.
What do you guys think? Is OnLive still important? Are you going to use it? Or is it totally overshadowed by the PS4 and other mainstream consoles. Let us know what you think in the comments.