First Look: OnLive

et me indulge in some contortion of the maxim about cows and free milk. As the ease of broadcasting and storing data manumits entertainment media from media itself, the promise of immediate access has tempered consumers' need for ownership. Enter OnLive, an on-demand, game-streaming service announced at E3 2009 and, in the face of delays and some incredulity, successfully launched the third week of this past June.

The man behind OnLive, Steve Perlman, is the man behind Quicktime, WebTV and half a dozen other technological germs dreamt up since the mid-1980s. He has intercepted the steady advance toward relieving a network's end users of most responsibilities save for purchase and receipt. Based on a delivery structure called cloud computing, OnLive maintains servers that labor to process video games remotely; to play a selection made at button-push, customers need only possess a computer capable of streaming video and wired connection to intermediate-level broadband (or, ETA sometime soon, a branded OnLive "MicroConsole").

Game and Player's sampling of OnLive was basic, involving three computers and the inspection of a handful of the service's twenty-one available titles in single-player modes. This limited test nevertheless impressed: on two typical desktops and a humble laptop, OnLive is proof of concept, its worth subject only to an appraisal by its market. (Editor's note: my connection is 6 Mbps downstream.)

I chose Borderlands as my first title, and aptly, too: Gearbox Software's whirlwind opening demands top presentation. As soon as Marcus Kincaid's picture-book yarn cut to the lonesome bus route, digital artifacts became visible — but were neither distracting nor devaluing. Notably, when "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" kicked in as a bumper kissed the skag in the road, the soundtrack lacked audible traces of compression. Was I playing Borderlands? Yes, and at little cost due to streaming.

Forty dollars to enjoy the fruit of critical acclaim over the next three years while unwinding in a downtown Hilton is not unreasonable.It was Frostbyte's side-scrolling platformer-puzzler Trine, interestingly, that revealed some limits of cloud gaming. The same, minor visual degradation was apparent, but during the use of certain, likely processing-intensive animations such as the wizard's signature levitation of an arcane cube, framerate — and the notational pitch of the soundtrack! — would drop, occasionally as a detriment to play.

But still, even a lavish, A-list entry like Assassin's Creed 2 performed with losses mostly confined to the subtle garbling of Ubisoft Montreal's exquisite visual design; particularly in the game's futurist-minimal menu trees.

While a subscription to OnLive through its "Founding Members Program" will ultimately cost just five dollars a month, actually playing games involves a pricing structure redolent of Steam or brick-and-mortar rental stores instead of the time-constrained consumption of, say, Netflix. Unlimited access to Assassin's Creed, for example, is offered at $39.99 for what is probably the extent of Ubisoft's licensure, i.e., mid-June 2013. Five-day play of Batman: Arkham Asylum, meanwhile, goes for $5.99.

Would this appeal to gamers whose computers can run most of these titles natively; or whose consoles could, no questions asked? Not nearly as much as the traveling professional whose discretionary budget includes connecting a laptop to the internet from a hotel room. Forty dollars to enjoy the fruit of critical acclaim over the next three years while unwinding in a downtown Hilton is not unreasonable.

In any case, OnLive should be refining its model both in response to customers and the successive entrance of competitors. Whatever implications there are for the sheer ambition of gaming by projection remain speculative; but for onlookers who wondered if Perlman's vision had any merit, early signs affirm.

© 2010 Game and Player. All rights reserved.