OnLive has been quietly building up steam over the last year for their cloud-based mobile gaming service, and they’re just about ready to go. During the E3 conference, OnLive announced that their subscription service would be available to iOS and Android device owners starting this fall, complete with support for multiplayer, and voice chat. Alternatively, you will also be able to use the tablet as a controller for games being played through OnLive’s TV console. They’ve also baked in a cool feature called Brag Clip, which lets you record the last 10 seconds of gameplay, and share it to Facebook.
Those of you who use VPNs for drab stuff like accessing spreadsheets on the office computer while at home will understand how it all works. Basically, CloudLive tracks your video game purchases, and does all of the heavy lifting of game rendering for you; all that exists on your phone or tablet is an incoming video stream of gameplay and an interactive control layer (or, if you prefer, you can use their new Bluetooth hardware controller). This set-up means high-end games with otherwise impossible-to-support requirements can be played on smartphones and tablets. It also means your same game can be transferred or continue on the TV or PC through their existing products there.
Currently, OnLive’s library consists of a little over 100 relatively new games, like Just Cause 2, Borderlands, and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. HTC has already invested in OnLive, so it’s a safe assumption their devices will support the app right out of the gate, and both the Motorola Xoom and iPad 2 were demoed at E3 using the app, so it looks like everything will be covered. As a big gamer, I’m dubious that the lag won’t be noticeable, but I’m willing to give OnLive the benefit of the doubt for now. If you’re willing to leave your products and services in the hands of a remote server, cloud computing can be very useful, and with OnLive, it could be fun too. Even if it’s not for you, we’ve seen that local processing power in mobile devices is increasing dramatically, so the need to bridge the gap between console games and mobile ones may very well diminish.
[via Gamasutra]