Is OnLive’s Technology Impossible to Pull Off?

Too good to be true” is a term being thrown around quite rampantly regarding the video game service OnLive, which was first unveiled at the Game Developers Conference last week. For the uninitiated, OnLive is to be a service available for both the PC/MAC platforms, and can also be used with a stand-alone device on your TV, used for streaming video games across the Internet for play.

I won’t get too deep into what it does or how it works for the sake of space, but I recommend checking out the video on the official site which explains all. Essentially, OnLive is designed to replace a console or PC, and no matter how beefy your computer may be, this streaming service is designed to allow you to experience the latest and greatest in the video game world, with the help of your broadband connection.

Not surprisingly, there are many doubts surrounding this product, and some people are coming right out and calling the technology “impossible”. It’s easy to understand why. How can a game look as good through this service as it would on a regular console? After all, streaming video doesn’t look that great, so what makes this product any different? Well, co-founder of OnLive Steve Perlman disagrees with all the nay-sayers, and if you are quick to discredit their technology, you could very-well be “ignorant”. Fair enough.

According to Steve, the reason their streaming technology is so good is because there have been “tens of thousands” of man-hours poured into it, and it’s not like any other video compression technology out there. He also goes on to mention that while the typical latencies for pressing a button on a gamepad and seeing the action in a game should be around 80ms, he states that OnLive will see a latency of around 35 – 40ms. Bold claims, that’s for sure. Despite the doubts I have myself, I’m looking forward to seeing it action later this year if it launches on schedule. It should be quite interesting.

While Perlman used that term specifically in regard to a Eurogamer editorial—”Why OnLive Can’t Possibly Work”—the outlet isn’t the only one questioning whether OnLive can deliver high-definition, perceptually real-time video game experiences without a console or PC. He tells the BBC that critics have not yet used the system, nor do they understand the technology behind it.