MMOs may be on the horizon for OnLive
The OnLive gaming platform officially launched in the US last year, bringing a new on-demand gaming service to homes with broadband internet connections. OnLive hosts and renders games on a computing cloud and delivers the resulting video feed over the internet. The potentially revolutionary system lets people play high-end games on low-end computers, but has a minimum bandwidth requirement of 2Mbit.
OnLive celebrated its UK release this week during Eurogamer Expo in London, and we were on the floor to ask the OnLive staff some questions about the service. Representatives were able to confirm that there are plans to bring MMOs to the OnLive service in the future but no solid deals had been made. The only thing keeping MMOs out of the game catalogue is the fact that no deals have been signed with MMO publishers.
OnLive representatives stated that it would be unlikely to see Activision-Blizzard's games like World of Warcraft on OnLive, but that Star Wars: The Old Republic and other MMOs could eventually be licensed to both the PC client and the home console. Talks are already underway with Electronic Arts, which released its first game on the system this week to coincide with the UK launch. When asked about latency issues, staff explained that the service already supports a large number of multiplayer titles with similar connectivity requirements to MMOs and latency is not a problem in those games.
