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The secret is out.
OnLive, a potentially revolutionary video game service that calls into question the future of consoles, has been unintentionally revealed to the public.
After seven years in stealth mode, OnLive was supposed to be unveiled at a swanky launch on Tuesday evening at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. Thousands of members of the video game industry are in the city for this week’s Game Developers Conference.
Journalists and analysts were pre-briefed under embargo on OnLive’s startling capabilities last week, but Variety magazine broke that embargo on Monday evening, spoiling the start-up’s well-laid plans and opening the floodgates of press coverage.
Put simply, OnLive is cloud computing coming to the TV video game experience years before anyone expected it. Its founders say they have perfected a video compression algorithm that allows games to be delivered from a data centre onto televisions or computers in the same quality as on the latest consoles, and with no noticeable lag in response times.
The games can be played on any bog-standard laptop or PC without the need for a high-end graphics chip using OnLive’s plug-in software or on a TV connected to a box the size of a pack of cards that may well be given away for free.
Seeing is believing and, in the demo I was given, two people played the graphically demanding Crysis game with one another via the data centre with no noticeable lag, while a third cruised a matrix of scores of screens where games were in session. They could zoom in and watch, play solo or join multiplayer sessions.
OnLive is given added credibility by its pedigree. Its founder and chief executive is Steve Perlman, who led the development of the QuickTime video standard at Apple and then founded in the 90s WebTV, the TV-based internet service bought by Microsoft.
The service is also receiving backing from major publishers and developers at launch, who no doubt see the revenue advantages of cutting out the middle men of retail shops and royalty-demanding console platforms.
Analysts I spoke to were impressed, but expressed concern about whether OnLive could scale its service and provide the necessary reliability to satisfy gamers using it on a national scale. They also felt the company could quickly be copied or become an acquisition target for a Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo, if they felt their consoles were being cut out of the gaming equation.
OnLive still has a lot to prove. It is beginning by showing 16 titles on the service at this week’s conference and plans to offer the service in the US through a monthly subscription from this winter.
David Gelles, Joseph Menn, Chris Nuttall and Richard Waters in the FT's San Francisco bureau upload their views - plus tech insights from writers in New York, London and Tokyo
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