OnLive thin gaming client runs “Crysis” on the iPhone, iPad to follow

John Brownlee ()

OnLive thin gaming client runs “Crysis” on the iPhone, iPad to follow

A potentially revolutionary way to stream next-gen video games to hardware technically too underpowered to run those titles natively, thin client OnLive might be the best thing to happen to gaming since, well, the Internet.

Essentially, the technology works by making a game into an interactive, streaming video, rendering all the gameplay on a beefy server, compressing the video and shooting it off to you as you play. Imagine, for example, playing a shooter like Crysis — which can cripple even a top-of-the-line PC — on your iPhone. Actually, scratch that, because you don’t really have to: at this year’s DICE Summit in Las Vegas, OnLive CEO Steve Perlman gave a brief demonstration of Crysis running on Apple’s handheld.

If the idea of playing full-featured, next-gen games on your iPhone doesn’t get you excited, it gets better: Perlman has also confirmed that OnLive will support tablets, clearly giving a wink and a nod to the iPad.

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OnLive thin gaming client demonstrated by ex-Quicktime guru, Steve Perlman

The only question is: will OnLive be able to solve the latency issues inherent in the thin client gaming approach? Perlman swears it’s feasible, as long as each OnLive user is within 100 miles of a server, but a high ping’s a deadly thing in an FPS. OnLive could very well be a revolution… but at the end of the day, I think we’ll be more likely to be playing slower-paced games like Civilization V through our iPad OnLive client than Crysis.

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About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in Gaming, iPad, iPhone, News |

  • http://ihbs.co.uk Ben

    last time i read about a demo for this, the lag was around 30ms, which doesnt sound like much, but its the difference between shooting someone in the head and then shooting you in the head first

  • Joseph

    I’ll speculate that by the time the network is up to delivering this experience, the device itself will also have the power to deliver it.

  • T.C.

    I agree with you on Civilization V for the iPad. It’s a more fitting game to play given the touch-screen capability. Playing Crysis on and iPad sounds… difficult.

  • http://hercules.gcsu.edu/~flowney Frank Lowney

    Since iPhoneOS supports real-time HTTP streaming, can anyone confirm that this new protocol is used here for the downstream video?

  • CaryMG

    This is BEYOND a revolution in interactive entertainment ….

    No more stupid “Console Warz” ….

    Now *everyone* has the best box ….

    The app *itself* will now get all the hype & speculation on the level new consoles had.

  • porkchop1234

    Quote
    The only question is: will OnLive be able to solve the latency issues inherent in the thin client gaming approach? Perlman swears it’s feasible, as long as each OnLive user is within 100 miles of a server

    The first problem is MANY PEOPLE AREN’T within a 100 miles of their beefy servers. Next problem is as more users log on the more the so called beefy server becomes overwhelmed.

    For this to actually work you would have to have a series of data centers (and they would have to be huge) strewn out all over the continent of N. America. I strongly doubt anyone will be willing to foot the mammoth bill of constructing these data centers just so people could game on Crysis. This technology is still a good generation if not more away before if sees final fruition.

  • Tarl

    Get the details right- to say 100 miles vice the actual 1000 miles is to spread missinformation.

    Its also pretty uninformed to talk about the device ‘having enough power’ its a matter of scale that goes way beyond the power needed to run it and it extended into practicality. Could your PC run google maps? It can take the results of Google maps but not even 10 years from now would it run it and even beyond the power one needs the organizational power and input that only massive scale will provide.

  • http://civilization5betakeys.blogspot.com/ rachelqueen

    Luckily I found this free blog that was giving out completely free Civilization 5 beta key as a cool promotion. I got two keys from there.

    Not sure if they have any left, but you can visit the blog by clicking on my name (rachelqueen).

    Good luck getting one guys!