By Ben Roberts
Cloud computing has already made waves in the business world, and now it’s looking to take over the video games industry. Steve Perlman, the man behind the beginnings of video streaming with Apple’s QuickTime, has developed OnLive and hopes to revolutionise the gaming industry. Essentially OnLive uses cloud computing to facilitate high powered gaming even if the end user has a low power computer; all that can limit the standard of service is the user’s bandwidth.
In theory it makes sense, but I don’t see how any cloud could have enough power to fuel gamers’ habits! We’re talking about huge volumes of data being transferred in real time and the processing power of the OnLive servers would have to be enormous – at any point millions of gamers could be placing incredible strain on the system.
If OnLive doesn’t work, we’re just looking at another fantasy gaming machine that failed to deliver, much like the Phantom. But if this does work, many are predicting the end of console gaming and a spell of dominance for OnLive.
This could be disastrous. By having only one dominant means of gaming, developers and publishers would dedicate funds to this area, leaving developing systems and ideas to sit unfulfilled. Competition may become fierce in terms of developing games, but competition would be all but non-existent in terms of developing gaming systems.
All this would lead to is a stagnation of the industry and a serious deterioration in the influence of innovation. To understand the importance of innovation in gaming, consider the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS series which have sold 50 million and 100 million units respectively. Nintendo have broken down barriers in gaming, found success across all demographics and opened up the gaming industry.
It’s ironic that a brilliantly innovative product like OnLive could destroy further innovation in gaming systems development. Let’s hope that even if OnLive is a hit, other consoles will continue to be successful and push our experiences further.
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