Physical media, Steam, Direct-2-Drive, Origin. These only a handful of methods for game distribution yet they result in the same questions, how much space do I need and what are the requirements? In the case of Steam and the other online distributors, you’re also faced with the initial download size. Requirements for playing the top games are increasing. If, like me, you build or purchase your PC with this in mind then you’ll at least have a good few years before deciding to upgrade components to keep up. The question is, should we have to? What if we could expand the gaming community past with a lot stricter computer budgets. What if a Mac gamer wanted to play Arkham City now?

OnLive is not a content distribution method in the same way as Steam, it is instead a cloud based platform for gaming. Rather than purchase, download, and install the games, they are streamed in real-time from their remote servers where all the rendering and computational work is done. The only thing you then need to download is the OnLive client.

There is a try before you buy feature, which is limited to 30 minutes. You can start another 30 minute trial on the exact same game if you wish, however it will not continue from any saves and you’ll be starting from the beginning – you can only load your saves on games you aren’t playing on trial. Asides from just purchasing and trialing, OnLive also allows you to rent games over 3 or 5 day periods. Whilst the service to play itself is free, there is also a subscription model, where £6.99 a month will get you access to 100+ games (which you can see before you decide to purchase, I counted around 125). You won’t find the latest and greatest in the list, but it does also net you an automatic 30% discount against future purchases (excluding subscriptions).

There are definite benefits. That Mac gamer above could indeed play Arkham City with OnLive. They could then connect their jail-broken iPad to both a keyboard and mouse and even continue playing on there. Whilst there is an app available for both iOS and Android devices, only certain games are touch enabled (I’ll come back to that in a moment.) For the rest you still need a keyboard and mouse (or a controller from their list of working devices), and the mouse is where the jailbreak comes in.

I decided to give OnLive a go, and initially fired up the trial for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine on the PC. I had no issues with quality, and response times were fantastic. After having enough of playing I decided to then try Lego Batman, only this time on my Android device. I mentioned earlier touch enabled games, and Lego Batman is one of them. Similar to how a lot of iOS and Android FPS games provide an overlay, you’re provided with the same method of control with clearly defined touch areas on the screen along with labels if you wish of what each button is. Again the game was responsive, and whilst it was a bit harder to play (due in part to the touch controls and size of the screen) I had no issues. But how well could it stand up to being actually mobile?

Still in the house (I’m not going to randomly walk around outside at 10pm) I disabled Wi-Fi and connected over the 3G/HSDPA connection of the mobile. The game remained as responsive as it had whilst connected to the Wi-Fi and I noticed no real difference. I then tried it this morning on the walk to work, where the connection seems to hit 3G black-spots and reverts to GPRS. The quality here was not so great. OnLive compresses the image on the fly depending on how your connection is, so whilst at times it was just as clear as it was at home, other times the image quality dropped quite a bit. Whilst the responsiveness was still fantastic, when you’re struggling to see distorted graphics on an already smaller screen it becomes very difficult to play. With a constant decent connection however, it’s a great way to continue your game on the move.

OnLive comes with its own built in voice chat (though not available on the Android devices) along with a couple additional features – Brag Clips and their Arena. Brag clips are OnLives recording and playback system. When activated, your last 10 seconds of gameplay is stored for future playback. Want to show your friend over and over how you fragged them last night? Go right ahead! The Arena is OnLives spectator system. When playing you can set your audio and video to be available to anyone logged in (or to friends only or no-one at all) which is accessible via the Arena. This includes it’s own spectator chat so you can watch and chat with your friends playing halfway across the world if you so wished and because it’s done via OnLive’s servers there is no need to install additional software. When accessing the Arena you are presented with a selection of screens, all live gameplay, which you can scroll through and select to enlarge and watch. I spent part of last night trying this out, seeing what and how others were playing.

As with all game distributions where you do not retain the media, what happens if the company goes under? With Steam you can backup the games and restore them if you wish, but there’s no such method with OnLive. What if, rather than your own connection being an issue, there’s major connectivity faults with OnLive? These are valid questions to ask, and only time can really tell the answers. However looking at the list of publishers and companies they’ve partnered with it paints a picture that OnLive may well be here to stay and fight it’s corner.

Will I replace my system and place all of my gaming eggs in OnLive? No, at least not yet. The service is fantastic, however not every game I’d want to play is on there. With more and more publishers being signed up this could well change, but for now I’m happy to run it alongside for testing and being introduced to new games.

Want to try it out for yourself? Download the iOS/Android app from the App store or Market, or download the PC/Mac client from OnLive and create yourself a free account.

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