You may have heard of OnLive: a cloud computing effort aimed at broadening the PC game market, as it allows subscribers to play PC games on any computer regardless of requirements or specifications. Games are rendered on a remote machine which sends packets of data back in the form of compressed video.
In turn, some have speculated that the service will put pressure on console manufactures, since the mainstream potential is huge. Anyone with a decent internet connection would be able to play Crysis, for instance.
It's a promising technology, but Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime isn't worried one bit about it. In a recent interview with WSJ at GDC, he expresses concern that lag will greatly hinder the gameplay experience:[blockquote2]For a game like Scrabble, the nanoseconds it takes for all that data to travel sometimes thousands of miles isn't noticeable. By for a state-of-the-art shooter game like “Crysis,” which relies on a hair-trigger response, you may as well be playing with dialup Internet connection, he said. “We’re not worried.”[/blockquote2]Agreed that Nintendo likely doesn't have much to worry about here, as OnLive is certainly not going to make people abandon their Wii or DS. Still, it isn't fair to completely count OnLive out. Remember that we have yet to see the service go into production mode. It could very well live up to its promises, depending on the implementation. It remains to be seen whether network lag will be an issue or not.
At Gaming Conference, Talk of Growth [WSJ]
