Founder and CEO of OnLive, Steve Perlman, demonstrated the potential of his forthcoming on-demand cloud-based gaming service at DICE Summit yesterday, and to the surprise of many, it worked without hitch. The premise of OnLive may seem too good to be true, but while on stage the technology reportedly performed well.
During the presentation, Perlman and COO Mike McGarvey fired up Unreal Tournament III in under five seconds over a standard cable connection. The game was run in high-definition and looked "fluid and lag-free," according to GameSpot. The only title that showed some choppiness was Crysis – but it was running on an iPhone.
Perlman said standard-definition games require a 1.5Mb/s connection, and over 70% of US homes have a connection that is 2Mb/s or better. High-definition content will require 5Mb/s. The demonstration was performed in Las Vegas with servers powering the game in San Francisco, and the company plans to cover the country with five data centers that are updated every six months.
OnLive entered public beta in September, and currently has server farms in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, and Washington DC – each with a 1,000-mile range. Perlman promised to announce launch details soon.