OnLive, the streaming video game provider, has officially opened their platform to beta testers. OnLive hopes to replicate the console gaming experience through broadband streaming, similar in concept to streaming of movies instead of buying a DVD. According to BroadbandReports.com, customers will need to be within 1,000 miles of an OnLive served data center to get the best gaming experience.
OnLive hopes to test against many different scenarios with the beta. “One of the key challenges that OnLive technology addresses is providing a high-quality, fast-response gaming experience over a wide range of situations: different speeds/locations/types of broadband services, a variety of different PC and Mac configurations, several kinds of input and display devices, etc. So, a major focus of OnLive Beta is to test as many of these different situations as we can,” says Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder & CEO in his company blog.
OnLive provides a ‘dumb’ terminal for console games on the TV. It also provides a computer gaming service, compatible with both PC and MAC. OnLive says 1.5 Mbps in downstream bandwidth is a minimum requirement, but the more bandwidth the merrier. They haven’t revealed pricing yet.
