OnLive MicroConsole TV adapter review
Streaming games and social features straight to your TV
Review date: 10 October, 2011. Review by: Darren Allan
The games industry is shifting, moving gradually and inevitably towards online territory. Back in the day, you bought a boxed copy of a game, then played it on your machine at home, and that was that. Then in the nineties following the release of Quake online play became more popular, as competing against human opposition over the net made the transition to a more mainstream activity. And in the noughties, digital stores such as Steam began to deliver games online, doing away with the boxed copy.
Cloud gaming
OnLive is another step in this evolution. It's a service that not only offers the digital purchase of games and online play, but is actually an entirely cloud-based platform. In other words, the game itself isn't installed locally at all, but on a server elsewhere, and you're playing remotely. Essentially, it's streamed gaming.
This means that the OnLive MicroConsole - and indeed the PC and Mac client program, which we'll cover later in this review - can be kept as streamlined as possible. The console is a very compact box (3 by 5 inches) with next to nothing in it, because it doesn't need any powerful processor or GPU, all the work is done on a meaty computer elsewhere.
The MicroConsole has a power light, twin USB ports, an HDMI port to connect it up to your HDTV, and an ethernet port to hook it up to your broadband (all cables are provided, though at just five feet long the ethernet cable is a tad short). And that's it - set up is a breeze. A decent Xbox-style wireless controller is also supplied, with a rechargeable battery that's charged up when you plug the controller into one of the device's USB ports.
At this point you're probably thinking that this all sounds like a pretty neat idea theoretically, but wondering how it works in practice. OnLive offers an initial library of some 120 games, some of which are older classics, and others new to the market. It's not a hugely extensive library, but a solid start, and many more titles are billed as coming soon.
Batman inbound
For example, the upcoming Batman: Arkham City, Saints Row: The Third and Lord of the Rings: War of the North are currently up for pre-order. In terms of new games that are currently available, there's Warhammer 40K: Space Marine, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Tropico 4, along with fairly recent titles such as Lego Pirates of the Caribbean, Red Faction: Armageddon, FEAR 3 and Dirt 3.
There are some notable big hitters missing, namely EA and Activision, although word is that EA - who were initially supposed to be involved - is coming on board soon, starting with Bulletstorm and several Harry Potter games, with more in the pipeline. And there are a lot more big name games on the horizon, so the line up is set to expand considerably.
When it comes to OnLive's pricing, newer games cost from £30 to £40, and older ones around the £10 to £20 mark. The service also offers three- and five-day rentals for around £3 and £5 for those who like to try before they buy, or if you'd rather not pay anything, OnLive lets you demo a game for 30 minutes for free.
Not only that, but you can also watch others playing any game to suss out whether you'd find it enjoyable or not. Spectating is free and facilitated by OnLive's arena, a tiled wall of small displays each of which is a window onto a player's gaming session. This is a very cool feature in itself, like a giant CCTV network set up for gamers, with the observer free to scroll around the wall and if they see anything interesting, zoom in to view the action full-screen.
Social features are also tied in here. If you've got a gaming headset, you can chat to the folks you're observing, make friends with them, even give their gaming skills the thumbs up or down - so you can let "campers" know what you really think of them.
Company: OnLive
Website: http://www.onlive.co.uk/
