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OnLive is a gaming service that is making waves that reach farther than the console wars. It is a glimpse of how cloud computing will operate in the future for more than just video games. It will educate the masses the importance of having a more stable, and superbly faster internet infrastructure.

OnLive is a service that allows users to play video games without needing traditional hardware. Today you need to continually buy new Video Cards, RAM, MoBo’s and hard drive’s in order to play games. Since the turnaround on technological advances is about every 6 months, the cost to keep up is too much for all but the hardcore and dedicated, and the rich. OnLive removes the need for the user to keep their own machines. OnLive hosts the video game on their own server and streams the game in high definition to the users TV or monitor. The gamer’s control devices will have their communications sent to the server using a very high speed connection, the server will process the input render the video, compress it and then stream the video back.

OnLive has stated that the service could be ready this year or early 2010, but I’m not getting my hopes up. While this is a great idea and definetely the future, it is also not the present. We simply don’t have the broadband speed/stability necessary (while also being cost effective) to communicate high definition video, with instantaneous response from user input over the net. It’s wonderful to think about having this technology, but serious thinking about it’s implementation and it’s nearly impossible to believe it can be a profitable adventure.

Essentially they would need to have one high end machine for every user to play the latest games. On top of playing the game, the server would have to compress the output instantly. The cost of the hardware on the vendor alone would be huge, plus with continual updates, how could their subscriptions keep pace?

But wait, there’s more. While we can already stream high definition video; that video is buffered so you don’t see any hic ups. In contrast, OnLive can not have any buffering because it will not know what is about to happen next. So any slowdowns in the download speed and it will be immediately noticeable to the gamer; that means OnLive would require an infrastructure stable enough to accommodate. Which we are sadly lacking. We have the means, but those mediums are not currently installed and that would take years to do on any scale.

Rest assured that OnLive will be available, someday. Perhaps not to everyone as It might be like DSL where you need to live close enough. Or you’d need to have some special dedicated fiber optics installed. Either way, OnLive is the power of cloud computing. Taking the hardware costs away from the user while providing a better service. Hopefully my kids can grow up playing OnLive, instead of begging me to buy them a console.