OnLive

When the Xbox 360 turned 5 years old this week with no known successor on the horizon, and no new imminent PlayStation or Wii either, it may well have signaled the demise of one of the video game industry's most longstanding truisms.

Since at least the mid-1980s, major console makers have generally come out with new models every five years or so. For example, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) came out in 1985, followed by the Super NES in 1991, the Nintendo 64 in 1996, the GameCube in 2001, and the Wii in 2006. Sony put out the first … Read more

TV guru David Katzmaier sits in for Joey this week, talking about his adventures in cord cutting. Like Scott, he also recently ditched his cable service for a mix of over-the-air and IPTV.

Additionally, Dan's iPad gets bricked by the iOS 4.2 update, and even our studio computer crashes, forcing an "a capella" version of the Digital City theme song.

Don't forget: You can download the show's theme song as a free MP3 here for a limited time!

Note: It's usually our video recording that ends up getting swallowed by our temperamental podcast system, but this time it's the audio version that's giving us some trouble--so stay tuned for the MP3 of this week's show.

… Read more

As a $99 set-top box, OnLive's MicroConsole offers an intriguing low-cost alternative to traditional living room game consoles, which can cost two to three times as much. We've just gotten our hands on a final hardware unit and tested it with a variety of games and controllers.

If you're not familiar with the OnLive streaming game service, it's essentially cloud-based PC gaming. The original PC client allows nearly any laptop or desktop to play high-end PC games by offloading the CPU- and GPU-intensive tasks of actually running the game software to a remote render farm, then beaming the gameplay back to you as a streaming video.

The PC-based version worked surprisingly well, so expectations are high for this standalone TV-friendly box. Ditching the computer altogether, the MicroConsole acts as a dongle and media streamer, connecting to your TV via HDMI (or component video) and to the Internet via an Ethernet cable (Wi-Fi is still wonky on the PC client, so we don't expect to see it on the MicroConsole anytime soon).

The setup is simple enough: if you have an existing account you can log directly into it, and one of the nice unintended consequences of cloud-based gaming is that your saved games and library travel with you wherever you log in. The interface is identical to the PC client, and includes a marketplace for buying games (you're actually buying a license to play the game on OnLive's servers), a list of your purchased games, and an arena view, which lets you drop in and watch other players' live game streams (this can be turned off in the privacy settings). … Read more

On today's show, Gowalla teams up with Disney to offer virtual pins, instead of the real ones everyone actually wants. And we discover Molly's never been to Disneyland, so maybe Gowalla should sponsor a road trip! Also, Google eyes Groupon, Cox becomes the first cable company to get into the mobile phone game, and carriers threaten to stop subsidizing iPhones if Apple tries to free the phone from carrier confines. --Molly

We've been reasonably impressed to date with OnLive's cloud-based game service, which allows nearly any Internet-connected laptop or desktop to play a variety of high-end PC games via a unique streaming system. The company's long-awaited MicroConsole, which skips the computer altogether and streams games directly to your TV, finally has a release date and price.

The OnLive MicroConsole ships December 2, for $99, and includes a free game (games typically cost the same as retail boxed versions, around $49) and a wireless game controller.

If you're not familiar with the service, OnLive works by offloading the … Read more

We've been quite excited about the potential of streaming-video game service OnLive, which forgoes any physical software or system/graphics needs and lets players play games on remote servers via streaming video. The effect is largely seamless, and for some games like adventures it's a fantastic cloud-based substitute for owning an expensive gaming laptop. The only drawback was price: OnLive's games not only cost money, but the OnLive service also levied a subscription fee.

That fee's now been waived: OnLive has dropped its monthly charge. That means that free demos can now be sampled without any … Read more

The past several years have seen a steady drumbeat of negative prognostications for PC gaming, both as a creative medium and as a viable business. High-profile releases were steered to living room consoles, with perfunctory PC ports at best, and messy DRM and hardware incompatibility made many of the remaining PC games more trouble than they were worth.

Magazines such as Computer Gaming World shut down (after an embarrassing sponsored name change to Games for Windows Magazine) and the only bright spot seemed to be the online multiplayer game World of Warcraft--even if other MMO entries found it hard to bottle that lightning twice.

No one was more at the forefront playing Taps for PC gaming than myself, having gone from a cheerleading booster to sober realist in the space of a few short years.

Yet, for the first time in a long time, I find myself much more interested in what's going on the PC side of the video game industry than the console side. My office and home laptops are suddenly buzzing with new and upcoming games, including StarCraft II, Civilization V, and OnLive's various streaming-game offerings--whereas this year's big list of holiday season console releases elicits a shrug at best, filled by the annual installments of mass-market cash cows. How did this potential reversal of fortune take place?

First, the companies that make PC games and the consumers who play them all seemingly decided it was OK to stretch the boundaries and leave their respective comfort zones. The seeds were planted over the past few years as game publishers opened the door to new ways to distribute their wares, losing the most frustrating parts of the DRM equation with services such as Steam and Battle.net (say what you will about online authentication, it works a lot better than discs, especially for those of us who like to install games on multiple PCs).

The next step was online stores like Good Old Games that offer classic games for less than $10, completely DRM-free. It's amazing how much goodwill one can build up by not treating customers like criminals.… Read more

Just like floppy disks gave way to CDs, then CDs to DVDs, followed by USB flash drives and SD cards, the time of game discs has an end in sight. Mind you, there's still a great need for them right now in the console and portable games world, but services like Valve's Steam on the PC (and now Mac) side have shown--in just a few years time--that the packaged game can make a graceful transition to the digital storefront.

What's more interesting, however, is the wave of new technologies that compete with Steam, and other download services like it--not only for PC games, but for console titles too. These streaming technologies, which include names like OnLive, Gaikai, Otoy , and InstantAction, promise to free us completely from the need to download software in the more traditional sense, and instead stream titles from a server cluster hundreds or even thousands of miles away from where you play them.

In a few months time (when this technology is more common) it will give you, the consumer, an alternative to buying new gaming hardware, while at the same time letting you pick up and play a new game on just about any Internet-connected device. Such a model may turn the gaming hardware industry on its head, but it opens up new avenues of utility for tablets, mobile phones, and even that 5- or 6-year-old computer that would have otherwise been hopelessly unable to run most modern-day titles.

When will it be like that? Soon, but not just yet. Many of the below services we're about to delve into are not live, or are live but aren't open to the public. Several are working on partnerships, back-end technology, and pricing. This story is to help serve as a primer for what each one promises to bring to cloud gaming, as well as some high-level detail on how it works. Read on to find out what could be taking the place of your next game console, or high-end graphics card purchase.

OnLive Availability: Limited public preview (with waiting list) Price: Free year of service as part of launch promotion, $14.95 a month afterward. Game price varies by title. Titles: <20 Platform compatibility: PC, Mac, MicroConsole TV adapter Killer app: Solid launch lineup, and both rental and purchase options.

Onlive first premiered at last year's Game Developers Conference, and opened up to a public preview a few weeks ago at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Its premise is that it lets you stream full PC games over to your PC, Mac, and, soon, TV--the last of which requires a small piece of hardware the company is calling a MicroConsole.

Unlike standard PC games, playing these titles requires no space on your hard drive, or a beefy processor and graphics processing unit. Instead, all that work is done in the company's server farm, then piped over the Internet. This lets users on just about any hardware or platform play titles--as long as they have an active connection.

Playing games on OnLive requires that users be connected to the entirety of their gaming experience. Connection also plays an important part in determining the quality of the feed that's getting piped back to the user, be it an SD or HD stream.

Using the service requires paying a monthly membership fee, although right now the company has a partnership going with AT&T to provide new users with a free year of service. The games themselves cost money on top of that, though usually at a lower price than the boxed copy, or even digital download. These "playpasses" usually come in the form of an up-front purchase that lasts as long as the game is on the service. There are also shorter playpasses that work for just a few days, and can be had for a fraction of the full price of a title.

OnLive saves game settings and progress on its own servers so you can access it from multiple computers without having to cart around save files. This information is kept even if a user's subscription has run out, so that they can come back to it at a later date.

Along with the playing of games, OnLive adds a few extra goodies on top of the experience that typical PC and console gamers don't get. The first being something called "brag clips," which is essentially a screen-recording tool that captures a segment of your gameplay and lets you share it to others on the service. OnLive also features a live performance area called the "Arena," where other OnLive users can watch you, along with several other players at once. … Read more

LOS ANGELES--Streaming video game service OnLive, which will launch June 17 on Tuesday announced its initial lineup of 23 games here at E3.

Among those titles--from publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two, THQ, and Square Enix--but not Activision, notably--are hit games like Assassin's Creed, NBA 2K10, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2, Borderlands, and others.

The initial list of publisher partners also includes Sega, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and 2K Sports.

OnLive promises its users console-like speeds over broadband, as long as they have a fast enough Internet connection and are within a limited distance from a hub. The … Read more