It was exactly one year ago where Onlive were just getting their foot in the door and showing the world what cloud gaming looked like. With TV, blu-ray player deals and a Micro-Console they have pretty much blown the doors right open for the service. One of their next entries was the Onlive app running on tablet devices unveiled at their booth at E3. LVLONE got a chance to sit down with them and get some hands on to find out what it was all about.
To note this isn’t the same app on the iPad which is just a viewer but will be an update in the future. We were given a demo of how the new app works on the iPad 2 and like the desktop version of the software this one works just the same. Like the desktop version you can view, purchase and play Onlive right on your tablet device.
We were first treated to an example of how it played by checking out Lego Batman. The buttons are laid out on the sides of the tablet and can be configured in anyway. They went as far as to say if a dev had certain button layouts that was beneficial, it would come pre-customized to suite it. While we noticed some connection drop, that had to do more with the congestion of networks in E3.
The second demo was Assassins Creed Brotherhood, showcasing that even some of the most graphically intensive games can run on a tablet device because of the Onlive software. The game looked great and the only lag noticed was almost about the same amount from the desktop version. They are currently look at the best ways to map complex games of this nature with touch pad. While they do have the universal blue tooth/wifi controller some will not have this option if they don’t want it.
Other plans like having the service running a cloud based browser which would essentially enable the ability to run flash on the iPad 2 and touch pad sensitive games were also shown. Along with making games have touch capabilities. Onlive has certainly impressed me on how far they have come in a short amount of time. I’m really excited in the direction the platform is going, who knows maybe we’ll see MMO support in the future?
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