Tomb Raider Underworld Onlive

[gitb90]

This is also on the TRF, but for those of you who cant acsess it:

OnLive, expected to be released later this year, is an on-demand video game distribution system that streams live video feeds (depending on your internet connection) to any TV (with MicroConsole), XP/Vista PC, or Intel-based Mac.

If you have at least a:
5mbps connection: 720p resolution
1.5mbps connection: Standard definition
up to 60 frames per second with a ping of less than one millisecond.

Yes, it could even work on your grandmother's craptastic PC, if it has XP or Vista.

There's a plugin required, I think it's 100 mb? Not sure.

The MicroConsole is about the size of your hand, and comes with a controller.

Benefits:
No install times
Cross-platform between TV, PCs, and Macs (even your saves, I think)
Try demos instantly
Games available in same release window as retail
Up to one million people can watch the live stream of a single player's game
Save and load 15 second "Brag Clips" to your profile
Little to no cheating and piracy
MicroConsole potentially free w/ service contract, but less than a Wii anyway
Monthly subscription fee on par with XBox Live membership
Server clusters will be located in Santa Clara, Texas, Virginia and elsewhere
Voice over IP chatting with friends and teammates

EA, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Epic, Atari, Codemasters, Warner Bros. and Eidos have signed up to have their games available on the service. An SDK is available for developers and it only takes a couple weeks to port a PC game to OnLive.

OnLive is showing 16 of the games planned for the service this week at GDC. From the screenshot and internet sources, it looks like:
Mass Effect
Crysis Wars
Prince of Persia
Tomb Raider Underworld
World of Goo?
Lego Batman
FarCry
Mirror's Edge
Bioshock?
Others?

Source: http://kotaku.com/5181300/
Videos are on GameTrailers

There's a countdown as well on http://onlive.com

[tombraider1best]

WHAT ? please

[Jurre]

I thought you were gonna say: "Tomb Raider Underworld on life support"!

[josh1122]

sounds like its going to be near $200 or something

[rg_001100]

If I'm reading that correctly, you are playing a game across the internet; your input commands are sent via the internet to OnLive's side, which then processes that and sends the video response back to you. Various advantages listed in the article.

Internet speeds would be WAY too slow for that kind of thing over here ("down under"), though.

[Dusk Knight]

Very interesting concept.

But people still tend to put up a fuss when it comes to disc copy vs. digital download.

With this, you won't even get the software you buy on your local machine...
With digital downloads, people don't like relying on the network for reinstall, etc ("what if I want to play this in 10 years?"). This relies on the network for every last second of gameplay.

At any rate, I think it may be too far ahead of it's time... but the future has to start somewhere.