OnLive: Doing What the Infinium Phantom Couldn’t

At this year’s Game Developers Conference, currently taking place in San Francisco, Rearden Studios announced their new PC-on-your-TV game system, OnLive. The new console will be offering an on-demand PC games service allowing gamers to purchase games, download demos and add-ons straight from their OnLive console.

I’m not sure about the rest of you, but as soon as I read about what this can do and saw it in action, I immediately thought of the Infinium Phantom. You remember, that big-ass white thing from E3 2004? The one that was shown demonstrating Unreal Tournament 2004 and excited the crowd? Let me refresh your memory.

Today, the Phantom is known as vaporware. It even made first place in Wired’s 2004 top vaporware list.

When I first read about OnLive, I said to myself “Crap, another Phantom.” But the thing about the Phantom was, they offered an on-demand game service which you can play straight off the console. Eventually you’d run out of hard-drive space and the specs would get too technical for the system to handle when games like Crysis release.

OnLive will allow gamers to play PC games with the highest of specs, such as Crysis, even if you’re still gaming on that crappy old Dell. And how? Through their high-speed streaming subscription service. So you’re never going to need to upgrade your PC, how I see it, and never going to have to spend so much money on extra parts again. As long as OnLive is around, you’ll be able to play any game that comes around in at least 720p HD, because Rearden will always be there to upgrade their hardware as long as we pay our subscription.

That’s why OnLive is doing what the Phantom couldn’t. Mr. Phantom, you’ve been one-upped.

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  • http://intensedebate.com/people/greeneggsnsam Sam Naylor

    Great, for people who can afford the connection. Even if it takes off, it'll never eclipse the PC and console markets.

  • MLG621

    So because when they upgrade my system, will I have to send my box in? Or will they send me a new one? What about my saved games? There's a reason the phantom failed and there's a reason Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are not losing any sleep tonight.

  • Jerk

    If the system does what it says it does (who knows), then you won't have to do any upgrading at all. How bout you read the articles before asking questions MLG621. Moron.