OnLive Going Portable?

The idea of playing a full next-gen game on a small portable device a few months back would have seemed absolutely absurd, but with companies like OnLive already demonstrating the power to play powerful games on some low-end PC’s and Mac’s; is it really only a matter of time before we begin seeing them on mobile phones and other small handsets? OnLive will run games off of a central server; so why not? Your mobile phone, or whatever else you’re playing your games through can work the same way.

Could you imagine playing Half-Life or Halo or Killzone or whatever else you’re into on something as minute as an iPod or an iPhone?

Obviously a big problem would lie in not just streaming the game, but also making sure your inputs and commands get back to the server in real-time, otherwise it would all make for a pretty pointless exercise. So can these problems be overcome? Well, a lot of people are actually starting to believe they can. The main reason is that the person behind OnLive is Steve Perlman, whose reputation throughout the industry is pretty spectacular, with over 80 patents to his name.

Someone was quoted as saying “the idea is so simple we could laugh at it,” and that is what many have done, but make no mistake; if OnLive and other similar services turns out to be a success, then I have absolutely no doubt that the mobile gaming world will follow suit shortly after, and the way that we play games on handheld devices will change forever.

Craig Bryan, NoobFeed