When OnLive was first revealed during the Game Developers Conference back in March, the entire industry was abuzz about the possibilities of cloud-based computing. When IndustryGamers saw the demos, we were impressed. Streaming a high-end game like Crysis on a simple PC laptop or Macbook appeared very smooth, but that's not with thousands or millions of users on a server. Now, however, the real test is beginning. OnLive founder Steve Perlman has announced that the OnLive beta program is now open.
Perlman says the last several months have been spent installing servers in their data center and tuning the service based on feedback from internal beta testers. With the beta having just opened to people who signed up on the OnLive website, Perlman said that others can still sign up to join the beta. Here's the rundown on how the open beta will work, straight from Perlman:
"One of the key challenges that OnLive technology addresses is providing a high-quality, fast-response gaming experience over a wide range of situations: different speeds/locations/types of broadband services, a variety of different PC and Mac configurations, several kinds of input and display devices, etc. So, a major focus of OnLive Beta is to test as many of these different situations as we can.
"When you sign up for OnLive Beta, you tell us some general information about your ISP, your computer configuration and your location. We use this information to organize Beta testers into test groups so that our engineering team can focus at different times on testing different situations. If you are a potential fit for a particular test group, we’ll send you an invitation email, asking you to run a detailed Performance Test on your network connection and your computer configuration. The results of the Performance Test will then feed back up to OnLive, and if you are a fit for a test group at some point during Beta, we’ll let you install the OnLive plug-in into your browser. Then, we’ll ask you to spend some time playing…um, I mean…testing games OnLive.
"As testers interact with the service and play games, OnLive will be constantly logging technical data, and then afterward, we’ll ask testers to give us feedback about their personal experiences with OnLive. This feedback will help us continue to evolve the features and experience of the OnLive Service, so it’s really important we get lots of feedback to bring the gaming community the best videogame platform and service possible.
"Another important goal of the Beta is to shake out bugs so we can fix them. So, it’s very important that you let us know what bugs you run into.
"Beta is an AWESOME milestone for OnLive, capping many years of work. We’re really looking forward to hearing what you think."
1 Comments
June 28, 2010
i can't see could computing working at all, its hardly used now. I really wish that the UK government would sort out mobile broadband and fund getting quicker speeds.