Play video games without hardware with OnLive service

Unable to believe? Let me repeat – You will not need any hardware to play online games. This is more like an online game service that doesn’t require any hardware, such as game consoles, for it to run. It’s an on demand video game service wherein the game is delivered as a service that doesn’t require a hard disk or hardware to run because all the gaming data is computed on remote servers.

“OnLive is launching the world’s highest performance Games On Demand service, instantly delivering the latest high-end titles over home broadband Internet to the TV and entry-level PCs and Macs.”

I know it’s still very hard to believe if such a thing could ever be possible. But if you were to believe, OnLive – a startup company has developed a data compression technology and an online gaming service that will allow game data to be computed on remote servers rather than using the local game console or computers having powerful hardware. What that means is that you will not need to buy gaming consoles or high-end gaming computers, but just play the games over the network without having to download them.

OnLive seems to have got a compression technology that compresses data upto 200 times and delivers it over the Internet. Games data will be computed on remote servers, compressed and sent via Internet. A gamer would then receive the data instantly and this will also allow players to join the multiplayer games regardless of which console or PC they are using. A small OnLive microconsole device which will connect to broadband will let you play games on your big HDTVs. Your game controllers and headsets can be connected to the OnLive microconsole using USB or wireless connections.

OnLive network seems to have a great future. They could perhaps someday come up with data compression technology based application that will stream movies and TV shows over the Internet without people requiring very fast broadband connections. Also, another interesting thing to consider is that those $400 netbooks are fast catching up on sales and people are showing more interest in them and OnLive gaming service will run just fine with those $400 netbooks. So, no more upgrades to the high-end PCs or gaming consoles. More about this online game service at OnLive.