We’ve talked about OnLive before. A revolutionary service that will allow you to stream videogames to your computer / TV / mobile device using a simple set-top box or a browser plugin. You’ll be able to play Crysis on 2004 PC. Now you get it, it could change the way we think about videogames forever.
Even if OnLive is promising and has launched today, no one has actually ever managed to test the platform running on an iPad. Steve Perlman said it would run perfectly on Apple’s tablet back at D8, but since then nobody ever tried it.
The folks over at TouchArcade managed to record a video of an iPad running OnLive at E3, and here are their impressions:
“Because of its raw tech demo state, the controls are less than ideal. The client uses a weird virtual joystick button layout that I don’t really think would be very useful for anything outside of just demonstrating what is possible. The following video walks through the OnLive iPad client, and shows Borderlands running, an XBOX and PC game. Also, after that, we load up Dragon Age: Origins, which didn’t work because it didn’t have gamepad controls, and finally we spectated on some games in session by other OnLive members.
If you watch to the end, you can see a side by side of someone playing a game on the OnLive unit hooked up to an HDTV, that same game is then instantly streamed to both that TV as well as the iPad. The video stream is identical. It really is amazing to see. As explained in the video, they’re not sure when or if the iPad client will even ever be available, but needless to say, we’ve got our fingers crossed.”
We’re really looking forward to OnLive on the iPad, as it could become the first strong alternative to games on the App Store.
