With their June 17 US launch date announced and deals in place with major publishers, staffers from the OnLive service gave a talk at the Game Developers Conference, to walk game developers through the process of adding a game to the service.
OnLive, the cloud computing solution that was announced at last year's GDC, promises to allow users to stream games to their PC, Mac or television (with the help of an add-on box), and receive an experience comparable to a local device. The service has been in public beta since last September. Executive Producer Tom DuBois opened the session with an overview of the service's highlights. "The promise of cloud computing is the idea of huge CPU resources, huge GPU resources, large amount of storage, large amount of RAM, really eliminating the constraints of what somebody can afford to put in their home."
Players who subscribe to the service will get instant access to games such as Red Faction Guerilla. The service records video of every session, allowing players to capture and share "brag clips," and it also promises to allow players to watch other players on their friends list or in an "arena" setting. Gamers can suspend and pick up a session at any time - DuBois gave the example of playing a game at lunch and picking it up again after work - and in their 2010 SDK roadmap, OnLive is also working on adding achievements and stats, in-game and cross-game voice, and other social features for future releases.
Publishers who work with OnLive can license a game that can't be resold or pirated. OnLive has announced deals with EA, Take Two, UbiSoft, and THQ.
Developers aim for target specs of a X86 compatible multi-core processor, 2 gb of RAM, ATI or NVIDIA GPU. OnLive runs Windows Vista, support DirectX 9 or 10 and OpenGL, and include keyboard and mouse support, although developers are encouraged also to support the XInput Gamepad to support players who are running through their television.
Joe Bentley, Director of Game and Media Development, explained the process for developers. To add a game to the service, developers go through an application and certification process, and implement changes that include adjusting the input/output to work in a virtualized environment, and removing menus for settings such as audio and video. The game must also be ready to preload – so that a user can jump into the game without a delay – as well as supporting suspend and resume.
To date OnLive has added 4 titles, according to DuBois. Taking Red Faction Guerilla as a case study, Bentley noted that a single outside contractor was able to prepare the game for the service in three weeks. Developers will also have to keep up with updates to the service, which OnLive plans to roll out every six months.
Bentley said that their target latency is under 80 ms round-trip, creating "a local experience." Five data centers around the country and a partnership with AT & T are in place to deliver that local experience. Customers and critics will test that claim when the service goes live this June.