Announced at the Game Developers Conference this year, Onlive is a new way to play games that may eradicate home consoles and make the need to upgrade your PC obsolete.

It works by using a small unit which you connect to your TV or even just a small browser plugin for your PC or MAC, you log on to the service and play which ever game you want from Onlive’s extensive list of games, pay a small fee and then start playing. The difference with Onlive to any other service is that there is no downloading, waiting or having to have the latest technology because when you are playing, you are actually playing on Onlive’s servers many hundreds of kilometers away and what you see on your screen is streaming video sent to you of your game.

This is thanks to Onlive’s new super fast servers and algorithm compression technology, making it possible to send your controller input and have it returned as movement on the screen without any noticeable delay… allowing it seem as though you are playing the game directly from your home console, PC or Mac.

The service is set to launch later this year in North America and while they haven’t set a date for Australia yet, It shouldn’t be too far away.

*image from onlive.com

More info and videos can be found at Onlive

Chris Thursfield