Cloudgaming

Yesterday, OnLive opened its Cloud-Gaming service in the United States. But what in the name of Bob Saget is cloud-gaming, and what in the world is it good for? What advantages does it have and what people offer it? These and a lot of other questions I want to answer with this blog entry.

What is cloud-gaming?
Cloud-gaming is a revolutionary new way to get your inner PC nerd going: The game isn't played on the local hardware, but on a server in a mortuary data-center. The picture of the game gets streamed (as in a hot live webcam session a live-stream). The movement of the mouse and the commands of the keyboard also get transferred to the server. The biiigg-tiiiime advantage here is that no high-end software is needed in order to play a game that otherwise would need a high-end gaming PC. The operating system, on which the client is installed, also is irrelevant. Games, that would normally need for example Direct-X, can also be played on a MacBook Air, or even tablet PCs (that by the way suck majorly) and smartphones. So maybe, we can be playing Crysis 2 on our overtly expensive iPad. But not everything is bright in the land of the clouds, because of slow internet connections, which cause small lags. This is the reason why ESport will never happen on a cloud-gaming client. It isn't known if modification or even hacks can be done, for example a own Megan Fox USA interface in World Of Warcraft or classical modifications, that are quite known on the PC.