from GeekChicDaily:
The history of video game development is littered with failed gaming systems. There was the Nokia N-Gage, a game system/cell phone that actually required you to remove the phone’s battery to switch game cards. Remember Nintendo’s Virtual Boy? Everyone loves an eyepiece on a stand that produces 3D images… and ocular damage in young children. How about the RDI Halcyon? Price? $2500. Total number of games released? Two.
You can forget the aforementioned. The eggheads at OnLive have engineered what may finally become button-mashing’s next great leap forward. Today marks the debut of their OnLive Game System, a device that lets you stream video games for the Xbox, PC and PS3 while owning almost no hardware.
OnLive’s new MicroConsole is about the size of a deck of cards and it does little processing work on its own. Instead, it connects your TV to the company’s servers, which stream games that you’ve bought or rented. What’s the catch? You need a pretty speedy internet tap to avoid diminished graphics and controller lag. For max performance, OnLive recommends an internet connection speed of 5Mbps, although it should still function at 3 Mbps. The best part? Because the console is portable and the games live in the computing cloud, you can start playing a title on your home PC, pick up a saved game on your laptop and maybe finish on the TV at your hotel. (Although why you’d be playing a game at a hotel and not watching Skinemax is beyond us.)