A new type of gaming has been announced at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). The OnLive service is a new type of gaming service which allows you to play your favorite games over the internet, saving you the shelf and hard drive space.

To play these games you simply need one of two things, either a browser plug-in or a cheap device called the MicroConsole to allow you to stream these games over your internet from the OnLive servers. This seems to be a really good idea, but when you think about it, the amount of downfalls, in my opinion, are not really worth it.

At the GDC people had the chance to try out this new service in a controlled environment, and people that have played it said it worked fine, but let’s go back to the “controlled environment”. When the service will be out in the world, it’s not in a controlled environment, the data is being passed over long distances, plus thousands of people accessing the same game, there has to be some problems coming in to all of that.

To begin with, if you have a limited internet connection, bandwidth and speed wise, you could get lag in the games and it could cost you alot in broadband costs on top of the games. The next problem is that when you buy a game you get the security of having a hard copy of disk, with OnLive, if the company goes bust, you have lost all of your games.

There also have been some questions as to whether the OnLive service could get rid of consoles, however, if this service really does kick off, companies like Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony won’t just roll over and give in, they will put up a fight, there have already been news about downloadable games.

So although the idea is good, will this company and the idea be able to survive? Considering it will be potentially competing with multi million dollar companies like Microsoft and Sony, plus they will also be competing with retailers like Game and Play.com. It seems to me like they are trying to take a huge bite out of the video game market in one go.

There is a beta test available, however, unfortunately this is only for US residents so I’m out of that one, but if anyone facies having a look at his service, it would be great to hear what it’s like. So if you fancy signing up to the beta or looking into this service a bit more, head over to the OnLive website.

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