Gaming Cloud is coming – rejoice

The future of computing is here and now the cloud that we hear so much about is providing its first sprinkle. And once again it’s the game industry that is pulling the rest of the world along.

Currently you can sample 2 trials of true online gaming in Europe and 3 if you’re in the US.

www.awomo.com is making all the right noises in my mind, allowing you to try a Lara Croft game in beta – free beta sign-up for the whole world. This works with the download of a browser (no chrome L ) plug-in – then the game starts to download.

6 mins later (might be slower for slower connections), you can start playing. The rest game continues to download in the background. One complaint you don’t get to say the file location. The website say’s it will offer top titles which you can buy out-right at a cheaper rate because there is no packaging, a hire service where you can hire games for a cost, after you have hired the game 5 times it is considered bought. My favourite a monthly subscription which allows you to play all the titles (why pay for World of warcraft, when I can play lots of new games), please let it be £9.99 or less.

Another example of Gaming cloud is www.quakelive.com, Quake has always been a front runner in technology terms and here it doesn’t fail either. Beta is free again sign-up and plug-in your browser. Not sure on the future of this but as a free half-hour blast, it ran smoothly and quickly. After a quick training session you get to choose if you want to play against / with bots or people and let the frag feast begin. I opted for a game with bots as am rusty in all my FPS and 40mins later I realised just how rusty I was J  I recommend giving it a quick blast.

Finally (for now) www.onlive.com is defiantly a USA company with lots of marketing behind it, “developed stealthily for 3 years” WTF? Anyway this seems to offer the most advanced out there currently; I can’t say if it lives up to all the noise it’s making as it is only in Beta in the USA (big mistake I think). Offering what is basically a virtue console on your PC and a mini console which you can connect to your TV. Am sure it will involve a plug-in to your browser for computer owners, but apart from that I can’t tell if there is or isn’t any downloading. It claims on the website for instant playing but who knows (not people in Europe). 

 

That’s what’s out there at the moment, am sure the big boys (come on Virgin) will swoop once the smaller companies have done the hard work. Personally I think onlive.com might be leaving the door wide open for Awomo.com to take the European market with there current strategy, but again that might just be the fact I want to try the thing and can’t J

 

Happy Hunting

Work Zombie…