For those of you who are not familiar with CO-OP, they are a weekly gaming-centric show put out by the team that brought us the 1UP Show.  They are one of the best videogame webshows around and they attended GDC last week and are talking about OnLive.  With hands-on experience with the service they have some impressions as well as some takes on how this could change the gaming scene overall.  One thing that seems to be a universal sentiment is that people are tired of upgrading their hardware, be it PC or consoles, and are at least very interested in a service like OnLive.

The segment where they talk about OnLive has been embedded after the jump.

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1UP has put up a video special with a discussion on the big things from GDC and OnLive gets a good chunk of the time.  They talk about not just the technology of the platform, but more importantly, what it could mean for rentals and game spectating.  The coverage starts at the 18:30 mark and lasts for almost 15 minutes.  The video loads slow with no scrubbing ahead and the audio could be better, but it is still worth checking out.

As usual the video is embedded after the break.

[Via 1UP]

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Many are very skeptical of OnLive even working, and if so, how well.  So we thought a roundup of hands-on reports might not be a bad idea.  Of course, so far these reports are all of very controlled demos.  The real test will be when people get a chance to play with it in the wild.

Let us know if we missed any and we will add them to the list.

• OnLive Streaming Games: Hands-On Impressions – Gizmodo
• GDC 09: Will OnLive Change the Future of Gaming? – IGN
• OnLive Makes PC Upgrades Extinct, Lets You Play Crysis On Your TV – Kotaku
• Hands-On With OnLive Streaming Gaming Service at GDC 09 – PC World
• OnLive Hands-on Impressions: A Blocky View of the Future of PC Gaming – Shacknews

[Image via Gizmodo]

With the announcement on Tuesday you would think that the video of the presentation would be widely available, but GameSpot seems to be the only place to find it.  You can find the video embedded after the jump.

Update: 3/28: Switched to Youtube version

[Via GameSpot]

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On Tuesday the 24th, Rearden Studios announced their new internet streaming gaming service OnLive at the Game Developers Conference.  According to them this is using a combination of hardware and software streaming technologies that have been 7 years in development.  The announcement struck everyone in the gaming industry by surprise.  One thing that can be said for sure about Rearden Studios is that they know how to keep a secret.

The system is built on streaming player input to a server bank and from there relaying back the player movement through HD streaming video. The calculations and transfer are handled by high powered server banks with very low latency at a claimed 1 millisecond.  The whole concept sounds somewhat suspect until you hear who the people behind it are.  Steve Perlman (founder & CEO) formerly worked at Apple and was part of the team that developed Quicktime in the mid ’90s and Mike McGarvey (COO) is a former CEO of Eidos.

It gets even more interesting in that the streaming can be done on any PC, Mac or through a proprietary “miniconsole” which will be launched with the service this Winter.  The “miniconsole” is said to be priced at “less than a Wii” and possibly free with a subscription service of some sort of which details will be released later.

They are offering sign-ups for the beta that is to be taking place this summer at their site.