Tuesday, December 07, 2010

OnLive Viewer for iPad Introduces the Unexpected Pleasures of Video Game Voyeurism [Video]

OnLive Viewer for iPad Introduces the Unexpected Pleasures of Video Game Voyeurism [Video]

Cloud-based gaming service OnLine has been developing briskly over the last half year. Their first move onto the iPad, the free OnLive Viewer app, doesn't let you play games but rather lets you watch them as they're being played. Huh!

The ability to play games will come sometime early next year—OnLive says they're waiting for publishers to retrofit their games with touch and motion-based input—but in the meantime you can use the free OnLive Viewer iPad app (and soon a similar app for Android tablets) to watch the action that's transpiring on the OnLive servers. It's more fun than it sounds! The app lets you dip into ongoing sessions, add friends to track and chat with across the service, and view and rank a gallery of "Brag Clip" highlights. You'll have to have an OnLive account to watch, but if you're the kind of person who's already an early adopter for a cloud-based gaming service then you can probably don't need to be sold on the appeal of gaming-as-spectator-sport. [OnLive Viewer]