Do people really need their fix of Crysis, Grand Theft Auto and World of Warcraft that badly?
There's a big buzz in the console industry around cloud-based gaming technologies like OnLive, Gaikai and OTOY, which stream rich games over broadband to relatively simple hardware, rather than cutting-edge PCs or consoles.
What hasn't been discussed much are the mobile implications of this kind of technology: complex 3D games running on a server, with the graphics being streamed to a handset, and the player's button-presses being streamed back up.
However, Ars Technica reports that it has seen OTOY being used to stream hardcore PC game Crysis to an iPhone. Crysis is well-known for requiring a high-end PC to run, so the feat is certainly technically impressive.
"The iPhone's screen was small enough that I couldn't discern any compression artifacts, and the gameplay was smooth and responsive," writes Jon Stokes of his hands-on demo, although he warns of a "half-baked control scheme... hacked together at the last minute."
This may be the barrier to something like OTOY actually being used for gaming on an iPhone or other mobile device. Being able to stream Crysis or World of Warcraft to a handset may be technically impressive, but controlling either of these games using a touchscreen or mobile keypad will be frustrating.
However, the fact that mobile is on OTOY's radar is interesting for another reason: the possibility for it to be used huge, visually rich games designed for playing on mobile phones - but using the cloud features to pack in more content.
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