OnLive Mobile Helps Gamers on the Go

To date, mobile gaming has been dominated by titles such as Angry Birds, where players perform a few simple tasks like firing a slingshot in a two-dimensional landscape. A couple of publishers are pushing the boundaries with simplified versions of console thrillers, such as Electronic Arts’s Dragon Age Legends. But those games remain limited because smartphones and tablets lack the robust graphics chips that power top-end consoles such as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Gamers now have an option for playing high-end titles on their underpowered tablets and smartphones. Silicon Valley startup OnLive already runs a cloud gaming service, letting people play games on their TVs without an expensive console. All the heavy-duty graphics processing happens in OnLive’s data centers, which transmit the results over the Internet. Starting on Dec. 8, OnLive began offering the same service for mobile devices. People with iPhones, iPads, Android devices, and Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire will be able to play full-fledged console games over Wi-Fi and 3G/4G wireless networks. “I just had my kids in the back of the car on the way to Laguna Beach playing their games,” says Steve Perlman, the chief executive officer of OnLive. “We got to the beach where there are whales popping out now and again, and they said, ‘Just a minute, Dad.’ So there’s good and bad to this.”