The future of OnLive is uncertain, yet Microsoft and Agawi remain determined to move ahead with Cloud-based gaming for Windows 8 and other platforms.
Indeed, Agawi has pledged to deliver “any game, anywhere, instantly.” As such, popular AAA game titles will apaprently be made available over the next few months for instant play on Windows 8 devices – without the need for porting or altering code by developers.
“Game developers want to focus on building great games, not worrying about back-end issues like scalability and platform management. With Windows Azure, Agawi 2.0 enables developers to make high-performance games easily accessible across devices with the high-quality graphics and virtually instant game downloads,” explained Microsoft exec Walid Abu-Hadba.
“For gamers, Windows 8 delivers a fast, fluid and no-compromise experience that opens the door to exciting new form factors.”
One question that remains is how the games will be controlled across various devices. Remember, controls can make or break a game plantform – and simply porting gesture-based controls from mobile games to a console doesn’t always work well.
Agawi exec Peter Relan weighed on this very topic, stating: “That’s a publisher decision. We support the idea of d-pads on the tablet itself. We support pure touch gesture on the tablet. We support point-and-click on the screen – touch and tap. We support swipe for scrolling. We support a full controller, like an Xbox console controller.”
