OnLive: CGI Arkham City visuals possible

OnLive boss Steve Perlman believes games with visuals as good as those seen in the stunning CGI Batman: Arkham City trailer, below, will be possible on the online gaming tech.

OnLive, which launches in the UK this autumn, allows users to play high-end games using the internet as opposed to a home console.

This, Perlman believes, means games with stupendous visuals could be possible on OnLive, as games are powered by scores of distant servers.

"People see this as a trailer for Arkham City, but the video quality is like a movie," Perlman told Eurogamer.

"A lot of people who are not in the industry think this is live action, but of course it's computer generated. If you take a current console, or even the things they're talking about for 2012, there's no way it can render anything like this in real-time - this is obviously pre-rendered.

"But we can render this in real-time in a data centre with thousands of servers, and you don't mind having a big fan cooling them.

"But in the living room, even if you wanted to, there's no way you can cool them.

"This level of realism is going to be something people will get with the new games with OnLive.

"When they [publishers] make an investment in a game that looks like this, it will only be able to run on OnLive. It will not be something they can distribute because it's obviously too performance demanding.

"This will be the new standard for gaming. We're very excited about that."

Batman: Arkham City publisher Warner Bros. is an investor in OnLive.