The Googleverse re-emerges?
After Google dumped Lively a while back, I was curious if they were going to dip their toe back in the MMO/Virtual world space. No concrete evidence has emerged yet, but some interesting posts are starting to pop up about Google’s O3D technology, their effort to put full 3D environments inside of Google’s browser, Chrome.
One writer believes that O3D + Google’s Wave technology could create a very interesting environment for browser-based MMO’s. I don’t know much about Wave yet, aside from Cole posting about it and showing a lot of excitement about its potential. Time to watch the Wave demo…
Note that this is nothing ground breaking. Mozilla is working on similar technology for Firefox and Unity3D is gaining momentum with its 3D plugin for browsers. I’m excited browsers can now handle large, interactive 3D spaces. This opens up HUGE doors for game designers and developers now that we don’t need to worry as much about custom installs and massive downloads. A prime example of where things are going is Quake Live. It frustrates me that this is browser based yet PC-only, but it’s a glimpse at where things are headed.
