We kid, of course – this is great news not only for OnLive, but for the future of streaming gaming in general. Onlive's service might have started off slow, with only a handful of playable games, but it has grown over time to include an impressive stable of publishers. It seems like every few months another big company throws their support behind OnLive, and with every publisher comes more titles, more profit, and more improvements to their system. Pricing has been higher than some would like, but that’s something Perlman claims is left to the publishers, and is out of its hands entirely. Still, anyone who has used OnLive has likely noticed that it has had regular sales, with games dropping in price on the fly to stay competitive.
The future is looking good for OnLive, which launched in the UK last week. Perlman teased the announcement of TVs and Blu-ray players with OnLive built in for the UK, which should help early adopters feel better about buying digital games. He also explained why he believes that the UK side will launch more smoothly than the US side: experience. "The US has been the UK's beta test. We've had 15 months of live experience there, not just on the technology side but with what users want, how to package features and build up the game library."
Streaming games is an exciting concept, and one we expect to grow over the next few years. Who knows? Maybe OnLive will be bought out by one of the big three console makers and turned into proprietary hardware for the next generation of games; or even more drastic, what if a publisher like Valve or EA picks them up, and enters into the console race with a dedicated box that can stream thousands of games on day one? Welcome to the future, friends – let’s hope your internet doesn’t go down.
Sep 29, 2011
