OnLive officially won’t be attending E3 this year. OnLive founder, Steve Perlman, provides the following reason:
…this is the main reason why OnLive won’t have a booth at E3 this year. More than anything, E3 is a retail-oriented conference, both for retail platforms and retail publishers, and OnLive is neither. You’ll hear and see plenty from us this year in the run up to our external Beta and launch, delivered directly to your home through your broadband connection.
Microsoft is rumored to unveil a new handheld device at E3. Called the ‘ZuneX,’ the device may feature Xbox Live Arcade, media player capabilities, and support for OnLive.
Microsoft has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the ZuneX.
Ken Brown from Nvidia has some positive things to say about OnLive:
Actually we think this is a good thing for the industry. Given the targeted resolution and image quality, it seems a good potential benefit for the 50% or so of the market currently stuck with sub-par integrated graphics. The server-side GPUs will want to be cutting edge, so it seems additive to today?s PC GPU business, much in the same way that servers have done for CPUs. It also has the potential to open up some markets for high-end graphics that previously weren?t available. So overall we view this as a net positive for us.
Christoph Hartmann, the founder of 2K Games, is a supporter of server-based games and believes that it is the future of gaming.
“What we think the future will be is the market will shift to more server-based games – similar to the movie business where most people just rent instead of view films in the cinema.”
Hartman speaks about the opportunities that OnLive offers like instant gaming and not having to go into a store to try out games.
He had seen a demo of OnLive in its early stage two years ago and was impressed even then. Hartman is convinced that OnLive will be capable of succeeding and points to the people working behind Onlive.
“First of all, there are a lot of people behind OnLive that have incredible track records – you’re always betting on people to some degree, especially in the software world – and we felt also as the market is changing you have to give new people a chance. While we have to help in some form on the product development side, it’s not like we have to put USD 20 million behind [the platform] and then design a completely new game. It’s kind of a calculated bet we could take. We want to support people with new ideas that could take the industry in a different direction.”
2K Games currently have two games planned for OnLive: Bioshock and Major League Baseball.
Daily Fidelity received an e-mail from OnLive that simply said, “We will support VOIP.”
Mercury News has an interview with Steve Perlman, founder of OnLive, where he gives the benefits of his game service over console systems.
One major issue is the skyrocketing cost of developing games for the console. At one point in time, it cost only about 1 to 3 million dollars to create a game. Now it’s $30 million a game.
Distributing the games was also an issue. If demand and supply was not matched properly, it came at the expense of the game publisher.
OnLive is much more accessible than console systems. Perlman compared his game service to television and how accessible it is nowadays to watch TV on our computers. He did not, however, say that OnLive will replace console systems.
The next-generation consoles are going to be much more powerful, but Perlman says the systems will be also be a “beast” in size and much more expensive. He thinks that it’s an easy decision for a consumer to decide between a $600-700 console or spending that amount of money to buy games on his OnLive game service.
Developing games for OnLive will be very easy. It will only take a few weeks to get a PC game to work on OnLive.
An interesting article that outlines why OnLive will fail, drawing some comparisons to the Phantom. One major issue is that OnLive’s biggest asset, the internet, may also be its biggest downfall. Another is the lack of commitment shown by their current roster of publishers. They have promised games this winter, but nothing more.
Time Warner Cable, the nation’s second biggest cable company, is planning on charging for the amount of bandwidth you use. This would affect gaming companies like Sony, Microsoft, and to a larger degree, OnLive. Perlman, however, isn’t concerned.
A summary of this year’s Game Developers Conference and the significance of OnLive’s investors and partners.
Imagine playing Halo 2 on your iPhone or on a dinky little netbook. OnLive’s technology makes this very possible since games are processed entirely from remote servers.
Eric