OnLive mobile phone tech demoed

By Tom Bramwell Published 16 November, 2009

Perlman shows it off in New York.

The developers of ambitious game-streaming service OnLive eventually hope to have it running on mobile phones.

OnLive CEO Steve Perlman even showed off a tech demo at a financial conference in New York on Friday, he wrote on the official blog (thanks vg247).

"Today, at a Wedbush financial conference in New York I showed OnLive running simultaneously on two iPhones, a TV, and a computer," he explained.

"What is really cool is that all four devices had access to the full OnLive Game Service, so they could play the same games, spectate on each other's (and beta users') gameplay, watch Brag Clips, check out Gamer Profiles, etc."

Perlman wrote that while playing big old PC and console games on a phone isn't really practical yet, it should be possible to check out the "community and social elements" of OnLive, and even watch your friends' gameplay in action. "Unscripted live user-generated content, available anywhere," he said. Except in tunnels.

"I'm afraid we are not announcing a date for availability of OnLive on particular cell phones just yet," he noted. "We have further development to do, and we need approvals from some cell phone makers before we can release OnLive to the public. So, for now, OnLive on a cell phone is only a technology demo."

Despite, er, scepticism about some of OnLive's claims, the service is unquestionably ambitious, seeking to deliver 720p, 60fps gameplay to people over the internet.

Other similar technologies include Dave Perry's Gaikai, although while OnLive aims to act as a content portal for content streamed at the highest quality, Gaikai is a business-to-business service that content makers can buy into to stream their software to people at a quality and resolution determined in large part by a user's connection speed.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (11) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • penhalion #1 2 years ago

    Who the heck was conned into investing in this! Seriously! Because I have a really good idea for a public Mars lander that will only cost a few million quid ;)

  • Mildew #2 2 years ago

    This has vapourware written all over it

  • skillian #3 2 years ago

    Yes, because investors like Warner Bros and Autodesk are always getting scammed in investment cons. And those partnerships with nVidia, EA and Epic have been bribed to add a veneer of respectability before they take the cash and run.

    I guess there will be calls of vapourware even when this product is sitting on the shelves...

  • StooMonster #4 2 years ago

    In a previous career I was a professional VC, and have to say that skillian's comment made me laugh.

    Err... yes, investors like Warner Bros and Autodesk are always making investments that will fail, at least if they are anything like a professional venture capital fund that will lose money or barely breakeven on 80%+ of its portfolio.

    Moreover, "partners" are ten-a-penny, I used to see so many business plans with Microsoft or Oracle or IBM or anyone as a "partner"; when what that really means is the company had a meeting and said "If we get funding and scale, we'll either (a) spend lots of money buying your services/kit or (b) paying you money in licenses and IRP" ... "So can we put you down as a partner?" and the partners says yes as it doesn't cost them a penny.

    So, securing funding from someone and getting "partners" on board is no kind of indicator for success; or even deciding whether this is vapourware. The only thing that counts is generating revenue and therefore when they expect to break-even.
    Edited by 1 at 16/11/09 @ 14:53

  • Ryze #5 2 years ago

    What a JOKE.

    Try and find someone who's a part of the OnLive 'beta'. You wont because it's a fucking SCAM.

    edit: seriously - where are the VOD deals with all of the ISPs? They'd all want a piece of this magic 'custom silicon' pie.

    I'd love to see this scale up and work cost effectively.

    /waits...
    Edited by 1 at 16/11/09 @ 14:55

  • skillian #6 2 years ago

    Err... yes, investors like Warner Bros and Autodesk are always making investments that will fail

    Well of course, but I suspect they aren't always investing in schemes that turn out to be scams? My point obviously wasn't that it can't fail, which I presume is why you didn't actually quote me.
    Edited by 2 at 16/11/09 @ 15:19

  • StooMonster #7 2 years ago

    Yeah, skillian, I know you were talking about scams. :)

    Due diligence is there to avoid investing in scams -- and they should've at least done that -- but sometimes they still get through; the dot-com era provides a few pretty good examples of such, although I think there's a thin line between "scam" and "very high risk".

  • rprince #8 2 years ago

    @skillian: "I guess there will be calls of vapourware even when this product is sitting on the shelves..."

    What shelves?

  • skillian #9 2 years ago

    This is a project run by a guy who led development on most of Apple's media software, including quicktime; the founder of Mozilla; a former Eidos CEO; an Executive Producer from Activision; and a few more respected and capable people.

    So these highly respected people, having built up a reputation in the IT and software business for the last 20 years, have been quietly plotting to introduce the world to this perfect but unachievable system, scam Warner Bros for their investment capital and then run off with the money to live as outlaws on the Costa Del Sol?

    Seriously, OnLive might not work for you guys because your tin-foil hats will block the signal.

  • penhalion #10 2 years ago

    @Skillian

    Give it up mate. The technology and infrastructure to stream 720p games to every desktop simply doesn't exist. Unless he's using atom teleportation to instantly show the images on your screen, It's what is called blue sky research. It leads nowhere and provides a convenient tax relief for large companies such as Warner. If the investment never comes in, they can simply write it off.

  • Bander #11 2 years ago

    While 3G data is still a bit laggy, for a phone the picture doesn't have to be as high as 720p 60fps (not that any current phone could easily decode that).

    This technology could be fine for something like an adventure, RPG or strategy game, which are ideal genres for phones anyway because small screens and crap controls don't suit fast action games. It could also provide a means of making phone games go multiplatform more easliy, and have forwards compatibility. Two things which are a massive problem right now.

    Maybe it's vapourware, but I hope it isn't, because it's starting to get interesting.