OnLive mobile phone tech demoed

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.