OnLive: ‘We’ll be No.1 for core games’

After the jostling for podium positions at E3, OnLive has declared itself the fourth platform” – and predicted that it will soon be No.1 for core gaming.

The cloud-based service, which launches in the UK this autumn, has been live in the US for almost a year.

CEO Steve Perlman told MCV: What’s exciting at the moment is that in some ways we’ve been an emerging platform until now. First we had to prove it worked, then that it would work across a certain scale. Then we had to bulk out the offering and start getting day and date releases, and we’ve done all that. People are now treating us like the fourth platform and it’s great to finally be there.”

Looking ahead, he claimed that eventually cloud-based gaming would be the only viable environment for the industry’s showcase releases.

I believe the cloud will become the dominant way to play high performance video games,” he said. We showed a trailer on our booth at E3 for Arkham City and I asked everyone who saw it, which part do you think is live action and which is computer generated? The truth is, it’s all computer generated and no one I asked got that.

That demo is a preview of what’s coming to OnLive. And there’s no possible way to have sufficient computing power locally to run gaming like that in real time. But we can in a data centre.

Even a new console, a monster sitting in your living room, couldn’t handle this stuff. It just can’t be done.”

To read the full interview with Steve Perlman, click here.