For once the UK is going to get something, if not first, then next, as the hugely anticipated US OnLive gaming system, which goes live in the US on June 17, after 8 years in development, 7 of them in stealth mode, comes to the UK through a deal with British Telecom.
OnLive was put together by serial entrepreneur Steve Perlman, who contributed while at Apple to the Mac and to its Quicktime media player, and who subsequently filed 80 of his own patents, while working at gaming companies like General Magic, and who also built and sold WebTV to Microsoft.
Perlman unveiled his creation last March and had hoped to get it live for Christmas 2009, but has slipped 6 months. The trick is that all his servers send are video images, the gaming itself is played out on remote servers that can be up to 1,000 miles away from the playing devices. This means that incredibly lightweight, average speed devices, can handle complex and powerful games. This thing is a natural for the iPad, and for all tablet or battery constrained devices, including phones.
It is based on an extremely thin client which can run on a phone, a netbook, any kind of PC and even a cheap $100 Micro-console sitting next to your TV set.
The game logic resides on central servers, and now BT is promising to host and market a UK set of servers for the platform, and OnLive has adapted many of the world’s most popular games to play in this style. The games work with sub 20 millisecond response time and the game imagery needs a 1.5 Mbps broadband connection to be delivered and the system can even offer HD gaming at 5 Mbps. Perlman has spent years getting all the inherent delays and latency out of traditional servers, storage and network interfaces, in order to get this to work.
BT has cut a commercial partnership with OnLive which gives BT exclusive rights to bundle the OnLive Game Service with broadband in the UK. It will be sold for a flat subscription price, as well offering ‘pay as you play’ business models. BT has also taken a 2.6% shareholding in OnLive. We guarantee that whatever it paid for it, this will make BT at least some money when OnLive goes public or gets acquired.
There are few revolutions in entertainment, but OnLive genuinely IS one, and it includes new ways to purchase games, zero delay online, try before you buy, for instance, because there is no need to wait for games to be downloaded, they run instantly.
BT has not yet released a launch date but it is THIS year not next. No need to think about your nephew’s Christmas present at all, an iPad and a subscription to OnLive will make him think he is your favourite. Nah, buy it for yourself.
Net Neutrality in Europe will prevent BT from making you play the games only when connected by a BT line, so it will be interesting to see if anyone else is allowed to sell this, or if BT can sell it without bundling in broadband as well ‘ for instance what about all of us that already have broadband, even from BT.
Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT Retail, said: ‘Entertainment is going to be at the heart of what we offer customers in the future. The partnership with OnLive complements our existing BT Vision service. It’s great for our customers – they’ll have access to a huge catalogue of games, available instantly on their TV or PC without expensive hardware. And it’s great for BT – it will enhance our premium broadband position and we’ll be entering into a market that’s worth more than £2billion.’
One of the keys to the OnLive service is that it encourages you to save Brag Clips and show them to friends and says it is capable of massive multiviewing of games as they are played. Games from EA and Ubisoft, to name but a few, will be available at launch.