Over the past week, we?ve been getting a glimpse of what OnLive will look like in the future. We know that OnLive is set to be on 25 million TV and 50 million Blu-ray players / set-top boxes by the end of 2011. We also know that it will be made available on smartphones and tablets through the download of an App.
This begged us to ask OnLive Founder and CEO, Steve Perlman whether he had plans to ship OnLive pre-installed on new computers.
?Some PC makers have come to us to talk about that, and because we have our NDA?s with them, we can?t go and disclose any details, ?explained Perlman. ?What you are describing is a pretty easy thing for us to do.?
There doesn?t seem to be any reason why PC makers would be opposed to the idea, and certainly there is nothing holding OnLive back. It would easily make the service available to hundreds of million gamers worldwide, as soon as they buy a new computer.
Perlman also explained what appears to be some future plans with PC makers.
?Another thing that is a variant on that is we can make OnLive work before the PC really boots up. I think you?ve seen that some PCs can play a DVD or something like that before it boots up. People have spoken to us about that as well.?
This begs us to wonder what OnLive plans to do with this feature. A computer, that with the press of a button, will sign you into the OnLive service? When signed in you would have access to an extremely fast web browser along with virtually any game of your choice. While Perlman obviously appears to have plans for something like this, it?ll probably be a little while before we see these plans materialize.
?The schedule for when these things role out has a lot of things that figure into it,? said Perlman. ?It?s the manufacturers? schedule of what they want to do when their products are coming out, and frankly we have to triage what projects we take on.?
We asked Perlman to describe in a little more detail how a system like this would be utilized. Here is what he said:
?You are used to the instant turn on with something like a tablet or a phone. Imagine if you hit the power button on your PC, and then you just immediately connect.
Even if you have a browser running on a PC, you have to boot an operating system, but the OnLive client that runs on your PC doesn?t rely on an operating system. It doesn?t rely on Windows, Linux, or Java or Flash. There?s really no underlying code. It just has a stand alone, self sustaining piece of code, which is why it is easy for us to port it to things like the OnLive MicroConsole or Blu-Ray players and TVs. A lot of TVs that we will be running on, there is no OS per say.
In the case of a PC booting up, the Intel or AMD processor on it would begin executing OnLive. The beauty of OnLive is that there is no operating system needed in the local device, there?s only an operating system needed in the cloud.?
Since there is no operating system required to run OnLive, it can basically run quite easily on just about anything, with only a few exceptions.
What do you think? Would the ability to run OnLive pre-installed on a PC at the push of a button benefit the service? What other possibilities does this open up for OnLive?
Article by Ed Krassenstein
This begged us to ask OnLive Founder and CEO, Steve Perlman whether he had plans to ship OnLive pre-installed on new computers.
?Some PC makers have come to us to talk about that, and because we have our NDA?s with them, we can?t go and disclose any details, ?explained Perlman. ?What you are describing is a pretty easy thing for us to do.?
There doesn?t seem to be any reason why PC makers would be opposed to the idea, and certainly there is nothing holding OnLive back. It would easily make the service available to hundreds of million gamers worldwide, as soon as they buy a new computer.
Perlman also explained what appears to be some future plans with PC makers.
?Another thing that is a variant on that is we can make OnLive work before the PC really boots up. I think you?ve seen that some PCs can play a DVD or something like that before it boots up. People have spoken to us about that as well.?
This begs us to wonder what OnLive plans to do with this feature. A computer, that with the press of a button, will sign you into the OnLive service? When signed in you would have access to an extremely fast web browser along with virtually any game of your choice. While Perlman obviously appears to have plans for something like this, it?ll probably be a little while before we see these plans materialize.
?The schedule for when these things role out has a lot of things that figure into it,? said Perlman. ?It?s the manufacturers? schedule of what they want to do when their products are coming out, and frankly we have to triage what projects we take on.?
We asked Perlman to describe in a little more detail how a system like this would be utilized. Here is what he said:
?You are used to the instant turn on with something like a tablet or a phone. Imagine if you hit the power button on your PC, and then you just immediately connect.
Even if you have a browser running on a PC, you have to boot an operating system, but the OnLive client that runs on your PC doesn?t rely on an operating system. It doesn?t rely on Windows, Linux, or Java or Flash. There?s really no underlying code. It just has a stand alone, self sustaining piece of code, which is why it is easy for us to port it to things like the OnLive MicroConsole or Blu-Ray players and TVs. A lot of TVs that we will be running on, there is no OS per say.
In the case of a PC booting up, the Intel or AMD processor on it would begin executing OnLive. The beauty of OnLive is that there is no operating system needed in the local device, there?s only an operating system needed in the cloud.?
Since there is no operating system required to run OnLive, it can basically run quite easily on just about anything, with only a few exceptions.
What do you think? Would the ability to run OnLive pre-installed on a PC at the push of a button benefit the service? What other possibilities does this open up for OnLive?
Article by Ed Krassenstein
