OnLive to offer streaming movies

December 8, 2010 By Jeffrey Van Camp

OnLive says it will soon offer streaming movies to go with its games, putting it squarely in competition with Netflix.

Would you like some movies to stream with your games? OnLive is betting you will. The game streaming service is in talks with movie studios to add Hollywood films to its roster of deliverable content, setting it up as a potential competitor to Netflix. The service may launch in early 2011.

“Streaming technology is available to anybody,” OnLive Chief Executive Steve Perlman said in an interview. “We want to work with the studios. All of these guys want to offer content, we’re just here to distribute. OnLive can deliver any experience that Netflix can.”

Time Warner, also a major movie studio, invests in OnLive and will provide some of its movies to the service. Other studios may sign on board as fear of Netflix domination continues to grow in Hollywood.

Just last week, OnLive created an unlimited PlayPack plan, that lets users freely play whichever games they want for $9.99 a month. And yesterday, the company announced that it plans to release iPad, iPhone, and Android apps so subscribers can watch others play video games on the go. While it sounds boring, OnLive says that game spectating is one of the most popular activities users do on the service.

Much like Netflix is for movies, OnLive is a service that lets users play video games from the cloud. Imagine playing a game, but instead of having an Xbox console attached to your TV, instead it was at a house down the street, but you could play it remotely from your TV over the Internet. All of the processing is done remotely, so graphics and games can look far better than they do on standard consoles and PCs.

The prospect of a game streaming service that also offers movie and TV shows is pretty appealing. Do you think this is a step in the right direction for OnLive?

Showing 6 comments

grumpy at 2:21pm 12th December 2010 Graphics are all a matter of a company investing in the tech to make it better. Any new console can come out to replace a previous and make the graphics much much better. A console doesn't need to stream an HD signal over the net to make a live game work where Onlive will. A PS3 or XBOX360 only has to stream info based on game play, not the whole image being presented. The console itself processes the video graphics, the net feeds location and interaction info to show you what the other players are doing. Onlive needs to send all the info needed to display, in real time, the HD images in the game and game play as well. If there is any latency in your internet then good luck with consistent online gaming quality. It sounds like a great deal but there are still going to be quirks with the service that might be beyond a person's control. The stronger the graphics, the more info that is needed to be exchanged over the net to keep up. With Onlive, the ability to play a high graphic game well is totally dependent on the home user's net capability. The better the graphics get, the fewer and fewer people wil be able to play a well conested game.
Clonmac at 9:30am 8th December 2010 Actually it is true. Note he says they "can". Meaning that they have the potential to, which is true. OnLive will continuously update their backend servers powering these games. This means that over time the games on OnLive will always look their best, while consoles will eventually struggle to keep up with OnLive's graphical quality. The graphical quality on OnLive simply depends on one's internet connection. Some people who just meet the minimum requirements may experience compression artifacts. But with my connection that is low latency and high bandwidth, I don't get any of that.
SimonP at 8:07am 8th December 2010 I think the part Nemo was questioning was "games can look far better than they do on standard consoles and PCs", which isn't true.
Glenshadow at 7:52am 8th December 2010 He doesn't need a source, this is the tenet the service is based on. Without it being true there is no service -- and there is a service and it does work, people are using it right now.
Nemo at 7:38am 8th December 2010 "All of the processing is done remotely, so graphics and games can look far better than they do on standard consoles and PCs." Source?
1. Edward L. Young Jr. at 9:35am 8th December 2010 I agree with it. My PC isn't top of the line and I have to dumb down the graphics to medium to get good frame rates. When I played Fear, or Borderlands on Onlive it is definitely running at max graphical settings on their server streamed in HD and running incredibly smooth. I'm recommending the service to my nephew who has a crappy E-machine PC so he can get his game on.