BT has bought a stake in OnLive, the on demand streaming games service, and will be bringing it the UK. OnLive streams games over the web straight to your Mac, PC or TV, handling the graphical grunt work back at its server farm. So when we can expect OnLive to go live in the UK?
OnLive doesn’t launch in the US until June but the promise of delivering games over your broadband connection has obviously tempted BT. It’s snaffled up a 2.6% shareholding in OnLive and confirmed that it’ll be adding it to its BT Vision service later in the year.
The idea of OnLive is that remote server farms do most of the major graphics work meaning you should be able to play games like Crysis 2 on far less powerful hardware. We saw an OnLive video demo back in January and while it look pretty tasty, serious PC gamers were perturbed by lag.
BT plans to package the OnLive on demand game streaming with its BT Vision service but OnLive also confirmed that it will be available through other ISPs too. Unlike others service like Stream, OnLive won’t need to download files before you can get gaming.
BT Retail CEO, Gavin Patterson says: “Customers will have access to a huge catalogue of games, available instantly on their TV or PC without expensive hardware.”
There’s also the prospect of online arriving on mobiles too. Steve Perlman, OnLive’s CEO says games will be “playable instantly on almost any video capable device attached to the internet.”
BT has yet to announce when it will launch OnLive support and we’re also in the dark about pricing. OnLive is set to arrive in the US later this summer.
Due TBC | £TBC | OnLive
