Yikes, my wife asked me about the game system OnLive before I’d even heard about it. OnLive is a service that looks to be a lot like the Vudu is for movies, only for games. It was announced earlier this month at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC). The games will work on TV or PC and are streamed through a central server. OnLive has a beta sign-up page (done) and will be inviting players this summer.

While chances are good we’ll be getting the OnLive Microconsole unless the pricing is insane, I’m not too excited yet how this will go over. It’s from Steve Perlman, founder of WebTV (and we know how well WebTV went over) and also Quicktime. And speaking of pricing:

the OnLive team isn’t offering up any details other than to say "we can price it substantially lower than the Wii." That’s according to John Spinale, the company’s VP of games and media, who kept mum on other costs like subscription fees and new game prices

Techtree.com has a sensationalistic headline declaring this to be a ‘threat to consoles’ which is doubtful, but adds the following useful intel about the game companies involved:

So far, nine third-party game publishers, who include Electronics Arts, Ubisoft, Warner Bros. Interactive, Take-Two, THQ, Epic Games, Eidos, Atari, and Codemasters, have committed to involve themselves in the game distribution service. These game publishers would also be retailing games as usual.

Xbox Live sort of rules the roost in our home and many others. If you want a great online game experience, it’s tough to compare the quality and diversity of titles to what’s available currently on Xbox Live. Yesterday we went and picked up the Guitar Hero: Metallica and enjoyed playing.

On the plus side potentially for OnLive, we’re digging how convenient the Vudu is hooked up to the TV, despite it being yet another TV-connected gadget. With Satellite in HD, Xbox Elite, PS3 and Vudu we don’t have enough HD jacks to handle all these gadgets. Going to have to get one of those HD selector boxes. Anybody seen a good price on one of those? I checked out on at Best Buy that was like $200. No way. Got to be something much, much cheaper than that. I’m thinking $50 range.

Will have more to say about OnLive when I can dig in and check it out firsthand.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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