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OnLive Closes Its Largest Funding Round
OnLive has announced that it has closed its largest round of funding to date, securing investment from AT&T Media Holdings, Lauder Partners, Warner Bros., Autodesk and Maverick Capital Invest.
The level of funding was undisclosed, but the company said that it will be used to launch OnLive's service offerings and to protect intellectual property rights.
Unveiled in March at the Game Developers Conference, OnLive's cloud gaming service has been in development for seven years. It recently entered beta phase in preparation for “a winter launch”.
"OnLive is excited to be receiving such a strong endorsement as we ramp toward launch," said OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman. "OnLive's technology and services enable broadband connections to deliver unprecedented gaming and interactive content experiences to the user. The implications are nothing short of world-changing, and we are excited to be aligned with forward-thinking investors and strategic partners who recognize OnLive's potential."
OnLive’s technology bypasses physical media by streaming gameplay data to Windows or Apple platforms, as well as televisions. Games are not actually installed on a computer – instead, game data is relayed back and forth between computers and powerful servers. For TV-compatibility, a small "microconsole" (pictured) is required.
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
Another good article:
http://games.venturebeat.com/2009/09/29/onlive-raises-big-round-of-money...
Ben_Lathwell said:
The ability to subscribe to using Maya, 3DS Max, Mudbox, Photoshop etc would mean people without massive budgets for software and high end hardware could compete.
Subscribing to Maya, 3DS Max, Mudbox, Photoshop, etc would be ok for small independent developers (both in new media and the games industry as well as others) and students who couldn't afford the £2000+ fees for such software.
A monthly fee for using such professional apps could be successful, if implemented correctly.
It would also cut piracy (although by no means end it). I know of alot of peers who are forced into piracy due to the high price tags of many of these programmes
Exactly, the pricing of the software is insane. In fact, at my University (before graduating) students were encouraged to use pirated software as the longer the student spends with the applications, the better it would be for enhancing their skills.
Student versions of some software are gimped i.e. watermarked, lack of features in the professional version, etc, so a pirated version was hugely beneficial.
If this works out the way they intend, then it could be huge, the next big thing.
I hope it works out and makes a huge impact.
I would love to give this a go -- as long as the bandwidth and the servers hold up (don't want obtrusive compression effects or buffering), and it isn't too pricey (do you pay by the minute? By the month? By the title?), and it has a wide enough range of titles (no platform exclusives or peripheral-dependent games, I suppose). From the looks of their website they're aware of all these problems, so fingers cautiously crossed.
I am far more excited about the possibilities of using software programmes than games. The ability to subscribe to using Maya, 3DS Max, Mudbox, Photoshop etc would mean people without massive budgets for software and high end hardware could compete.
That's a very good point. Has that angle even been suggested by the company itself yet? Mind you, the image quality issue would be even more important for those kind of programmes.
Im sure i remember it being mentioned in an Edge feature, im not sure if its officially a line they have looked down or just the feature writers mind wandering
If i can stream Mitchell and Webb in HD from iPlayer i would have thought this would be just one step on from that
Yep, iPlayer does it well. Even so I've found it can stumble, even in standard quality, at heavy usage times like Sunday evenings. Like you say though, they've got this far so it's surely the next step...
Yeah i guess that could be annoying, your trying to work but some idiot down the road is downloading N Dubz and hogging the line