AllThingsD » OnLive

When Office Is in the Cloud and on a Tablet, Is It Really Office?

Arik Hesseldahl — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 23:12:28 +0000

Now we know how Microsoft feels about the whole “desktop as a service” thing that has started to gain traction in some quarters: It doesn’t like it.

Redmond today officially pushed back against OnLive, a company known best for its streaming gaming service that has created a streaming desktop for use on tablets, including Apple’s iPad and those running Android.

OnLive started offering the service last month for $4.99 per user per month, including two gigabytes of cloud storage.

In a corporate blog post today, Joe Matz, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for worldwide licensing, said the company sees OnLive’s product as a violation of its licensing terms for Office. “We are actively engaged with OnLive with the hope of bringing them into a properly licensed scenario, and we are committed to seeing this issue is resolved,” Matz wrote. The licensing terms allow some desktop functionality on a tablet, but not the full version delivered as a hosted service, he wrote.

Microsoft partners who host under the Services Provider License Agreement (“SPLA”) may bring some desktop-like functionality as a service by using Windows Server and Remote Desktop Services. Under this solution, the partner is free to offer this service to any customer they choose, whether or not they have a direct licensing agreement with Microsoft. However, it is important to note that SPLA does not support delivery of Windows 7 as a hosted client or provide the ability to access Office as a service through Windows 7. Office may only be provided as a service if it is hosted on Windows Server and Remote Desktop Services.

The response from OnLive was brief: “We have never commented on any licensing agreements.”

The Writing on the Tablet

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:03:03 +0000

I’d like to purchase a tablet for use in the classroom and group meetings. I’d like a tablet that can take written notes in PDF and PowerPoint files, has a Web-browsing experience similar to that on a laptop, and can at least open Word and Excel files. With the iPad 3’s impending release, I’m tempted to jump in but I’ve also heard there are some interesting Windows 8 and Android Ice Cream Sandwich tablets coming out later this year. What do you recommend?

I can’t make a recommendation now, since none of these tablets is out. However, I can make a few observations. Even on the current iPad, you can annotate files and take written notes in various apps. But the iPad isn’t designed at heart for freehand note-taking and annotation, and you’d have to buy an add-on stylus. Some Android devices—even without Ice Cream Sandwich—have integrated note-taking and the stylus as a core feature. The latest is the Samsung Galaxy Note, a ginormous phone that is really a small tablet. As for Windows 8, it is designed to run the full version of Office. And the preview device Microsoft has supports handwriting and has a stylus in the box.

I use Adobe Connect for online training, and want to use the iPad. I’ve been using the Adobe Connect iPad app. I find it okay but not great. I had high hopes for Online Live Desktop. I purchased the subscription and entered the Adobe Connect Meeting room without incident. When I attempted to activate the iPad camera and microphone, I couldn’t. Why?

OnLive doesn’t interact with the iPad’s native features—even the virtual keyboard. I hadn’t tried the camera or microphone, but I am not surprised you couldn’t make them work. OnLive essentially uses the iPad as a terminal for a copy of Windows that is running on a remote server. The company is working on tapping the iPhone’s native features.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Still Waiting on Office for iPad? OnLive's New Subscription Service Has Office, Flash and More.

Lauren Goode — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:55:48 +0000

For those of you still holding your breath while you wait for an official Microsoft Office app to come to iPad, here’s something that might help in the interim: OnLive Desktop Plus, a premium, $4.99-a-month version of the OnLive Desktop app for iPad and other tablet devices. The newest version of the app offers a cloud-based Internet Explorer 9, Adobe Flash, and PDF capabilities, in addition to the full Office suite and the “accelerated browsing experience” that OnLive created for fast pushing and pulling of data on a remote-access desktop.

Working in Word, Excel, PowerPoint on an iPad

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:04:34 +0000

Although Apple’s popular iPad tablet has been able to replace laptops for many tasks, it isn’t a big hit with folks who’d like to use it to create or edit long Microsoft Office documents.

[ See post to watch video ]

While Microsoft has released a number of apps for the iPad, it hasn’t yet released an iPad version of Office. There are a number of valuable apps that can create or edit Office documents, such as Quickoffice Pro, Documents To Go and the iPad version of Apple’s own iWork suite. But their fidelity with Office documents created on a Windows PC or a Mac isn’t perfect.

This week, OnLive Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif., is releasing an app that brings the full, genuine Windows versions of the key Office productivity apps—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—to the iPad. And it’s free. These are the real programs. They look and work just like they do on a real Windows PC. They let you create or edit genuine Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.

I’ve been testing a pre-release version of this new app, called OnLive Desktop, which the company says will be available in the next few days in Apple’s app store. More information is at desktop.onlive.com.

The OnLive Desktop app stores documents in a cloud-based repository.

My verdict is that it works, but with some caveats, limitations and rough edges. Some of these downsides are inherent in the product, while others have to do with the mismatch between the iPad’s touch interface and the fact that Office for Windows was primarily designed for a physical keyboard and mouse.

Creating or editing long documents on a tablet with a virtual on-screen keyboard is a chore, no matter what Office-type app you choose. So, although it isn’t a requirement, I strongly recommend that users of OnLive Desktop employ one of the many add-on wireless keyboards for the iPad.

OnLive Desktop is a cloud-based app. That means it doesn’t actually install Office on your iPad. It acts as a gateway to a remote server where Windows 7, and the three Office apps, are actually running. You create an account, sign in, and Windows pops up on your iPad, with icons allowing you to launch Word, Excel or PowerPoint. (There are also a few other, minor Windows programs included, like Notepad, Calculator and Paint.)

In my tests, the Office apps launched and worked smoothly and quickly, without any noticeable lag, despite the fact that they were operating remotely. Although this worked better for me on my fast home Internet connection, it also worked pretty well on a much slower hotel connection.

Like Office itself, the documents you create or modify don’t live on the iPad. Instead, they go to a cloud-based repository, a sort of virtual hard disk. When you sign into OnLive Desktop, you see your documents in the standard Windows documents folder, which is actually on the remote server. The company says that this document storage won’t be available until a few days after the app becomes available.

To get files into and out of OnLive Desktop, you log in to a Web site on your PC or Mac, where you see all the documents you’ve saved to your cloud repository. You can use this Web site to upload and download files to your OnLive Desktop account. Any changes made will be automatically synced, the company says, though I wasn’t able to test that capability in my pre-release version.

Because it’s a cloud-based service, OnLive Desktop won’t work offline, such as in planes without Wi-Fi. And it can be finicky about network speeds. It requires a wireless network with at least 1 megabit per second of download speed, and works best with at least 1.5 to 2.0 megabits. Many hotels have trouble delivering those speeds, and, in my tests, the app refused to start in a hotel twice, claiming insufficient network speed when the hotel Wi-Fi was overloaded.

The free version of the app has some other limitations. You get just 2 gigabytes of file storage, there’s no Web browser or email program like Outlook included, and you can’t install additional software. If many users are trying to log onto the OnLive Desktop servers at once, you may have to wait your turn to use Office.

In the coming weeks, the company plans to launch a Pro version, which will cost $10 a month. It will offer 50 GB of cloud document storage, “priority” access to the servers, a Web browser, and the ability to install some added programs. It will also allow you to collaborate on documents with other users, or even to chat with, and present material to, groups of other OnLive Desktop users.

The company also plans to offer OnLive Desktop on Android tablets, PCs and Macs, and iPhones.

In my tests, I was able to create documents on an iPad in each of the three cloud-based Office programs. I was able to download them to a computer, and alter them on both the iPad and computer. I was also able to upload files from the computer for use in OnLive Desktop.

OnLive Desktop can’t use the iPad’s built-in virtual keyboard, but it can use the virtual keyboard built into Windows 7 and Windows’ limited touch features and handwriting recognition. As noted above, I recommend using a wireless physical keyboard. But even these aren’t a perfect solution, because the ones that work with the iPad can’t send common Windows keyboard commands to OnLive Desktop, so you wind up moving between the keyboard and the touch screen, which can be frustrating. And you can’t use a mouse.

Another drawback is that OnLive Desktop is entirely isolated from the rest of the iPad. Unlike Office-compatible apps that install directly on the tablet, this cloud-based service can’t, for instance, be used to open Office documents you receive via email on the iPad. And, at least at first, the only way you can get files into and out of OnLive Desktop is through its Web-accessible cloud-storage service. The free version has no email capability, and the app doesn’t support common file-transfer services like Dropbox or SugarSync. The company says it hopes to add those.

OnLive Desktop competes not only with the iPad’s Office clones, but with iPad apps that let you remotely access and control your own PCs and Macs, and thus use Office and other computer software on those.

But, in my tests, I have found those tricky to use. They require you to leave your computers running and either install special software or learn to use certain settings.

Overall, I found OnLive Desktop to be a notable technical achievement, but it has so many caveats that it’s best for folks who absolutely, positively need to use the full, genuine versions of the three big Office productivity programs on their iPads. For everyone else, the locally installed Office clones are probably good enough, and simpler to use.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

OnLive Streams Xbox-Quality Games Like L.A. Noire to the iPad

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 09:06:12 +0000

OnLive, a Pandora-like service for videogames, has figured out a way to bring console-quality games to the iPad and Android tablets.

That means that high-performance games, previously only able to run on top-notch hardware, will now be able to stream over the Internet to comparatively low-end mobile devices.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has been selling its gaming service for a little more than a year. Up until now, consumers could stream games to their TV, or to a PC or Mac. The games can be purchased, rented for a few days or paid for via a monthly subscription. The mobile version will work the same way.

The apps will be available as soon as today in both the iTunes Store and the Android Market in the U.S. and the U.K. The app will also be coming to other devices, include the Kindle Fire.

OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman said an iPad would never have enough memory to play a 10 gigabyte game.

But OnLive’s service works because the game runs on the company’s server and then streams a compressed version to the device. The service is so efficient, in fact, that it will work not only on Wi-Fi but also on high-speed 4G wireless networks, like AT&T’s or Verizon’s LTE. OnLive worked closely with AT&T, which is one of its investors, to ensure its service would operate seamlessly.

At launch, the mobile app will have a catalog of about 25 games, including one of this year’s top sellers, Rockstar’s L.A. Noire, which is a 1940s Hollywood crime thriller.

Perlman said three categories of games will be available on mobile devices. The first category will be games like L.A. Noire that have been adapted to use the touchscreen. The second will be games that will use a virtual controller that appears on the tablet’s screen. And the third category will require an OnLive wireless controller, because the games require too many buttons to control. The controller will cost $50.

The number of games that have been fully adapted will be limited initially, but nearly all of OnLive’s 200 titles will be playable on a mobile device in some manner.

Because OnLive’s service is stored in the cloud, users will be able to pause a game on one platform, and then pick up on a mobile device where they left off.

One inconvenience of the iPad app is that all games will have to be bought on the PC, because of Apple’s policies on in-app purchases.

Perlman said it’s unclear what the demand will be for a mobile service like this, but that it has the potential to disrupt the way console games are traditionally sold.

“Before OnLive, games were a form of software and a type of application,” he said. “They were subject to piracy and hardware requirements, but now it’s music or movies. It doesn’t matter what the performance of the device is.”

Silicon Valley Inventor’s Radical Rewrite of Wireless

Don Clark — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:35:15 +0000

Steve Perlman is known for ambitious technology projects. But his take on wireless communications definitely raises the bar.

The Silicon Valley inventor, who has recently been delivering videogames online with a startup called OnLive, has also been quietly working for more than ten years on the problem of radio interference–the phenomenon that, among other things, slows down data speeds when too many users of mobile devices log on at the same time.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Flixlab Tackles the Last Thing an iPhone Does Slowly: Export Video

Drake Martinet — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 19:48:36 +0000

The Apple iPhone user experience is pretty snappy. Web browsing, picture taking, trivia-disagreement solving — it all happens at the speed of a tap.

Unless, that is, you try to edit and export a video. That’s because speedy video editing is a very hard problem to solve.

One of the first app makers to take a serious whack is Flixlab, with its app offering of the same name.

Flixlab was started three years and a few patents ago, in the hopes of “letting people do something with the videos they shoot on their devices,” said CEO David Slater.

The company markets the app as a social video creation tool. In this case, that means enabling users to create videos, share them on Facebook and then remix other videos that their friends have made through Flixlab.

So, basically, it’s a less creepy video version of what has been attempted by beleaguered and overfunded app-maker Color.

In addition, there are lots of big players trying to optimize video for social sharing, such as Google and Facebook.

Saving time for users is what Flixlab is touting as its real differentiating feature, which is important for video editing on mobile.

Here’s where it gets a little technical:

After editing a movie on Apple’s own iMovie for the iPhone app, the user chooses an export size, which is when the heavy processing begins.

Just like professional editing software, the iMovie app chews through the video frame by frame and creates the finished product at the selected resolution.

It is analogous to the process an animator would have gone through back in the days of Bugs Bunny, drawing the cartoon one frame at a time.

This process, called “rendering” by video nerds, gobbles memory and battery and is probably the most intensive thing an iPhone is asked to do in a normal operation.

Even on Apple’s iMovie app, it can take up to two minutes of rendering and exporting time for every minute of video created — a lot more if the video is being uploaded. And those two minutes must be spent with iMovie running in the foreground, so that calling, texting and cat-video watching has to be put on hold.

In the iPhone user experience universe, minutes might as well be millennia.

Flixlab solves the problem by doing all the video processing in its cloud.

“The user’s video gets uploaded to our servers and gets processed by a really fast computer,” said Slater. “Playback happens in near real time.”

This is essentially the same value proposition that cloud gaming start-up OnLive offers: Do stuff on your mobile device at speeds typically reached only by beefy, graphics-enhanced desktop computers.

It’s unclear why iMovie isn’t yet offering the same cloud-based editing, but Slater thinks Flixlab “probably has about 18 months in the market where [it] is the only [company] doing this — because it’s a hard problem and we own patents around it.”

Cloud-based mobile solutions are harder than just making an app, and Flixlab does have an edge solving the most expensive part of it.

But the company’s bigger bet is on whether or not users want to co-create video, as well as share.

Slater is betting that the future is one where “we have to deliver creation and consumption experiences that are as integrated.”

Color bet on the same idea and the jury is still out there. So, if Flixlab can’t make it work either, the tech community may need a new working theory about what “the future of social media” means.

Here’s a video interview I did with Slater, in which he talks about all of this:

[ See post to watch video ]

HTC Deal Shows Importance of Content to Manufacturers

Ben Rooney — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 08:00:09 +0000

News that Taiwanese handset maker HTC has bought the London-based Saffron Digital and taken a stake in the U.S.-based on-demand games company Onlive Inc. shows the increasing importance for manufacturers to differentiate themselves in the market. The days of simply making better and better phones are over. Manufacturers are increasingly in need of content strategies to win new customers and help hang on to existing ones.

Last month, Nokia Corp.’s venture arm invested $8 million in Voddler Group AB, a Scandinavian video-on-demand service focused on streaming movies to Internet-connected TVs, among other devices. Other makers also offer their own exclusive content.

HTC started life making handsets for other people, but has increasingly sought to establish itself as a brand in its own right. It has enjoyed success in producing attractive and well-featured handsets running a skinned version of Google’s Android operating system, called HTC Sense. It was also one of the makers to offer a handset running Windows Phone 7 on its launch.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

HTC Invests in Two Mobile Software Companies

Lorraine Luk — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 10:32:18 +0000

HTC Corp. unveiled two investments in software companies in the latest push by the Taiwanese company to expand through acquisitions in the lucrative but competitive smartphone market.

HTC, which has gained popularity world-wide for its early adoption of Google Inc.’s Android software in its mobile phones, said it will acquire London-based mobile platform company Saffron Digital for £30.15 million ($48.6 million) and will buy a $40 million stake in U.S.-based on-demand games company OnLive Inc.

HTC has been increasing its investments in mobile technology and beefing up its content and applications business to expand in the fast-growing smartphone segment in its bid to keep up with rival Apple Inc.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

IPhone App iTeleport Wants You to Get Excited About VNC

Voices — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:12:03 +0000

In app store terms, iTeleport is as old as it gets. In fact, it actually predates the app store, according to founder J Sherwani.

Today, iTeleport’s update will offer the product free for 30 days, and then switch to $3 a month thereafter or $25 for unlimited use.

So, why would a small, profitable company–Sherwani said there have been a total of about 700,000 devices on iTeleport in its two-plus years in existence–decide to give away its only product for free?

According to iTeleport, it’s the thing to do if you want to change how people think of VNC, or virtual network computing.

Essentially, that means you can use one computer to log in to and operate another.

And this two-man shop might not be alone in thinking there’s a future in bringing VNC-style computing to the masses.

Vishal Kapur, the other iTeleporter, said that he thinks there is an untapped consumer group out there for VNC, especially those using Apple’s iPad and iPhone, and that most users aren’t there yet because there haven’t been consumer-focused products built on the technology.

“They [VNCs] have been around for 25 years, but they have always been an enterprise thing,” Kapur said.

But moves by larger companies, such as the recent demo of OnLive’s new cloud gaming and computing system at the D: Dive Into Mobile conference, indicate that the iTeleport team may not be the only ones thinking the future lies in this direction.

In fact, Mobilized’s Ina Fried reported on enterprise software maker Wyse doing pretty much the same thing–taking its basic VNC app and making it free.

While freer access to a desktop’s files on the go might be great, the bigger question here is: What are the hurdles ahead now that it looks like we might have a race?

Sherwani sees a world where you can share a screen, folder or an online shopping experience with a friend just as fast as you can share a link today.

He thinks the biggest barrier to overcome is the narrative about what VNCs are good for, but admits there are technical limitations too.

Thus, he wants iTeleport to rethink what the VNC is and repackage the whole experience to make using your desktop through your iPhone “as good as, if not better than,” sitting in front of it.

Big ideas are important, but there are also some bandwidth realities to overcome.

Today, VNCs don’t include sound, and depending on your connection speed at both ends–your desktop and mobile device–there is enough lag to make modern games and HD video look like a flip book.

Also, many people turn their computers off (or close the lid) when they leave the house, which renders the VNC connection useless.

Sherwani concedes these are big issues today, but said that the first step is to let more people see what VNC can do, and to let them share stories of consumer VNC experiences.

With little app makers like iTeleport in the mix with businesses in totally different weight classes, the future of VNC, or maybe we could call it “mobile terminal computing,” is interesting, if a bit murky.

Will users either gravitate toward OnLive’s model of taking a tiny piece of a very big cloud, or will there be a more scaled model, where the OnLives and the iTeleports of the world exist together and users simply choose seamlessly between how much computing power and interactivity they require to fill a given need?

Since we aren’t in the heyday of the teleport yet, please accept this video interview with the iTeleport team as a substitute:

[ See post to watch video ]

OnLive Claims Long-Delayed Patent is Pivotal

Don Clark — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 19:40:47 +0000

Tech entrepreneur Steve Perlman has his name on more than 100 U.S. patents. He is particularly excited about his latest, but miffed at the same time.

His company, OnLive, has pioneered the concept of running fast-action videogames over the Internet without the need for users to own a gaming console or a PC with a fancy graphics card. The software runs on servers OnLive maintains “in the cloud,” as people like to say in Silicon Valley. Those machines handle the chore of rendering sophisticated gaming images and compress them so they can be delivered to any computer with a Web browser, or to an HDTV equipped with a small add-on device OnLive sells.

On Tuesday, OnLive announced that it had received what Perlman says is a fundamental patent that covers that concept. Among other things, claims of the patent discuss a video game server executing a “high twitch-action” videogame, a compression unit, a transceiver to transmit compressed game video to one or more players located over a remote distance.

“This is an industry-changing patent,” Perlman says.

What irks him is that it took eight years to receive it.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Also, view coverage of Steve Perlman demoing OnLive’s capabilities from last week at D: Dive Into Mobile and from last June at D8.

Dive Tech–OnLive Now More Than Just a Game (Video)

Drake Martinet — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 17:49:50 +0000

Way back in June, OnLive demoed its cloud-based mini gaming console in front of a packed house at D8. Today, it is attempting to level-up, announcing a new extension of the OnLive cloud service platform–one that turns just about any device into a console for their cloud system.

Via OnLive, you will be able to virtually run Web sites (and full applications) that far exceed the computing limits of the connected device–think generating 3-D models in Maya on an iPad.

Company representatives will also be demoing use of OnLive on the Samsung Galaxy Tab and showcasing its effort to make online gaming into a spectator sport–by letting you watch things others are doing on OnLive.

Spooky.

[ See post to watch video ]

9:50 am: OnLive takes the stage.

9:50 am: OnLive CEO Steve Perlman says today OnLive is becoming about more than gaming.

He is showcasing how you can run Windows 7 on his iPad, via OnLive’s cloud connection.

9:52 am: Perlman opens Internet Explorer, to a Flash-heavy Mercedes site, on the iPad.

Walt checks it: “So, you are running Windows, and IE, and Flash on the iPad, none of which run natively.”

9:54 am: Perlman, addressing bandwidth, says that the applications are running on a datacenter about 50 miles from San Francisco, but that he expects you could run the same application several thousand miles away.

9:55 am: Walt wonders if Steve Jobs is loving this right now.

9:55 am: Now he brings up a Samsung Galaxy Tab and shows Quicktime video running on the Android device.

9:56 am: Perlman says none of the applications are running natively. He says all that’s happening is a tiny app is running to decompress video.

9:57 am: Perlman is now showing Maya, a $6,000 high performance 3-D editing tool–on the iPad.

9:58 am: Now he is editing a 3-D character, in Maya, on the iPad, while the Galaxy Tab is “spectating” the editing. He mentions the possibilities for collaboration.

Walt asks if the “spectator” can participate in editing.

Not on this beta version, says Perlman.

10:00 am: Perlman claims that OnLive’s collective cloud network is the largest supercomputer in the world.

10:01 am: Walt asks if this is another dagger in the heart of the laptop.

Perlman says that may be the case. He says in the future you’ll need even less computing power than today.

10:03 am: Perlman demonstrates the coup de grace–an iPad with Maya, the Android phone spectating, and the Galaxy Tab running Maya with another iPad spectating.

His point is flexibility and ubiquity.

10:04 am: Walt asks about movies.

Perlman says yes, but OnLive can go much further.

He says OnLive can support the interactivity and extra features like those on a home Blu-ray player.

10:05 am: Walt asks about the business model. Perlman says they make money when they demo another company’s game, through ads, etc.

Perlman says he would rather everyone be able to use this tool than focus on turning a profit.

10:07 am: Perlman closes with an answer to Walt’s question.

“Its not us OR Netflix. Its us AND netflix.”

Perlman, Walt and Kara leave the stage. Next up is Spotify.

Full D8 Demo Video: OnLive

Kara Swisher — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 15:01:03 +0000

As promised, All Things Digital is posting the full videos from our eighth D: All Things Digital conference, held in early June.

Today, please don’t miss this riveting demo of OnLive by longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman.

OnLive is aimed at bringing high-end games to users, streamed from the cloud.

But the idea is much bigger than cloud gaming, since OnLive is essentially the most interesting example of how almost anything can be deployed in this manner.

With lots of patents pending and proprietary compression technology, OnLive will be an interesting and innovative start-up to watch.

So, watch it demo at D8:

[ See post to watch video ]

Want to see it bigger? Click here.

Note: We’ll be posting full D8 videos on Mondays and Thursdays. Next up: The demo for Wordnik.

Cloud-Based Gaming Start-Up OnLive Offers One Year Free Service

Eric Savitz — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 07:00:24 +0000

OnLive, a cloud-based gaming service, announced today that it will offer one year of free service to anyone who signs up to be a founding member before July 15. Members will have the option to sign up for a second year at $4.95 a month. The company will begin activating accounts to pre-registered users on Thursday. The free year is being offered with sponsorship from AT&T (T); ergo, you can sign up at www.onlive.com/att.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

D8 Tech Demo: OnLive

Drake Martinet — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:16:23 +0000

On-demand streaming has crept into nearly every media space, and today, OnLive hopes to open the last door and bring high-end games to users, streamed from the cloud.

Built on more than 100 patents or patents-pending, OnLive plans to deliver games either to the browser via plug-ins or to the TV through a micro set-top box.

Liveblog

Cloud game service OnLive take the stage to demo its pre-release game-delivery system.

10:16 am: Walt joins Kara onstage to talk about the power of cloud computing and to introduce OnLive.

10:17 am: Steve Perlman, CEO and founder of OnLive, comes on and says in two weeks, users will be able to log on and start cloud gaming.

Perlman says gaming is the first offering from OnLive, and that this is the hardest thing to do in the cloud.

Walt reminds the audience that Perlman worked on QuickTime at the young Apple Computer (AAPL) and the early Microsoft (MSFT), among others.

10:19 am: Perlman shows the Web interface for playing and watching games.

He shows that the games play on the computer, even though the full games would not run on the hardware he’s using if it were local.

10:20 am: Perlman says that as long as you are within 1,000 miles of OnLive’s data center, there is no perceptible latency thanks to new, proprietary compression technology.

10:21 am: Perlman shows how OnLive can create and serve huge volumes of 3-D video “brag clips” just as fast as the games.

The whole interface is a movable wall of individual videos.

10:23 am: Now Perlman brings out his “micro-console” to demo on a TV.

He says it’s very inexpensive and that depending on the business model OnLive adopts, he could even offer it for free to users who sign up for the service. According to Perlman, “The electronics inside cost less than the case and connectors.”

10:25 am: Perlman restarts the little black box, which is the size of a large deck of cards.

The interface on the TV micro-console is the same as the Web version.

Walt asks how many users can be online. Perlman says it is scalable to millions of users.

10:27 am: Walt asks what the price is.

Perlman says it will be less than $15 a month, but also hints that access to individual games will add additional costs.

10:28 am: Now Perlman starts an “unauthorized” demo of OnLive on the iPad. No Flash here.

He says the interface OnLive designed is also great for the iPad.

He sends a message to his “friend” who is playing another game, then begins playing a game called Borderlands on the iPad itself.

10:31 am: Perlman says that the game he’s playing wouldn’t play on any hardware in the room (only very high-end gaming consoles and computers).

10:32 am: Now Perlman opens the version for the iPhone–this one doesn’t work quite right, but Perlman says it’s prototype software and should work because to the iPhone, it’s just streaming media.

Walt asks for examples of what else he can deliver besides games.

Perlman answers by saying that the data center OnLive will be using may be the largest supercomputer in the world when it turns on in two weeks.

He says delivering video would be easy. He says OnLive’s microbox can run software that is too complex to run on any computer currently using Microsoft software.

Now he plays a Harry Potter movie on the iPad: No lag in play.

Now Perlman shows something new: A photo-realistic face generated with the same technology that was used to alter Brad Pitt’s face in “Benjamin Button.”

10:37 am: Perlman could keep going, but Walt and Kara bring the demo to a close.

D8 is on a short coffee break–back in a few with Tim Armstrong of AOL (AOL)

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as possible. It is not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

Perlman's Cloud-Based OnLive Gaming Service Goes Live, but Not Until June

Kara Swisher — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:29:44 +0000

Longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman has been ferreting away on a new cloud gaming service called OnLive for a while now.

Finally, it’s got a due date to go live–June 17 at the E3 conference in Los Angeles.

As in OnLive will be live, but it’s not live yet.

Get it?

Perlman announced the launch of the potentially innovative service, which plans to offer high-quality games on any computer or smartphone without a dedicated console unit, in a keynote at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today.

It will include 3-D, since all the rendering is done in the cloud and brought down via streaming to OnLive’s software.

Whether it will be twitchy enough for the ADHD set of gamers is the big question.

In any case, OnLive will cost almost $15 a month as a service, with game prices on top of that. Movies and other community or social networking features are also presumably possible.

I will be talking to the always entertaining Perlman–creator of WebTV and more–later this week about it all.

Until then, here’s the press release:

OnLive to Launch Consumer Game Service on June 17, 2010

US Rollout of First Cloud Gaming Service to Begin During E3 2010 in Los Angeles;

Launch Titles, Pricing Plans and Early Registration Program Announced at GDC 2010

San Francisco, CA–March 10, 2010–OnLive, Inc., the pioneer of on-demand, instant-play video games, today announced that the PC and Mac® versions of its game service will begin rolling out to consumers on June 17, 2010 during the E3 2010 show. The OnLive® Game Service is a revolutionary, on-demand video game platform capable of delivering the latest and most advanced games instantly via a broadband connection on virtually any PC or Mac, via a small browser plug-in, or on an HDTV, via OnLive’s MicroConsole™ TV Adapter. The OnLive Game Service enables an entirely new way to discover, explore, purchase and experience video game content. Additionally, the game service offers instant access to purchase or rent new release games on an à la carte basis from many of the world’s leading publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft®, 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

“This marks a huge milestone for both OnLive and the interactive entertainment landscape as a whole, changing the way that video games are developed, marketed, accessed and played,” said Steve Perlman, Founder and CEO of OnLive. “We are opening the door to incredible experiences for gamers and enormous opportunities for developers and publishers.”

Starting on June 17, 2010, the OnLive Game Service will be available to early registrants throughout the 48 contiguous United States. The initial offering will be supported by a $14.95 monthly service fee, which will provide access to an ever-increasing library of high-end, new-release, instant-play game content without the need to purchase expensive PC gaming or console systems.

Loyalty programs, such as multi-month pricing, and special offers will be announced by the start of E3. For starters, OnLive is announcing an exclusive, pre-registration offer, wherein the first 25,000 qualified registrants will have their OnLive service fee waived for the first three months. For important details regarding the OnLive Pre-registration special offer visit www.onlive.com/special1.

The OnLive Game Service will include standard online game service features such as gamer tags, user profiles, friends, and chat. In addition, an evolving slate of OnLive-exclusive features will include state-of-the-art 3D graphics performance; instant-play free game demos; multiplayer across PC, Mac and TV platforms; Brag Clips™ video capture and posting; massive spectating; always-updated games; cloud-saved games–pause and instantly resume from anywhere, even on a different platform; and much more. Individual game titles will be available for purchase or rental on an à la carte basis, with specific game pricing announced prior to the consumer launch event at E3.

“The OnLive Game Service creates a new opportunity for consumers to play the latest games without spending hundreds of dollars on a hardware system to make it happen,” said Mike McGarvey, COO of OnLive. “As a Mac user myself, I’m excited about the opportunity to help bring high-end gaming to this new and significant market.”

OnLive also confirmed ongoing platform support from the world’s largest and most influential game publishers. While launch titles will be announced prior to E3 in Los Angeles, a few of the anticipated games include Mass Effect 2™, Dragon Age Origins™, Assassin’s Creed® II, Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands™, Borderlands™ and Metro 2033™. OnLive will soon be announcing the availability of its MicroConsole TV Adapter which will bring the OnLive Game Service directly to consumers’ television sets for the first time. An announcement about expected availability will be made later in the year.

OnLive’s digital distribution model, instant-play capability and revolutionary video compression technology offers gamers of all skill levels the ability to experience the newest, most advanced, always-updated games with no downloading, no hardware upgrades, and virtually instant response time. As a result, consumers can enjoy more games more rapidly and with lower overall up-front investment than ever before.

What Happens When Games Go to "The Cloud"

Nick Wingfield — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:00:53 +0000

On Wednesday, a startup called OnLive that’s generating a lot of buzz–and skepticism–in the videogame world raised a new round of financing from AT&T (T), Warner Bros. and others. We spoke to OnLive founder Steve Perlman, a well-known serial entrepreneur, about the investment (which wasn’t quantified) and some of the implications if OnLive or startups like it are successful.

OnLive has developed technology that it says will allow consumers to play graphically rich videogames without owning high-end PCs or consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 that are normally required for such titles. Instead, OnLive plans to run games on powerful remote servers in data centers and pipe high-definition game graphics over the Internet to consumers, who can play them on low-end PCs and Macs or through an inexpensive OnLive device connected to their televisions.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Cloud Gaming?

John Paczkowski — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:00:22 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

WebGameTV

John Paczkowski — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:35:13 +0000

The days of the traditional gaming console are coming to an end–according to entrepreneur Steve Perlman, anyway.

Later today, Perlman–former principal scientist at Apple (AAPL) and the founder of WebTV–will officially unveil OnLive, the online service with which he hopes to upend the $46 billion world-wide videogame market. Seven years in the making, OnLive promises to create an on-demand gaming experience that rivals those offered by dedicated videogame consoles. It’s capable of streaming even the most advanced, CPU-intensive games to television and computer–Macintosh or PC–without lag or a reduction in quality. “We’re providing you with the latest high-end titles, the exact same ones you would see at Target or Best Buy, in the same release windows,” Perlman told USA Today. “But what is really cool is you don’t need any high-end hardware to play them. There’s no physical media. It’s an all-digital platform. You never need to upgrade your equipment at home.”

A compelling proposition. A potentially disruptive one too, if OnLive is able to deliver it with the reliability and ease of use it promises. Said IDC analyst Billy Pidgeon, “It’s a good idea and has potential, but the thing I need reassurance on is being able to deliver this over the network. In games there’s no wiggle room–when you press a button to fire you want to fire,” he said. “But if it works, this could be a disruptive.”