Early attempts at cloud-based video gaming were a flop. Roy Bahat, of OUYA, says it’s still a worthy pursuit, but should be based on a new generation of games built specifically to take advantage of the cloud’s supercomputing strengths. Read more »
The fate of cloud-gaming pioneer OnLive is in question following a report that most of the staff was laid off and the service was closing. The company has denied those reports but hasn’t provided further details. Read more »
Mobile World Congress took place this week, and aside from a few Microsoft-related announcements, the show was all about Android. We saw new phones from all but Samsung, with many slated for Android 4.0. OnLive Desktop launched for Android, bringing Windows to tablets and smartphones. Read more »
G-cluster plans to enter the U.S. market with an on-demand gaming service. The company has secured an unnamed amount of funding from Intel and French mobile carrier SFR to expand its reach beyond home casual gaming and movie streaming into high-end gaming for tablets and smartphones. Read more »
The Game Developers Conference said more than half of its attendees last year were from mobile game development companies and the trend is likely to continue this year as Google, Qualcomm and RIM pour more money into mobile-focused developer days and booths at the show. Read more »
Amazon’s Kindle Fire is the latest example of a growing trend to move traditional computer activities to tablets and smartphones. AlwaysOnPC, a $25 mobile app, connects the Kindle Fire to a cloud instance of Fedora Linux with Open Office, Firefox, Chrome and integrated Dropbox support. Read more »
OnLive’s game service is already available for Android devices, but there’s an iOS version in the works. Here’s a hands on demo with the beta client on an iPad, along with the OnLive wireless controller, which I think brings a much better experience than the touchscreen. Read more »
Sometimes Windows is just what the doctor ordered, and with OnLive’s new Desktop app for iPad, I suspect it’ll be the prescription I’m looking for much more often. Here’s a look at what the fresh new Windows virtualization app for iPad offers. Read more »
The new OnLive Desktop app making its debut at CES this week will let users stream their full-featured — and resource-intensive — Microsoft Office applications to their Apple iPads. The company runs virtualized versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint on its data centers in the cloud. Read more »
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play smartphone, aimed at mobile gamers, has a new twist that could add more appeal: OnLive’s cloud gaming service now supports the slide-out gaming controls on the Android smartphone. Touchscreens certainly work for games, but button-mashing is best done on…. buttons. Read more »
This infographic, courtesy of Savings.com, brings together historical datapoints showing the decreasing cost and size of mobile devices, in conjunction with more capable hardware and services. Can you imagine (or remember) buying a phone for $4,000 in 1982 just for a few voice calls? Read more »
On this week’s audio podcast, Matt and Kevin share more about the Galaxy Nexus and Google Wallet experiences, plus OnLive; a cloud-based game service. There’s talk on the fate of webOS now that HP has open-sourced it. Will it matter in the long run? Read more »
OnLive is taking another big step in its evolution, with the launch of apps for mobile phones and handsets to make any device a gaming device. Users can now play high-quality games on devices with a fraction of the processing power included in high-end gaming PCs. Read more »
Perhaps Netflix has found a friend in its lonely battle against broadband caps, as a U.K. paper is reporting that gamers playing the OnLive service can use up to 20 GB in six hours. Can an outraged gaming community help eliminate broadband caps? Read more »
Nintendo is making a home console that incorporates a tablet, and the Sony PlayStation Vita borrows liberally from this generation of smartphones. But thanks to OnLive, gamers may not have to go looking for devices similar to their iPads and iPhone for a top-tier gaming experience. Read more »
OnLive is a few steps closer to bringing its streaming video game service to new TVs and Blu-ray players, thanks to a partnership with Intel to add its service to chip sets and the release of a universal controller designed to work with various connected devices. Read more »
Happy Cloud, a Cambridge, Mass. startup believes the key to accelerating online gaming of top titles is intelligent progressive downloads that leverage the cloud to make games playable within a few minutes. The goal is to make video game downloads as on-demand as videos on Netflix. Read more »
OnLive has a new iPad client as of yesterday, Dec. 7. It won’t let you play games, but it will let you watch others doing just that. The press release talks about “gaming as a spectator sport,” but that’s the least interesting thing about this app. Read more »
Netflix has grown pretty substantially since launching its subscription streaming service. But pretty soon, it might not be the only game in town; companies like OnLive and Vizio are in negotiations with content owners to launch their own streaming services like the one Netflix has. Read more »
JooJoo Revamps Interface Ahead of Launch, Adds Local Video Playback — and Changes Color; the device formerly known as the TechCrunch tablet plays back Flash video streams and local content stored on a thumb drive, supports H.264 HD and many other codecs. (Engadget) New YouTube App […] Read more »
OnLive made a lot of noise when it first appeared on the scene way back in March at the Game Developer’s Conference of 2009. It’s a service that’s said to be able to make a gaming machine out of any computer that can run the latest […] Read more »
In recent years, virtual worlds (also known as massively multiplayer online games, or MMOs) have shown tremendous growth in terms of user numbers and revenue. However, the market for them is currently in tremendous flux, with the most well-known sub-genre — the subscriber-based fantasy role playing games (MMORPGs) — suffering a growth plateau, due to the dominating success of World of Warcraft. At the same time, user activity in “freemium” virtual worlds continues to explode, most especially in the tween/adolescent market, which is likely to reach a market saturation point soon, though monetization prospects for all but the established players remain uncertain. The explosion of social networks, which share numerous traits with virtual worlds, have created a new potential audience for this genre, while the mass adoption of web plug-ins and smartphones like the iPhone have opened up new markets for the genre.
In this transitional period, many of the best investment and growth opportunities to watch are not the worlds themselves, but the solution providers offering developers the means to better monetize their existing MMOs. Opportunities also exist in niche MMOs that appeal to consumers seeking entertainment outside the established fantasy and kids social MMO space. However, new players that would enter this already crowded market must foster a community of users by rewarding user-created content and continued engagement, while also being architected with multiple revenue streams and play platforms. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Today everyone who follows the gaming industry is talking about OnLive, an upcoming service incubated by Rearden, the venture company of Web TV Founder Steve Perlman. The system, which streams high-end video games to pretty much any PC, Mac, or TV with a broadband connection, was […] Read more »
