HTC Invests $40 Million In OnLive 48
Smartphone-maker HTC has invested a significant chunk of change into cloud gaming service OnLive, raising speculation that the service could be headed for mobile devices. "At the D8 conference in June 2010, one of the most impressive demonstrations was a PC game running on an Apple iPad tablet via the OnLive service. HTC has yet to announce a tablet, although a recent report by DigiTmes said that HTC will ship a tablet at about the time that the Motorola Xoom launches." The deal comes alongside HTC's acquisition of a company involved with mobile video-on-demand, pointing to a renewed interest in bringing more types of content to mobile customers
Re:How would this work? (Score:4, Interesting)
You're missing the bigger picture.
Imagine a top of the line HTC tablet with a slide out joypad or included BT joypad, hardware optimised / accelerated stream decoding etc. that 'plug and play's anything from onlive. Sure you've still got game interface issues but as the portable gaming market grows more and more games will be designed with portables in mind, even AAA titles eventually. OK so 3G or 4G streaming online still sounds like scifi (that extra 100+ms latency.... oooooh) but could work very well with wifi. How about a Motorola atrix style dock next to your TV? Suddenly you have a tablet that doubles as an portable onlive machine that can dock into your HDTV for a full onlive experience, or you can take it round to your mates place.
Without knowing HTC's balance sheet and cashflow don't know if 40 million is a big number for them but this could be far from a niche within a niche.