OnLive To Offer Movie Streaming

[Skeithex]

According to an article from Reuters, the non-console gaming service OnLive has plans to stream movies and television shows. The company says it is in talks with major movie and TV studios, and will begin to stream TV and movies next year.

"Streaming technology is available to anybody," OnLive Chief Executive Steve Perlman said, "We want to work with the studios. All of these guys want to offer content, we're just here to distribute."

"OnLive can deliver any experience that Netflix can," he said.

No information about movie pricing or how many titles will be showing on the service has been revealed, although the game-only OnLive plan costs $9.99 a month.

If I were at Netflix, the current streaming behemoth, I wouldn't be sweating too hard about OnLive. In a certain sense, it's not true that OnLive offers any experience Netflix can, because Netflix is already available everywhere. There's a huge advantage to being entrenched in the ground floor of a technology, and that's definitely the position that Netflix is in. Right now, you can already stream flicks from the service on your home computer, iPhone, iPad, and all major consoles for nothing more than your regular subscription price, which, by the way, is a couple bucks cheaper than OnLive, if you sign up for the streaming-only option. So, as an end-user, the last thing I want to do is switch from a service/technology I'm already familiar with and already love to something else... so whatever OnLive ends up offering would have to be signifcantly better than Netflix's service.

To be fair, though, OnLive's main deal is video games, not movies, a focus the company plans to keep in place, so the movie-streaming thing might prove to be a side dish to the main course.

source

seems kind of pointless unless onlive pulls a wal-mart on netfilx.

[froggyboy604]

Indeed, if the price is great and with a good movie selection it might be good.