OnLive is one of the more intriguing start ups that might have a major impact on gaming in the near future. As it turns out, OnLive CEO Steve Perlman thinks the platform has a lot of potential for advertisers as well.
We can have games that are ad-supported. We can also have games that are supported as some kind of promotion related to a product, said Perlman. Say someone has a car that they’re selling and they want to promote the new antilock brakes, they might have a driving game that plays instantly. OnLive is delivered through browsers, and it can run as an executable, and it can also be delivered through apps through cell phones or tables, or integrated into consumer electronic devices. We showed it at E3 working on iPads, iPhones, and on Android devices, and of course on the MicroConsole to the TV. You’ll see OnLive built into TV’s, and you’ll see OnLive built into set-top boxes.
As far as having embedded ads in Web sites, a lot of people run OnLive from their desktop, but a lot of people will connect to the service from the OnLive Web page, he continued. It should be pretty obvious that it’s easy for us to embed a link in a Web page that makes a game run. The reason we haven’t done that yet is we’ve been paddling as fast as we can as far as the basic service.
You will see in time Web pages that people can just click on a link and they instantly play a game, but there are other alternatives, he detailed. If you finish a 30-minute demo in the OnLive service, for example, we can include a link to download the game, maybe in partnership with Steam or Direct2Drive, or maybe with the publisher itself. Then there will be another option to refer to GameStop or Amazon, or Toys R Us, which would either tell you what store has the thing in stock or has a used copy of it, or you can buy it directly.”
Source: CNet
