Valve Interested in OnLive Cloud Gaming

Valve, the owner of the massively popular Steam digital distribution service on the PC, is quite interested in OnLive, and made suggestions to the cloud gaming company in terms of what features it should target, at least according to OnLive vice president of engineering, Joe Bentley.

OnLive, together with a few other companies, including Gaikai, are pushing for the gaming industry to adopt cloud solutions, focusing on streaming content to the player, not making him buy consoles or powerful PCs in order to enjoy a game.

While such services are becoming popular, as well as threatening to regular gaming companies, OnLive insists that at least Valve has been extremely open with the cloud gaming group, especially its boss, Gabe Newell.

"Gabe and his team really like what we're doing," said Bentley to CVG. "I can't go into specifics of any conversations we've had but we have had conversations with everybody in the industry. They really dig OnLive. Gabe is a funny guy because he's really not competitive - very similar to Randy [Pitchford]. He sees us a complementary in a lot of different ways."

The OnLive executive emphasized that Valve is passionate about Steam, as well about making games like that Portal 2, which appeared for all sorts of platforms, from its own digital service for the PC to consoles like the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

"He's really fascinated with our features and given us a lot of suggestions, they've got similar features coming out and we've chatted about really innovative ideas. I regard him and the company as friends. Sure we're going to have other people doing similar things, but the industry is big enough. We're only a 200 person start-up, we don't need to own it all, there's something for everybody."

OnLive is currently offering its service as a subscription, from computers, but people can also buy a dedicated micro-console that simplifies the whole cloud gaming experience.