OnLive will be coming to a Google TV near you, thanks to a deal announced today between the cloud gaming service and chipmaker Marvell.
OnLive, which provides access to titles like LA Noire, Batman: Arkham City and Civilization V, will make use of Marvell’s new ARMADA 1500 HD Media SoC to provide “hundreds of high-end video games directly from the cloud to PCs, Macs, TVs, tablets and now to Google TV, with no game console necessary,” quoth the press blurb.
Sony’s NSZ-GS7 and NSZ-GS9 Google TV devices use Marvell dual-core chips, meaning they ought to get OnLive support along the way; these are the first two Google TV devices destined for the UK so we’d hope so.
“OnLive’s focus is to make the highest quality gaming accessible to everyone, anywhere and anytime they want it. With Marvell under the hood, we are able to deliver the highest-quality, on-demand gaming experience on groundbreaking devices and systems like Google TV,” said Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder and CEO.
Weili Dai, Co-Founder of Marvell added; “I believe this is a major breakthrough that demonstrates Google TV’s progress in addressing the interactive big screen for any type of live content. We are thrilled to collaborate with OnLive in transforming any TV with gaming capabilities.”
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Marvell’s signed up to work with Google on the next generation of Google TV boxes, so this means that OnLive support is firmly part of the furniture. We just need to wait for the Google TV app to materialise now.
If you’re not swayed by Google TV (perhaps with good reason) but you want to play OnLive games through your TV then you could connect your Android phone or tablet to your TV via HDMI and use a wireless controller to play this way, or use your laptop to the same effect.
BT, which has a stake in OnLive, may well be bundling access with its future YouView boxes as it has done with BT Vision. OnLive requires download speeds of at least 3Mbps in order to work; the same minimum speeds for YouView’s video on-demand content to work.
Until the first Google TVs land in the UK and BT makes its intentions clear, we’re otherwise stuck with the waiting game regarding OnLive on our TVs. Of course you could always approach the whole OnLive/gaming on you TV thing from another angle and invest in an OUYA console…
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