Just a few weeks ago, competing cloud gaming service Gaikai had found itself under the wing of Sony to the tune of a cool $380 million; leaving observers to question where OnLive would make its home.
Well, one place that you’ll certainly see OnLive is on the Android powered Ouya home console, since a deal has been reached between Onlive and Ouya; a hardware venture funded through the popular crowd funding medium of Kickstarter.
As of current writing, the Kickstarter has 43,405 followers and has amassed $5,549,134 in funding.
That’s some $4,599,134 clear of their funding goal of $950,000. The main thrust of the Ouya Kickstarter is that it empowers enterprising and imaginative folk to create their own Android powered games within their homes as the Ouya console is able to ship with a very cheap SDK in order to enable such splendid bedroom coding aspirations.
The particulars of the OnLive deal mean that Ouya owners will have instant access to a streaming library of hundreds of games from over 80 publishers at launch. The deal also includes the OnLive demo functionality; allowing you to demo any game in their library for 30 minutes without incurring any cost whatsoever.
In addition to the above, you’ll also be able to transfer your OUYA OnLive gaming experience from the home console to your Android phones, tablets, PC’s and Mac’s.
Obviously elated about the deal, OnLive UK boss Bruce Grove had this to say: “When OnLive first heard about Ouya, we were excited to see console gaming becoming more available and open. Like Ouya, we came to gaming with a new vision for making top-quality gaming accessible to more people, and we continue to look for ways to expand on that vision. Ouya is rethinking the console business, making waves by using standard technology to make gaming for your living room accessible, affordable and more innovative than ever. In OnLive’s case, we pioneered a groundbreaking, cloud-based system that instantly delivers games to any device on demand.”
Great stuff, so as well as being able to play Android titles and the latest homebrew games using the Android OS, you also have full access to the OnLive cloud gaming service too. A pretty versatile, well-rounded offering for a $99/£69 console I’d say.
The announcement of the partnership with the cloud gaming specialist also coincides with the full reveal of the controller for the Ouya console, which you can see below along with a picture of the console itself.
Go nuts:
Just look at that pad will you. Its like somebody took a look at the PS3 pad, used that as their inspiration and suddenly had a common-sense brain aneurysm and decided to put the analogue sticks in the correct place.
The Android powered Ouya console is due to ship sometime in March 2013 for $99/£69 respectively.
