OnLive hardware deal to grow total addressable market by 75m

Cloud gaming service OnLive will add a total addressable market of 75 million consumers by the end of the year through hardware deals, according to CEO Steve Perlman.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz at E3 this week, the executive confirmed that partnerships with TV manufacturers - like the Intel deal inked last week - will see the OnLive gaming system stealthily added to Blu-ray and TV hardware.

"We expect, and given estimates from the manufacturers, about 25 million internet TVs and about 50 million Blu-ray players," said Perlman.

"Really every hardware manufacturer wants OnLive built in because it adds value, and the minute one of them has it they all feel that it's a potential reason not to buy a TV if they don't have it. And it adds no cost to their TV."

"There's a lot of TVs being built now with Intel silicon in them - every Google TV has Intel silicon built in," he added.

Although not discussing specific partners, he did say that deals with manufacturers for Europe and other regions were already in place, and he hopes when OnLive officially launches in the UK this autumn it will be available in TVs, as well as through the MicroConsole and other formats.

"Our expectation is that we'll launch in the UK and you'll be able to get the TV with OnLive built into it. Combine that with iPads and Android tablets, PC, Macs and the OnLive Game System, it becomes a pretty large total addressable market."

OnLive thinks more like a media business than games company, said Perlman, where it can bring triple-A PC games to a wider market of portable and home screens.

"If we were a TV network they would talk about 'TAM' - total addressable market. Because anything can carry a TV network - satellite TV, cable TV, broadcast TV or you can send it over the internet.

"But with video games when you talk about total addressable market, what you're always talking about is how many Xbox 360's or how many PlayStation 3's are out there. OnLive is different, it's much more similar to a television channel or Netflix or LoveFilm.

"People will begin to think of video games not as a type of software tied to a particular platform, but begin to think of video games as a type of media, in the same way they think about television, music or movies," he added.

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