OnLive game streaming platform to be bundled with BT Broadband in the UK

While it once seemed like an impossible pipe-dream, OnLive‘s game streaming service now has the backing of at least one heavyweight partner, BT.

BT have signed an exclusive partnership deal with the cloud gaming company, obtaining a 2.6 per cent share in the company and the rights to bundle it in with their BT Broadband packages.

“Entertainment is going to be at the heart of what we offer customers in the future,” said CEO of BT Retail, Gavin Patterson.

“It’s great for our customers – they’ll have access to a huge catalogue of games, available instantly on their TV or PC without expensive hardware.”

OnLive’s CEO Steve Perlman also spoke of the potential of this new partnership:

“The UK market is extremely important to OnLive and our videogame publishing partners as we expand into Europe. We view BT as the ideal UK partner. As gamers are moving increasingly to online game distribution, OnLive delivers video games as a pure form of online media, playable instantly on almost any video-capable device attached to the internet.

“The implications are nothing short of transformative to video games and in time, all interactive media. OnLive is delighted to be pioneering this revolutionary technology in the UK together with BT.”

Due to launch later this year, OnLive allows even modest PCs to play games with high specifications. It does this by housing the games on remote super-PCs, which send a stream of the in-game video back to the player at home. In effect, your button presses and mouse clicks are turned into a video stream of what is being generated on the remote PC, meaning all the difficult processing is done elsewhere.

If subscription fees are reasonable, OnLive could truly revolutionise PC gaming.