OnLive sign-ups "far bigger than expected"

Cloud gaming service OnLive has been a hit at launch, according to CEO Steve Perlman.

"We got hit with a far bigger wave of people wanting to get on than we expected," he told CNET. "We literally ran out of floor space in our data centres, but we just literally emergency-moved racks to [other centres] and brought in fiber and turned it on."

He refused to divulge subscriber numbers, but claimed "we're far beyond what we had projected."

Perlman responded to CNET's various criticisms of the service to date, repeatedly implying that OnLive worked alongside rather than instead of more traditional gaming platforms.

"If you're a hardcore gamer and you've got a big rig and you want the highest quality graphics than OnLive is not the place where you're going to play your high-end game. Then again, to not have a huge download in order to trial something... Just click OnLive and give it a go. If you like it, terrific. Download the thing from Steam or order a copy on DVD."

He went on to address concerns that, unlike physical media, OnLive games could be turned off, denying access to those who had paid. Apparently hardware obsolescence rather than licensing or server costs was the only issue there. "If a game is tied to a particular Nvidia or ATI card, or if it's relying on a particular version of Windows with different drivers, we can't be sure that those will continue to be available as our servers age and need to be replaced. But… I think the probability of us pulling a game in three years is on the order of 0.1 percent."

While an OnLive subscription is free for the time being, that is set to change in the future. "It's not going to be that expensive," pledged Perlman.

He also went further into the service's future business model: "You'll see OnLive built into TVs, and you'll see OnLive built into set-top boxes... We'll figure out what the right timing is for the iPad, the iPhone, and the Android. Nobody can promise that Apple is going to permit an application to run, and we haven't submitted it yet.

"I'm optimistic they will, but if not, it will be available on the Android. It works very well on both the iPad and the iPhone, with the caveat being that …the publishers need to make some modifications to the controls for the touch interface."

Perlman was not prepared to reveal pricing details for the upcoming MicroConsole, a device which plugs directly into an HDTV, but claimed "we want to get it out as inexpensively as we can."

The next priority for the service, though, was supporting wi-fi. "If we have the complexities of people's home internet service, and then we compound that with the interference that's happening with wireless, it's very difficult for us to diagnose what's going on." However, he claimed this would be fixed in the Autumn.

In terms of competing with other consoles' current talking points, he was convinced OnLive "does support motion control" if the right USB peripherals were connected, and claimed that 3D would simply require the TV, glasses and enough stereoscopic content.