OnLive not threatened by PlayStation Now, Steam Machines

The cloud-gaming market is going to be so massive that OnLive, PlayStation Now, and others can co-exist, according to OnLive executive chairman Mark Jung. Speaking with GameSpot today about the service's new suite of features, we asked if his company is worried about PlayStation Now. His answer was blunt.

"No," Jung said. "I think Sony's acquisition of Gaikai and the launch of their service is only a validation of how important the cloud-gaming marketplace is. This is such a big opportunity that we'd be hard pressed to say that any one company could possibly capitalize on all of it."

Though PlayStation Now and OnLive are ostensibly alike, Jung contends that OnLive won't be faced with the same strictures of Sony's service.

"And frankly, with Gaikai and that acquisition, that's going to have very much of a Sony feel, in a Sony-closed environment," Jung said. "They have specific goals and objectives for that service for migration or legacy application or platform support for their own titles. They have their hands full in what they have to do. And building out all the data centers is not going to be simple."

"And frankly, with Gaikai and that acquisition, that's going to have very much of a Sony feel, in a Sony-closed environment" -- OnLive executive chairman Mark Jung

Overall, Jung said PlayStation Now is "not an issue to us," and pointed out that OnLive won't spend its time worrying about the competition because, "We have plenty of market opportunity facing us that we're just trying to get our hands around [laughs]."

Part of this market opportunity extends beyond gaming--far beyond. The possibilities for cloud-based commercial applications are "almost unlimited," he said, noting that anything graphics-rich you can imagine can be delivered via the cloud to "roaming devices" like smartphones and tablets.

OnLive has already seen "significant interest" from the military and government, as well as the medical and financial fields, Jung said. Of course, OnLive has a number of competitors who are no doubt vying for the same kinds of opportunities and contracts. But Jung said OnLive's technology is "far superior" to any competitive technology or specific applications for graphics streaming.

"So we seem to be the top choice from a technical standpoint," Jung said.

We also quizzed OnLive about Steam Machines and what kind of impact they might have on the company's business considering Valve recently introduced in-home streaming. Vice president of product and marketing Rick Sanchez described Valve's new system as a "really fabulous platform," but said what OnLive offers is vastly different.

"At least publicly, Valve has said that Steam Machines are about being in the living room. They want their device there in the home and they want to do in-home streaming from those devices," Sanchez said. "What we offer is something very, very different though. We enable you to take your game library and take them with you wherever you go. Streaming out of the home and into the Internet and to another location is a very very different thing than in-home streaming."

Whatever the case, OnLive sees massive potential for cloud-powered experiences across industries.

"Cloud overall is increasing in terms of relative importance worldwide across all technical industries," Jung said. "I think it's inevitable that almost everything will be streamed from the cloud."