Two days ago, OnLive was awarded a patent on an “apparatus and method for wireless video gaming,” giving the company a leg up in the cloud-based gaming market. Dave Perry, CEO of Gaikai, says his company isn’t worried about the fallout, because its service operates in a different way. Both services do game rendering on the server-side and then stream the images to the client, but Gaikai remains confident moving forward.
“We share OnLive’s vision that streamed gaming is a key element of the future of the video game industry,” said Perry in a statement. “We do not expect the general concept of remote gaming to be patentable, as many of us played remote games in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Neither Gaikai nor OnLive were the first to develop technology in this area.”
“Gaikai has filed a number of patents regarding cloud-based gaming. We have also been careful to avoid technology where we think that other companies may develop valid patent rights,” he continued. “With regard to OnLive’s new patent, we are not concerned with making set-top boxes, which is the focus of OnLive’s patent, because from the beginning we decided to go frictionless and not require a specific hardware configuration. As a consequence, you are witnessing the evolution of two companies with notably different business models. ”
Perry has been rather clear on the differences of the two services in the past, stating that Gaikai is more industry-facing, versus OnLive’s clear consumer focus.
“Nearly everything is different in the ways that we approach the consumer marketplace,” said Perry.
[Via VentureBeat]
