Valve 'really likes' OnLive

By Tim Ingham for computerandvideogames.com

Far from spurning OnLive as a worrying threat to his Steam business, Valve boss Gabe Newell "really likes" the games-on-demand service. At least, that's according to OnLive.

The Cloud gaming company has told CVG that it has engaged in "conversations" with Valve boss Gabe Newell about working more closely together, and that it considers the exec and his business as "friends".

And that's not all - Valve has even given the California-based start-up advice on what to include in the future feature set of its service.

"Gabe and his team really like what we're doing," said OnLive VP of Engineering Joe Bentley. "I can't go into specifics of any conversations we've had but we have had conversations with everybody in the industry. They really dig OnLive. Gabe is a funny guy because he's really not competitive - very similar to Randy [Pitchford]. He sees us a complementary in a lot of different ways.

"If you get to know Valve as a company, Steam was something that they just had to do because nobody else was handling a decent digital distribution model. Gabe and his team's hearts are really in making games like Portal 2 and so forth. If you see where Portal 2 is, it's on every other platform.

"If Gabe was so intent on Steam's dominance he would make it exclusive on Steam, but that's not what he is. He's about making the best quality games out there.

"He's really fascinated with our features and given us a lot of suggestions, they've got similar features coming out and we've chatted about really innovative ideas. I regard him and the company as friends. Sure we're going to have other people doing similar things, but the industry is big enough. We're only a 200 person start-up, we don't need to own it all, there's something for everybody."

OnLive showed its service off on a range of mobile devices at E3 earlier this month, including iPad. Bentley showed CVG how the company's controller will soon sync wirelessly with most popular tablets on the market. (See below for a video of OnLive CEO Steve Perlman demonstrating the tech in Los Angeles.)

Bentley told us: "For me, Steam can't really take their game to that mobile level... Gabe [Newell] walks around with his iPad so he sees OnLive and maybe thinks about how he can get Portal out to the world to the mobile market without compromises."

UK gamers can already sign up to OnLive ahead of its launch .

BT has the exclusive rights to bundle OnLive together with its broadband service offerings in the UK, although customers will also have the option to order directly from OnLive to run over any UK ISP.