The founder of cloud gaming service OnLive has told TechRadar that he does not see his offering as a direct competitor to Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.
OnLive has just launched in the UK, and one iteration will be a small box that allows people to play games through their televisions with a console-like controller.
However, founder and CEO Steve Perlman insists that he does not see OnLive as a competitor, suggesting that the service could actually run through the PlayStation and Xbox consoles.
Check out our hands on: OnLive video to see what we think of the service:
Interesting times
"Well it's been interesting in that when the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 came out in 2005 they clearly were head-to-head competitors and there really wasn't anything that they would do for each other," said Perlman.
"We're not like that. People will use OnLive – and its free service for demos – to check out a game and see if they like it and then they may go and pick up the Xbox 360 disc if they want to and we're perfectly okay with that.
"So we're not a direct competitor and you could easily run OnLive on an Xbox 360 or PS3, but clearly you could not run one of the other platforms on the other one."
Community
"I think opportunity here is to look at OnLive as a distribution system and as a community and as a service unifying principal across all these platforms."
Of course, when you provide a set-top box, the latest games and insist that the experience is comparable with consoles, it's clear that you are likely to be a competitor.
And if uptake in the UK is strong then it will be fascinating to see how Microsoft and Sony respond.
