When I read about the OnLive service being demoed at the GDC, I didn’t believe it.

In a nutshell, the game runs on their expensive hardware instead of your inexpensive laptop or set-top box. Your controller input goes to their machines over the Internet. Video of what’s happening gets streamed back to your tv or computer.

To me, it raises a lot of questions, like “How is demoing this on a LAN at GDC even remotely comparable to the latency problems you’d have to solve for the Internet?” and “If you’ve invented a 200-to-1 compression scheme that works with hi-def video, why are you wasting your time with remote video gaming?” It looked to me like a Phantom-esque play for investor dollars.

I fired off e-mails to several major publishers that news outlets have identified as having distribution deals with OnLive, asking them to confirm or deny. I’ll be honest, I expected them to say was “We expressed interest, but don’t have a concrete agreement.”

Apparently I was wrong. Here’s what Ubisoft sent:

Confirmed.

-Jaime Cottini

Electronic Arts was even more explicit.

EA has an agreement to provide titles for the OnLive Service – Burnout, Mirror’s Edge and other games from EA and EA Partners will accompany the launch of OnLive. We are eager to see if consumers embrace a subscription service for PC games, and we look forward to the new customers that OnLive can bring to gaming.

-Holly Rockwood

I’m still pretty skeptical, but apparently EA and Ubisoft think OnLive can deliver what it promises. 

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