OnLive CEO: Faster broadband leads to greater piracy

Steve Perlman, CEO of OnLive, told attendees during his session at DICE that faster broadband will lead to higher levels of piracy.

Citing the music and video industries, which have run-ins pirates, Perlman says that videogame makers should learn from such mistakes others made in the past.

"Stop just a minute - that was something that the music folks thought, that the video folks thought - the pirates are always one step ahead of that," he told the crowd. "Music was the first 'now' media and are they [video] the next music industry?"

Explaining how the terminology associated with these medias has changed, Perlman said that before, when people heard music, they asked what band it was or what CD it was. Now they just go on iTunes or look for a link online - same with movies and video.

"I don't know anybody that watches live TV any more, it's all time-shifted," he said.

Guess we're a bit old fashioned then and don't live in the world of tomorrow like Perlman. We watch TV all the time that has not been "taped" to our DVR.

His biggest example of the shift in times, was sharing his belief that "physical media is in rapid decline" and "downloaded media is past its peak".

Therefore, OnLive will be there for the shift as videogames are an altogether "different beast," he said, right before he launched a tech demo of OnLive, which is now in Beta.

"The lowest-capability server we have right now is many more times the capability of an Xbox 360," he said, adding that the servers would get upgraded every six months, keeping consumer from having to spend money on hardware updates.

This should help with those reported latency issues.

Thanks, GI.biz.