Transgaming says "jitters" spell doom for OnLive

Toronto-based streaming games tech company TransGaming has said performance issues will be the death of rival services like OnLive.

"The problem, I feel, is that if I'm playing Call Of Duty and I know that on my PlayStation 3 it's an amazing, uninterrupted experience, the minute I get jitters with OnLive, or any kind of stuttering, that's it, I'm going to stop," CEO Vikas Gupta told GamesIndustry.

"These aren't the sort of games where you can have that level of delay or unpredictable performance."

Transgaming's own offering, Game Tree TV, is apparently immune to these problems on account of being built specifically for one platform - Internet-capable TVs. The company's first partner, French ISP Free, expects to have 5 million subscribers by the end of next year.

Gupta also cast doubt on OnLive's ability to make money.

"We've looked at OnLive's model and we don't believe it's sustainable. We don't believe they can make money on it," he said.

"We know what they're making from a distribution fee perspective, because that's their model... So EA says here's a game, and that game retails for $50. We know that they're only making x percent, and within that margin there's no way they can make money, given their operating expenditure, as well as the initial capital expenditure in order to get that data centre up and running."

Before revealing its Internet TV games delivery service in early 2010, Transgaming was best known for several porting technologies and a number of high-profile Mac ports.

Thanks, CVG.