Maggie Cheng via Wall Street Journal, this will "strengthen its gaming capabilities and help HTC tap into increasing demand for games on smartphones" -- yep, smartphones. HTC also announced it has acquired London-based Saffron Digital for about $48.6 million, although it said the buyout shouldn't affect deals with its current content partners including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, and Samsung. We don't think the OnLive investment will stop the cloud gaming company from pushing its way onto as many platforms as (in)humanly possible

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/htc-to-invest-40-million-into-onlive-to-help-with-games-on-smar/

Keep thinking that smartphone gaming isn't relevant.

After getting a smartphone myself, I can admit that I think handheld gaming is headed for this direction.

Could we see OnLive coupled with Xperia Play?

On live in my mind is still the biggest potential threat to the console market. This along with recent news of a subcription package I think demonstrates the potential On live has has of developing a serious threat to the console model.

Onlive will never take off. People like to actually own their games.

Which is why I think Sony and Microsoft may be the two companies taking the correct steps so far.

Microsoft incorporating LIVE into their phones and SONY adding dedicated gamepads to their phones.

If OnLive grows, WM7 survives, WM7 phones get dedicated gaming pads and SONY incorporates PSN into their Android based phones do you think we could see a shift out of Nintendo's favor in the handheld market?

I know many would say "no", but I also think that those same people may be under estimating the smartphone gaming market.

It really does have incredible potential and could well be the future of handheld gaming.

I don't think that hold as much truth in handheld gaming as it does home console gaming.

Just look at mobile gaming sales, not to mention piracy rates on handhelds as opposed to home consoles.

If OnLive comes to mobiles and mobiles offer the same control layouts of hardware such as the Xperia Play and OnLive indeed could offer PC Like graphics due to cloud and streaming, then I think the sky is the limit, especially with the new subscription.

Don't underestimate the appeal of downloadable gaming on mobiles.

There is a reason why Reggie had something to say about these super cheap titles.

They sell better. Angry birds for example can be grabbed free of charge, downloaded over 15M times and estimated to make over $1M/month in ad revenues.

It will only continue to grow.

Free and/or super cheap games that bring in money due to advertising. 

If you would rather pay $50 than $5, more power to you.

Shit, they can have their games pirated and still make money thanks to ads.

i agree

Go HTC, And Go Windows phone 7, lol

They also used to like owning music and films too.