If you see this game console as just another casual gaming avenue, you’d be wrong. There is a certain sense of gravitas to the ONMO+ controller-esque console, once the foundations become clear. The experience plugs into the popular Steam gaming distribution service. Secondly, as Rahul Raina, Executive Vice President - Gaming at ONMO confirms to HT, the server farm runs the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics. What you get is essentially something that looks like a gaming controller, and that’s about it. The ONMO+ app is key, and since it is web browser based on computing devices and as an app elsewhere, it means I was able to experience the games on an Apple Mac Studio, an HP laptop running Windows 11, a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 and a Xiaomi S Mini LED TV 75 smart TV. That is the widest compatibility possible.
This sort of compatibility width is rare for gaming platforms, game titles and consoles themselves. The ONMO+ console is priced at ₹4,999 and that is tremendous value for a device that can run Cricket 26, Cyberpunk 2077, Death Standing: Director’s Cut, God of War and Dune Awakening, among others. Grand Theft Auto V is playable, which lends hope for the upcoming, and much-awaited GTA 6 as well. A reason for the pricing is, high-end specs don’t need to be delivered to each console—they underline the cloud. There is a second layer to the ONMO+ console proposition: the Essential Pass subscription that costs ₹399 per month (a certain tenure subscription is also bundled at purchase time).
The conundrum here is, given current memory, storage and component prices, how tough will it be for ONMO to maintain this pricing for the console? Raina is very clear that they will “continue on this price”. He says, “we’ve spent the past year working in close collaboration with gaming platforms, chip makers and server suppliers, and that is holding us in pretty good stead for now.” As for any possibility of variation, that’d only happen with the Essential Pass subscription, but Raina is clear that it will not breach the ₹500 per mark in any case. Brave clarity, at a time when Sony’s PlayStation 5 console has seen price hikes of around ₹10,000 at retailers (it is a miracle if the console is even available, to say the least).
The ONMO+ console simply works. It takes a couple of minutes per device to set up the app and pair the controller to start playing. Since a major chunk of the gaming is essentially server-side, there is no waiting for hours for a game download to complete, before the fun can begin. This also negates any concerns about local storage. At this time, the gaming is in Full HD resolution, and the company has plans for 4K gaming as well. That should happen soon, and we may see a higher tier subscription to unlock that—though plans for pricing are yet to be finalised.
{{/usCountry}}The ONMO+ console simply works. It takes a couple of minutes per device to set up the app and pair the controller to start playing. Since a major chunk of the gaming is essentially server-side, there is no waiting for hours for a game download to complete, before the fun can begin. This also negates any concerns about local storage. At this time, the gaming is in Full HD resolution, and the company has plans for 4K gaming as well. That should happen soon, and we may see a higher tier subscription to unlock that—though plans for pricing are yet to be finalised.
{{/usCountry}}At this moment, the ONMO+ console is equally adept at casual gaming, and also premium games. That’s a balance which should do well in a household for example, where users will have different gaming preferences and proficiencies. At this point, I must mention that more racing and sports games are needed. The FIFA franchise, the F1 game titles and even the likes of Asphalt need to be brought on board. ONMO adds games every month, after a series of optimisations that may be required. These are essentially Windows games delivered via the service.
There is a reason to circle back to the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics. The core specs of these GPUs point to power, the kind even it’s successors don’t possess—24GB GDDR6 VRAM, 960GB/s max memory bandwidth, memory speeds up to 20Gbps, 96 compute units with 6,144 stream processors. The GPU lowdown was necessary, to underline the potential of the ONMO+ console, which it must deliver on in the coming months. As Raina points out, they have a system in place that is significantly powerful, and points to the compatibility requirements of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI (or GTA 6) as an illustration.
There is however a conundrum that ONMO has to contend with—when the times comes to upgrade these GPUs across the servers, they’ll be contending with successors that have less VRAM (that’s a factor of the geopolitical situation, impacting all things compute).
The ONMO+ console itself is well built. I got the early Founders Edition console, which has red inserts on the RB and LB triggers. The built-in battery can last through around 20 hours of gaming on a charge, with vibration feedback enabled, and the USB-C interface makes charging quite easy. Raina notes that it is an even split between smartphones, computing devices and TVs, in terms of where buyers are gaming with the console. The smartphone’s popularity surprises him, though he notes a very India specific challenge: older Android TVs need extra work regarding app optimisation.
The proposition of the ONMO+ console is simple and clear. There is a lot of potential for what is essentially a Windows gaming device. Raina confirms that work is in progress to add more game services apart from Steam—though it is early to comment since they are still being worked out, he does note that EA, Ubisoft Connect and even Microsoft GamePass are additions that customers expect. Mind you, when any and most of these also arrive on the ONMO+ console, the value proposition will skyrocket. For the simplicity of setting this up and the ease of switching devices, a full-fledged premium gaming experience is simply too good to ignore. And it will be even more so, if ONMO’s plans work out as intended.