Cloud-Gaming Service Set for Thursday Launch

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By Kevin Parrish
published

The OnLive streaming PC game service is launching Thursday.

PC gaming will officially move into the cloud thanks to Thursday's launch of the OnLive service for PC and Mac. The company--OnLive Inc.--announced its launch plans on Tuesday during E3 2010 and includes a limited-time and limited-availability 1-Year Free Founding Member Program for qualified users, backed by AT&T. Interested gamers can now head over to the official website and sign up to be placed on the waiting list. After the first free year, participants will receive a discount for the optional second year, costing $5 per month.

"The incredible support we've received from our publishing partners has been instrumental in helping us get OnLive into people's homes," said Mike McGarvey, COO of OnLive. "These partnerships provide us with the great games we require to deliver the Just Play experience which introduces instant access and play functionality for the first time."

As for the initial games, OnLive will offer twenty-three hot titles including the following:

  • Assassin's Creed II (Ubisoft)
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum (Square Enix / Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)
  • Borderlands (Take Two Interactive Entertainment)
  • Dragon Age: Origins (Electronic Arts)
  • Just Cause 2 (Square Enix)
  • Mass Effect 2 (Electronic Arts)
  • NBA 2K10 (Take Two Interactive Entertainment)
  • Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Ubisoft)
  • Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction (Ubisoft)
  • Unreal Tournament III (Epic)

According to the company, the service will also offer new games as they are released including F.E.A.R. 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Alpha Protocol, and more. All in all, more than twenty-five publishing partners have signed up to offer games. Eventually OnLive will migrate to HDTVs via OnLive's MicroControle TV adapter, and possibly pose as a viable threat to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Kevin Parrish
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69 Comments Comment from the forums
  • yzfr1guy
    Join the Cloud for everything in your lives, your government urges you to! :P
    Reply
  • tapnick
    This is one of those things where I'm just going to have to see it in action first.
    Reply
  • Transmaniacon
    tokenzand you only need 2 Fios lines to use it. Also if you shoot it takes 3 second to hit the target. So basically it will be really cool dodgeball. or laggy C.O.D. Take your pic
    Yea I can't see this becoming practical until FIOS is a commonplace.
    Reply
  • bildo123
    Is it me, or is there little icon an optical illusion. The ribbon doesn't end up on the same side if you follow it from the top.

    Also, for $5 you can play all those games per month?
    Reply
  • tokenz
    and you only need 2 Fios lines to use it. Also if you shoot it takes 3 second to hit the target. So basically it will be really cool dodgeball. or laggy C.O.D. Take your pic
    Reply
  • Jerky_san
    I actually want to try this out but it seems like I won't get in. hehe.. Only thing I wish they would do is let you use your steam account. Then I don't have to re-buy games I already own..
    Reply
  • cekasone
    I honestly don't know what to say about this. It's good in a way that people without gaming rigs can play games. But then again, anyone with a part time job can afford to build a decent machine to play all the above titles. I dunno about some people, but i actually like to hear the roar of my 3way SLI GTX260's while playing Just Cause 2.
    Reply
  • dxwarlock
    Its amazing people/companies still see this as a possible revenue generator, and a feasible product model.
    Do they not realize the lag times will be horrible, graphics will be subpar, an overall bad customer experience?

    Just because your running the cloud on say a OC-98 backbone, doesn't mean smooth game play for the end user that's on a 1.5mb DSL line that takes 30 seconds to buffer a youtube video.
    what about lag spikes? or the dreaded internet video artifacts that lag/buffering causes.

    and wait until the ISP bandwidth police start popping up for more people than they do now, locking their users for going over 10/100/etc Gigs of bandwidth a month used to stream a game at 1080p to their machine 8 hours a day.\


    I cannot believe someone is actually thinking the "your basically streaming a 'movie' of the game your playing to your machine" as a good business model.

    maybe one day, in the future..but not today, with ISP hard caps, speed limits, lag issues..etc
    Reply
  • bison88
    I'm going to laugh my ass off when this thing goes tits-up.
    Reply
  • extremepcs
    bildo123Is it me, or is there little icon an optical illusion. The ribbon doesn't end up on the same side if you follow it from the top.
    It's you... lay the crack pipe on the ground and step back! :)
    Reply