Onlive Cloud-Gaming Offers $10 Flat Fee

News
By Tuan An Nguyen
published

Cloud gaming company Onlive will soon be offering a gaming flat fee.

The "PlayPack" plan is priced at $9.99 per month and allows users to play as much as they want. Onlive calls it "gamer nirvana." It appears that Onlive will be positioned the PlayPack as the standard subscription plan, as opposed to the PlayPass subscription. PlayPass charges from $4 to $50 for games that are played for only 3 or 5 days or are being purchased in full.

The company said that some games will only be available in the PlayPack or in the PlayPass plan. For example the latest NBA 2K11 is just available in the PlayPack. Games are not impacted by plan changes, Onlive said.

PlayPack is scheduled to launch on January 15 and include 40 games. People who are signing up for Onlive now get access to the Beta of the flat fee service free of charge.

Originally announced in 2009, Onlive came online in June of this year. Other than traditional consoles, the game system is entirely cloud-based and uses remote servers to deliver, render, store video game data. The basic Onlive game system sells for $99 and includes one game. 

Tuan An Nguyen
48 Comments Comment from the forums
  • el33t
    Well, I still playing games on 'real' system mainly because I don't have internet fast enough to experience HD gaming streaming online
    Reply
  • jomofro39
    anyone here have this? is it nice? feasible end to other consoles?
    Reply
  • f-14
    sounds great for console gamers, no more console! i'll stick with my p/c tho as i don't play simple games that are made for consoles.
    Reply
  • dark_lord69
    I am subscribed to it and I got this notification the other day. I have yet to try Onlive. The one time I did try my connection wasn't fast enough.
    Reply
  • Grims
    We need a review on this unit, and service.
    Reply
  • jomofro39
    GrimsWe need a review on this unit, and service.Good idea. How about it Tom's?
    Reply
  • ckthecerealkiller
    My 3Mb internet is good enough for it. I am surprised at how well it works honestly. The video and latency were above my expectations. The only problem I found was the sound was compressed too much for my tastes. Latency worked ok even on wifi (not so much for multiplayer but I had no trouble during single player).

    But it has been a month or so since I tried a game (I still can't resist upgrading my hardware). It is certainly worth a try. The main complaint from everyone is the selection is slow taking off.
    Reply
  • neblix
    I run like Verizon FIOS with an old laptop that has parts that were good in maybe 2007.

    I tried OnLive over Wi-Fi, and I got relatively high settings for around 30 FPS. This service is no joke :P
    Reply
  • I've been using the service lately. They recommend having a low latency connection with a download bandwidth of at least 5Mbps. My connection is well above that and the quality in graphics and sound is very difficult to tell that the game isn't installed locally. Lag isn't bad at all. It really all depends on your connection. I can play graphic intensive games all on my netbook if I wanted. It's great!

    I hear they are adding a ton of games over the next several months too.
    Reply
  • beef623
    Just to clarify on the article, the PlayPack plan isn't required to use the service. It gives you access to several games (no new releases unless they change their minds), but you can still buy and play games on OnLive without it.

    I haven't used the console yet (it's in the mail), but during the beta of the service I bought and played through Borderlands via OnLive. Overall it's a pretty good experience. I could play with the settings turned up higher on my home pc, but through the onlive service I could play on just about anything (when I played through Borderlands via OnLive it was on a 6 or 7 year old machine that wouldn't have had any hope of running the game natively). Saved games and that kind of thing are all stored on their servers as well so you can pick up and play from any machine. When I was using it, the minimum bandwidth requirement was 5 mbps, not sure if that's still the case or not.
    Reply