OnLive Opens Up for Beta Testers

Earlier this year we learned of a stunning technology from OnLive that would stream a game over the Internet for play on your PC or Mac. The striking part is that nearly all the grunt work in the CPU and GPU processing would be done remotely on OnLive's servers, with the video and sound then to be streamed to the player.

Such a streaming gaming technology would make hardware-demanding games such as Crysis play on even a mainstream laptop computer, provided it had a good broadband connection.

Now six months since announcement, OnLive is ready for beta testers.

"I'm very excited to say that we are now opening the OnLive Beta to outside gamers who signed up on our website. It's not too late to sign up if you haven’t already," said OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman. "We are very much looking forward to hearing from gamers all about their experience with the OnLive Service."

"It’s been a very busy and productive few months for OnLive," Perlman adds. "We’ve been focused on evolving the OnLive technology, installing lots of servers in our data centers and tuning the OnLive Game Service based on feedback from our internal Beta testers."

Click here to sign up for the beta. Good luck!

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
  • I'd be amazed if this actually works
    Reply
  • bustapr
    already signed up and waiting:)
    Reply
  • maigo
    free is good, after its over, you could maybe ebay the hardware :D
    Reply
  • socrates047
    booooo no testing for Canada
    Reply
  • Major7up
    What kind of games will they be offering?
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  • gam3r4321
    did anybody receive an email for signing up to test? neither my friends or i have.
    Reply
  • tubers
    will this mean no more exciting GPU/CPU for playing game? :( oh well.. maybe then id invest for a faster internet connection if this would really work as promised..
    Reply
  • griffed88
    If this works ill def be excited. but it only streams at a fairly low resolution by pc gamers standards. I believe its just 1024x768 or somethin like that, maybe 720p. That might deter some gamers. Ill def test it out tho
    Reply
  • christop
    Seems like fun I will give it a Try..
    Reply
  • r0x0r
    Wonder how well this will go on anything less than a 100Mb connection...
    Reply