OnLive UK Launching on September 22

Back in June, cloud gaming service OnLive revealed that it would hit the United Kingdom in the autumn as part of a collaboration with BT. The company opened up Player Tag sign-ups during E3 for those wishing to reserve their username and register for an Onlive UK Founding Member account. Now we have a solid date for when you can make use of the username you so wisely reserved.

OnLive has said the service will launch in the UK market on September 22 at the opening of the 2011 Eurogamer Expo in London. Special promotions, including OnLive system giveaways and demo sessions, will be available for those attending the expo. OnLive in the UK will be fully integrated with OnLive’s North American service, including trans-Atlantic massive spectating and voice chat, as well as multiplayer gaming for games suited for long-distance multiplayer.

"OnLive will utterly transform gaming in the UK," said OnLive Founder and CEO Steve Perlman. "No discs, big downloads or specialised hardware needed. OnLive gives you the latest games instantly, anytime, anywhere on HDTV, PC, Mac, as well as iPad, Android tablets. High-performance gaming as accessible as streaming video, with unique social features such as massive spectating with voice chat and Facebook integration."

Following the UK launch, OnLive has plans to expand to other European countries as well additional continents.

Topics

Gaming

9 Comments Comment from the forums

memadmax

Well... at least they won't have to worry about someone smashing a window and looting the place =D
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rantoc

"OnLive will utterly transform gaming in the UK," said OnLive Founder and CEO Steve Perlman. "No discs, big downloads or specialised hardware needed."
So what about lag/gfx quality from less than average quality 3d render thats then compressed reducing quality further? Lag is nothing you want in for instance fps and racing games. I bet onlive will do better in europe than us due to higher capacity internet but i doubt it will attract serious gamers as the service got nothing to offer them beside poor gfx and added latency (both controll and gfx lag) as well as the added risk of being disconnected. For the casual user how ever i bet this will be atleast one of the options.

I laugh at the reviews citing in game latency when reviewing a service like this, its the latency the servers have in game - The servers then need to render the gfx, compress it, send it, the user sends a new comand set to the server and thats counted as zero extra latency accoring to some reviewers. Amazing how few seem to realise that!
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Goldengoose

So i take it these types of services are what everyones worried about regarding THE DOWNFAL OF THE DESKTOP!!!!1
Like Rantoc mentioned, it will be brilliant for casual gamers who arn't really bothered about performance, but from experience the tiniest amount of lag can send a gamer into a mad fit of rage like no other! Will be interesting to see how this takes in the UK.
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bv90andy

I tried it from here in the uk on us servers (you can do that, with no hack) and The games where pretty playable... maybe not if you want to become champion in a shooter, but it definitely didn't break the gameplay in either fear2 or dirt3. statistics said I was getting about 160ms lag
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alidan

bv90andyI tried it from here in the uk on us servers (you can do that, with no hack) and The games where pretty playable... maybe not if you want to become champion in a shooter, but it definitely didn't break the gameplay in either fear2 or dirt3. statistics said I was getting about 160ms lag
yes they are playable, but with dirt specifically, it becomes unplayable even under 50ms lag, people who play racing games for review have gone on to say its impossible to play, they are hard core though, a casual player probably wouldn't care to much, till they go hardcore.
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halls

I was really skeptical of this service when it went into Beta in the US - I was chosen to be one of the early testers and even when I only had a 5.5 Megabit connection to work with, I was very impressed with what I saw; the technology was working surprisingly well.

Yeah, if you're used to a high-performance gaming computer then the lag/image quality is a distraction, but the simplicity of the system is what really turned me on to it. You log in, even on a netbook, and you play. Not the highest fidelity, and maybe with some added latency, but suddenly you're playing a high-profile console/PC game with no need for the hardware.

I like Onlive. They did surprisingly well in the US and definitely broke through my expectations for them as a venture. I'm under the impression that bandwidth is a little better on average in the UK - I hope they do well there too.
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rantoc

bv90andystatistics said I was getting about 160ms lag
And that lag included all the server/client overhead or just the game who reports 160ms at the server? If its the game then you need to add the overhead of serverside rendering,compression,send to your client, your client decompresses the videostream and finnaly displays it. All your input like keyboard ect will have to be sent to ther server before processing at the game. All thoose steps adds extra latency that ain't reported in the ingame latency display but still are there!
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species8472

Fuck OnLive!!! These bastards are trying to take control away from the PC gamer. They're trying to dumb it down for the technologically illiterate. There will never be enough casual gamers to make this a very popular service. There will always be a huge amount of hardcore gamers like myself whi insist on TOTAL control of the gaming experience!
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pirateboy

don't worry, in the end indie game developers will save gaming from the greedy paws of big gaming companies....the bastards will choke on their big plans...people will get fed up paying way too much for bad products.

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