Would you pay to play a free-to-play game on your tablet or smartphone? That's essentially what's going on with War Thunder and OnLive, as the game is now offered through OnLive's recently launched CloudLift subscription service.
"By expanding the CloudLift subscription to include a free-to-play MMO such as this one, we can now offer content in the subscription for our players to access right away, anywhere on a wide range of devices, even before they own any of the traditional download games," said Mark Jung, executive chairman.
Streaming this MMO means no long, hefty downloads, and no huge amounts of hard drive space allocated to one specific game. Subscribers can play on their PC or laptop, and then pick up where they left off on a tablet or smartphone. This is on top of streaming PC games you already own for one monthly fee of $7.95.
As we reported earlier, players can link their Steam account to OnLive's CloudLift service. So far the games are limited in number, but the list will presumably grow over time as OnLive makes deals with publishers. Don't have one of the games listed in CloudLift? You can purchase a Steam code through OnLive's website, or simply load up Steam and purchase the game there.
While paying $7.95 a month seems a bit much for playing a free-to-play MMO, this setup prevents low-end users from having to load up Newegg or visit Best Buy to update components. If your device can run OnLive's app, then it can run anything listed on OnLive.
Developed by Gaijin Entertainment, War Thunder is a "a next generation MMO combat game dedicated to World War II military aviation, armored vehicles, and fleets. You will take part in all of the major combat battles, fighting with real players all over the world."
Typically, this MMO's recommended specs include a dual-core CPU clocked at 2.4 GHz, 4 GB of RAM, 8 GB of free space, and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 or higher. But that's not needed when playing the MMO through OnLive's CloudLift.
