LEGO® Harry Potter™: Years 1-4 Contest Wrap Up

Posted in OnLive 2010 with tags , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2010 by Matt Jensen

Winner's Arena

Hello Everyone!

By way of introduction, my name is Matt Jensen, the Community Manager here at OnLive. I would first like to thank everyone who participated in last weekend’s July 4th Holiday Sale when all PlayPasses in the OnLive Game Service were featured at 30% off their regular prices. It was exciting to see so many of you take advantage of the holiday discounts to purchase the Full PlayPasses you’d been eyeing for some time.

I’d also like to congratulate our LEGO® Harry Potter™: Years 1-4 Contest winners. Several of our winners took advantage of OnLive’s instant play functionality to get started on the quest to collect 200 gold bricks before retail stores across America even opened the following morning.

Grand Prize Winner: Alex Schlee from Seattle, WA (Player Tag: Rantis)

While not his first all-night gaming expedition, Alex informed me that the contest made the intensity of play “pretty extreme” and did not hesitate to give credit where credit was due. To that effect, a nod of gratitude goes out to his friends at Mountain Dew and various energy drink companies. During a couple moments of assured haziness, they even took pause to break for a bite to eat.

Playing Robin to his Batman, Alex’s roommate was persuaded to stay up through the night and play this best-selling, new release title in co-op mode. While Alex’s intent is to “share” his new iPad prize with his gaming cohort, all bets are off once that killer new device arrives on his doorstep in the coming days.

This gaming “Ponch and John” duo set out to collect all 200 gold bricks in one play session but eventually hit a brain-malfunction as they slammed into a metaphorical “brick wall” at 2AM the next day having collected all but 1 of the remaining bricks. They were getting loopy and couldn’t muster the combined concentration to find that last gold brick. Nevertheless, they did shatter the OnLive Game Service continuous session mark with over 24 hours of continuous play.

The tag-team duo from Seattle played with 2 wired controllers and a Sony Vaio laptop which they rigged via VGA cable into a 50” television to maximize their game space. Alex commented that this setup was “just like a console experience”. Alex’s roommate also has an OnLive account, so they occasionally would fire up a second laptop and log in to the Game Service to see how many spectators they had (not realizing you could see this via the Dashboard/Overlay). Word that Rantis—and the runner-up winners listed below—were on fire spread quickly through the OnLive community (and certainly captivated our entire office).

To prove his achievement, Alex took a Brag Clip™ video upon finding the 200th golden brick around 1PM on Thursday with the official entry emailed into my team immediately thereafter at 1:02PM. Congrats Alex!

I’d also like to extend warm congratulations to our runner-up prize winners.

Kenneth Dailey, Jr. from Toledo, OH (Player Tag: Seiki Sands)
Florent Allain from Worcester, MA (Player Tag: Fiflo)
Richard Rivera from Yakima, WA (Player Tag: Wolfboy)
Christopher Murphy from Abbeville, AL (Player Tag: The Murfin Man)
Anthony Boscoe from Los Angeles, CA (Player Tag: Boscosticks)

Thank you all who entered! As a special shout out to all of you who had a valid entry in the contest, we’ll be sending out new E3 2010 custom OnLive T-shirts as a token of our appreciation. The LEGO® Harry Potter™: Years 1-4 contest ended up being a great kickoff event for our “Minute One” new release feature.

I’ve listed a few of my favorite quotes, feedback and stories sent in by our winners below. It really sounds like they had a great time:

Florent Allain:
“It took me around 35 hours in-game to complete it, but I had to sleep 4 hours after the first 25 hours straight (not easy starting at 3AM when you’re on the east coast!). I actually did kind of fall asleep while playing, and realized that I had found crests in the level I was in, without being aware of anything I was doing. Some kind of automatisms I guess… That’s actually when I decided I had to go to sleep, after seeing the empty coke bottle and coffee pot. ”

Anthony Bosco:
“I heard about the contest via email from OnLive. I woke up that day around 6PM. When I heard that the contest started at midnight I knew I could place somewhere in this contest. I was in the lead for hours as I stayed up for two days straight playing this game. I didn’t eat for 20 hours. Finally, I ordered a pizza about half way through the game. I had a bunch of spectators that were cheering me during the first 8 hours. Friend requests started pouring in once people saw I was up for two days straight. I met a lot of cool people. Speaking of spectators, I want to give a shout out to my buddy DJ. He stayed with me for four hours straight before having to leave to attend to his other life. Thanks again dude! I really enjoy the OnLive Game Service. The UI is simply amazing. I will be using it for some time.”

Chris Murphy:
“When I decided to give the Lego Harry Potter contest a shot, I had no snacks or drinks. I took off to a nearby city (mine is fairly rural here in Alabama and has nothing open past 10pm) and bought some supplies. A friend of mine who was really excited for me actually met up with me there to tell me everything he knew about Lego games as I never had played one prior to this contest.

I started the game when I got back at 2:01AM on the dot. I played my heart out and absolutely loved it. I didn’t really think I would win anything, but I had a lot of people who were genuinely very supportive and excited throughout my campaign.

It also helped that people in the OnLive community were supportive and excited. One other contestant spectated me playing, friended me, and messaged me in the 4AM to 10AM window. Easily, OnLive’s community is a huge factor when it comes to excitement in this sort of thing. I think I added ten friends just from people watching my live gameplay. It wasn’t quite like playing live on stage, but it certainly gave me that feeling at times.

I went all night twice. I hadn’t had any sleep which eventually caught up to me. I made it to about 1PM that afternoon (the 47 hour mark) and I absolutely had to sleep. I was running the bonus levels at the time, and my focus was so off that they seemed completely foreign to me. I mean, I literally couldn’t comprehend what I had to do to solve them, so I called a friend and put him in charge of being my human alarm clock. I napped until about 3:30PM and had easily 15 missed calls from him. Thankfully one made it through to me and I got up and got back on the game. I absolutely destroyed the bonus levels when I got back, which reinvigorated me and gave me the second (probably fourth) wind I really needed to at least try to finish out.”

What great fun!

I also wanted to mention that we’re rapidly working through the Founding Members waiting list as quickly as possible. If you’re still on the waiting list, we appreciate your patience and will be getting to you very soon. When signing up be sure to use a valid zip code. The OnLive Game Service is presently only available in the contiguous US states. If you haven’t signed up yet for the Founding Members Program presented by AT&T, you should give it a go soon!

As we continue to build out the OnLive Community we’re interested in collecting your thoughts and opinions on the Game Service. Please direct your feedback and first impressions to community@onlive.com. Also, if you’re having any issues with the Game Service, remember you can visit our Support Portal for assistance at www.onlive.com/support.

Stay tuned for future contests, promotions and events brought to you by the community team here at OnLive. We’ve got all kinds of exciting events planned for the weeks and months ahead. I look forward to seeing all of you in the OnLive community!

—Matt Jensen, Community Manager
Player Tag: OnLive MJ
community@onlive.com

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Making it Easier to Just Play this Holiday Weekend

Posted in OnLive 2010 with tags , , , , , , , , , , on July 1, 2010 by John Spinale


Hey, John Spinale here, VP of Games and Media at OnLive. So much has transpired since I last posted that I thought it’d be nice to chime in with an update and some exciting news.

As you may already know, we successfully launched our game service a couple weeks ago (hopefully you’ve seen it for yourself!) and things are going gangbusters. We launched with about twenty titles live—across a spectrum of genres and pricing programs. We’ve brought on games from publishers both large and small alike, and while the big boys tend to make the most noise, we’ve got some really fun games from independent developers as well. These games are both a ball to play and all come with accessible pricing programs. In addition to these, we’ve got lots more coming out over the coming weeks and months—including two new sports titles from our friends at 2K Sports, NBA 2K10 and MLB 2K10, both of which are now live.

But most importantly, I’m excited to announce our big weekend promotion—to celebrate the July 4th holiday, we’re offering 30% off all PlayPasses purchased between Saturday morning (9:00AM EDT/6:00AM PDT) and Monday evening (11:59PM EDT/8:59PM PDT). This makes all of our games an even better value and should keep everyone “Just Playing” through the holiday weekend and well into the summer! It’ll be over before you know it, so load up while you can. All OnLive Founding Members should be receiving their 30% off promotional code via email soon! And if you haven’t yet signed up for our Founding Members program, you can do that now by clicking here so you don’t miss out on future offers and summer fun with OnLive.

Let the (summer) games begin!

—John Spinale, VP of Games and Media

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OnLive at Day 10, a Milestone, and a Contest!

Posted in OnLive 2010 with tags , , , , , , , , , , on June 28, 2010 by Steve Perlman
LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4

Ten days ago, following our E3 booth wrap-up, we hit the button to start inviting founding members to the OnLive Game Service. By then, the OnLive waitlist had grown far larger than expected, and we knew the initial flood of new users would be pushing OnLive’s data centers to their very limits, regardless of how fast we added capacity. OnLive’s maiden voyage would be at full throttle from the get-go.

Each day, as increasingly more users were invited, we saw the load on our data centers rapidly mount as we repeatedly hit new session highs. We were blasting into completely uncharted territory: cloud gaming on a massive scale. Theory put to practice with no margin for error.

Now, ten days later, I’m happy (and relieved) to report the OnLive Game Service has been running 24/7 since launch, with games being played every day, around the clock, from every corner of the 48 States, despite the fact we’ve accommodated far more members at this stage than ever anticipated.

As I mentioned in my last blog, there would be some bumps on takeoff, and there were. As with any new technology, some small bugs have surfaced that we are fixing now. Also, while we have been installing data center capacity as quickly as we can, it looks like it will be about a week until we’ve balanced capacity across all US Internet regions. This will improve response time for some users as we fine-tune Internet routing, and it will also enable us to invite users from the waiting list more evenly across regions.

We appreciate the patience of our users while we iron out these bumps and continue to ramp up the OnLive Game Service, and we’re doing our best to keep up with the unexpected demand. If you’re still waiting to get in, hang tight, we’ll get to you as soon as possible.

We are also working hard to bring more great games to the OnLive Game Service. We announced an exciting slate of great new and coming soon games at E3, and we are rolling them from Beta into public release as fast as we can. In addition to these, we anticipate many more new game announcements in the coming months. In fact, here’s the first one:

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 is being released tonight at 12:01AM PDT on Tuesday, June 29th. What makes this a major milestone for OnLive—and showcases an awesome benefit of instant gaming—is OnLive members will be playing the game before anyone on any other platform. No waiting for a store to open or waiting in line to buy a physical disc. No downloads, updates, installs or authorizations required. (And, no Windows required if you are a Mac user.)

With OnLive you Just Play. It’s better than being first in line!

To commemorate this milestone, we’re going to have a contest! The first OnLive member to make it all the way through LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 will win an Apple iPad™, and the next 5 OnLive members will win an Apple iPod touch®. The six winning entrants will:

  • Have a PlayPass for the game to participate in the contest, so if you are logged in just prior to the game going live, we recommend you log out and log back in at 12:01AM to be sure your Marketplace list is refreshed and all PlayPass options appear for the game.

  • Take a Brag Clip™ video showing collection of all 200 Gold Bricks in the game and reaching the final bonus level. Specifically, winning Brag Clip videos must show you have collected all 200 Gold Bricks in the game and have become Lord Voldemort in the final bonus level. You must enable “All players” to view your Brag Clips video under the Privacy settings in the OnLive Game Service Dashboard.

  • Send an email to community@onlive.com with your Player Tag (associated with the Brag Clip video of the game completion screen), First Name/Last Name, Address, Telephone Number and Date of Birth in the body of the email as soon as you have completed the game. Entrants will be ranked based on when OnLive receives a properly completed email.

  • Receive a contest confirmation email from OnLive to confirm receipt of your validated entry. Remember that your OnLive Account will only save your last 15 Brag Clip videos, so wait until the winners of the contest have been announced by OnLive before making any more Brag Clip videos that might delete the game completion Brag Clip video.

For full contest rules and eligibility please click here.

So, OnLive is now 10 days old, and despite growing up much faster than expected, other than a few bumps, so far, so good. Again, we are grateful for all of you who have been patiently waiting for OnLive, and we are working as fast as we can to get you in.

For those of you who have tried OnLive, we do hope you like what you’ve seen so far. But, remember, this is only OnLive’s very first step. In every dimension, OnLive will get way better from here.

—Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder & CEO

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Let the Games Begin

Posted in OnLive 2010 with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on June 21, 2010 by Mike McGarvey
OnLive's Booth

OnLive's Booth

We just finished up an amazing week here at OnLive. The enthusiasm for the OnLive® Game Service demonstrated by those who visited our booth at E3 has been incredible. Countless articles, tweets and other social commentary have reinforced the promise of OnLive’s “Just Play™” instant gaming experience. Early feedback confirms that our first step toward offering an all-new game play experience has been well-received.

As you may also be aware, the OnLive Game Service officially launched to the public at the conclusion of the E3 show in Los Angeles. Demand to this point has been overwhelming and we are working diligently to activate new members as quickly as possible.

If you’ve already signed up for the Founding Members Program presented by AT&T or are one of our Pre-registered members, we will be adding you to the Game Service on a first-come, first-serve basis in each regional geographic area over time. We appreciate your patience in the coming weeks and months as we work our way through the waiting list. By the way, if you haven’t signed up for the Founding Member Program do so quickly–it is a limited time, limited availability offer. To sign up click here.

I also want to extend our warmest gratitude to our over 20 publishing partners without whom creating the instant play experience that is the hallmark of the OnLive Game Service would not have been possible. Knowing that great content is the cornerstone of every successful game platform, we are committed to adding new publishers and great games in the days, weeks and months to come.


As a result of the commitments from our publishing partners, Founding Members will enjoy a launch selection of over 20 of the hottest games available for instant play. You’ll now find games for every type of player spanning various game categories. As new members get activated and sign in to the Game Service, I encourage you to check out the instant-play demos as well as the 3-day, 5-day and Full PlayPass options. One of the values of cloud-based gaming is enabling various play experiences with the added convenience of having all of these options available at your finger tips at all times. 
  
As new members get activated, I wanted to quickly point out a couple key features you should know about when you first log on:


  • Arena is your home for watching live gameplay. Instantly view a friend’s game or any public session on the OnLive Game Service. Develop new friendships with other Founding Members or view people playing through various levels of games before choosing the PlayPass purchase option that is right for you.
  • Brag Clip™ videos allow you to record your greatest in-game hits for all to see or to share specifically with only those you’ve selected as friends. You can rate other member’s Brag Clips and view key highlights from great games.
  • Marketplace is where you’ll find Demos and PlayPass options. It is here where you’ll punch in your ticket to instant gaming.


While we still have much work ahead of us to hone and improve the OnLive Game Service, our official launch marks an important first step toward delivering the instant play experience. In the end, our goal is simple: to enable as many ways as possible for players to quickly engage and have fun with many of the best games currently available. We look forward to your feedback and active participation, both of which are instrumental in our mission to bring the “Just Play” experience to gamers across the US.



See you all OnLive. Enjoy and have fun!



—Mike McGarvey, COO, OnLive, Inc.

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Welcome to OnLive!

Posted in OnLive 2010 with tags , , , , , , , , , , on June 15, 2010 by Steve Perlman

Founding Members Program

Founding Members Program

It is with great pleasure that I invite you to the opening of the OnLive Game Service for PCs and Macs, beginning this Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 9:01 PM EDT/6:01 PM PDT.

And the best news is that we’re going to make it as easy as possible for you to give OnLive a try!

I’m very excited to announce the OnLive Founding Members Program, presented by AT&T, which is a limited-time, limited availability offer of a FREE 1st-year OnLive membership, with an optional 2nd year at $4.95/month, month-to-month! It’s an awesome deal delivered on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to availability, so sign up here today.

(No purchase is necessary for the free first year, and while there are lots of demos and other great stuff that are also free, this offer does not include games, features and other services that are for purchase. Eligibility requirements and other terms and conditions are detailed here.)

We’ll have more than 20 games available on the OnLive Game Service at launch, and with dozens more in the pipeline, we’ll constantly be adding new games over time. To mention just a sampling, we’ll have Assassin’s Creed 2, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction from Ubisoft; Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins from Electronic Arts; Batman: Arkham Asylum and Just Cause 2 from Square Enix; Borderlands, NBA 2K10 and MLB 2K10 from Take Two; Red Faction: Guerilla from THQ; Fear 2: Project Origin from Warner Bros. Interactive Games; and DiRT 2 from Codemasters along with other great games from publishers, both large and small, representing a wide range of genres.

While June 17 marks the end of a very long journey for the OnLive team, our partners and, of course, our Beta testers, what it really marks is the beginning of a much longer journey: the emergence of a new era in videogames that stands to utterly transform the way we create, distribute and play games and interact with each other when playing them.

The OnLive experience is unlike anything that has existed before. Click on a hot new game and typically within a few seconds the game is playing. Dive into a game or pick up where you left off, even if you’ve changed locations or are using a different computer. No discs, no giant game downloads, no patches or updates, and no high performance computer needed.

You Just Play.

And, instant-play games are only the beginning. OnLive creates a massive live video social network. Every game in play (when permitted) can be spectated, and you can record and share your best (or worst) moments in Brag Clip™ videos. Make Friends after watching their moves in the Arena or in a Brag Clip video, and then check out what all your friends are up to by watching them play live.

These features and more are possible because OnLive fundamentally changes what videogames are:

Without OnLive, videogames are apps requiring specialized hardware and discs, downloads and/or updates.

With OnLive, videogames are digital media, just like digital video and audio. And, like digital video and audio, OnLive games will be playable across a wide range of devices which will provide enormous flexibility in how we distribute and share game experiences among users. The PC, Mac and, soon, TV are just the first devices that will play OnLive games while massive spectating, Brag Clip videos and live video Friend Profiles are just a few early examples of what is possible with the OnLive user experience.

Despite the enormous potential of OnLive technology, it is important to emphasize that the OnLive Game Service is a very different way to experience videogames. We are using the Internet and computers in ways that have never been tried before and, like any brand new technology, you can expect a few bumps on take off until we reach cruising altitude and achieve a smooth flight. OnLive has been tested in an enormous variety of locations using a vast number of combinations of computers, ISPs, displays and input devices. Even so, there are endless possible combinations. So while most OnLive testers report good results with their gameplay experience, we still run into situations where the user may have to take some action (e.g. reset a cable modem or use a different mouse), or unique situations that we have not yet accounted for and require further changes to OnLive technology. And, of course, there are still some rough edges and plain old bugs that need to be fixed. So, if you run into problems, please let us know, and we will do what we can to address them.

Lastly, while most people who have tested the OnLive Game Service report a great experience right from the get-go, sometimes you need to tweak your configuration (our Technical FAQ has lots of tips), and even then, the OnLive experience is not for everyone. The best way to find out is to give it a try. It’s free to sign up, and there are lots of free demos in a variety of game genres. And, whatever you think of OnLive, please send us your feedback to support@onlive.com. We will continue to evolve our technology and user experience in many dimensions, and this early feedback is crucial in helping us shape the future direction of OnLive.

So, at long last, OnLive is opening its doors to the public! Now it’s time to…

Just Play.

—Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder & CEO

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OnLive Coming to Belgium

Posted in OnLive 2010 with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on May 16, 2010 by Steve Perlman

Immediately upon announcing that OnLive was coming to the UK last week, we began fielding inquiries from others in the European Union who wanted to know where else OnLive will be available on the continent.

Today, I’m happy to announce that, through our new partnership with The Belgacom Group, OnLive will be coming to Belgium.

Belgacom, the largest broadband operator in Belgium, has made an investment in OnLive, and has partnered with us to deliver the OnLive® Game Service to their broadband customers. Belgacom has the exclusive right to bundle the OnLive Game Service in Belgium and Luxembourg with their other broadband services, but gamers in these countries also will have the option of ordering directly from OnLive through any Internet service provider.

Belgium is multi-lingual, so OnLive will be offered in multiple languages there. Since OnLive will support multiplayer games throughout Western Europe, as well as community features globally, game players from different countries will be exposed to different languages as they play and spectate with each other.

The experience will be seamless: You might find yourself watching a top gamer playing a version of your favorite game in a different language. And even if you don’t understand what is being said, stealthy and fast-twitch moves alike will require no translation.

As with the UK, we have a lot of work to do for our US launch this summer before we are able to turn our attention to Belgium. As we get closer to our European launch, we’ll be sure to share more details and dates at that time. For now, we are very excited about our partnership with Belgacom, and are looking forward to expanding OnLive’s availability throughout Europe.

—Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder & CEO

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OnLive Coming to the UK

Posted in OnLive 2010 with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 13, 2010 by Steve Perlman

Since OnLive’s unveiling a little over a year ago, we have been inundated with requests to introduce the OnLive® Game Service in Europe. Literally, not a day has gone by without requests pouring in. And, from the day we opened up sign-ups for OnLive’s US Beta testing—making it very clear the sign-ups are for US-only testing by gamers with a US zip code—a huge percentage of the sign-up requests came from gamers from European locations who used popular US zip codes to try to get into the US Beta (indeed, we had more sign-ups using zip code 90210 than the actual population there).

We got the message.

So, for all of you Euro gamers who have asked about OnLive, I have some very good news: OnLive is coming to Europe in a big way. Secretly OnLive has been operating a test site in Europe from a BT (British Telecommunications plc) data center in Wales since 2009. And I’m happy to report, that over the European Internet infrastructure, OnLive is AWESOME. We’ve tested OnLive across all of Western Europe spanning from the UK to Italy and from Scandinavia down to Spain.

Today we are announcing that BT, the largest broadband operator in the UK, has formed a partnership with and has made an investment in OnLive. We’ll be working together with BT to bring the OnLive Game Service to the UK, such that it operates reliably and with high quality over the UK’s Internet backbone to BT’s broadband customers. BT has an exclusive right to bundle the OnLive Game Service together with their broadband service offerings in the UK, although UK gamers will also be able to order the OnLive Game Service directly from OnLive to run over any UK ISP.

I know everyone would like the exact details of when OnLive will be available in the UK, but we are not announcing dates just yet. We’re completely focused on our US launch this summer. Once we get the US service up and running, we’ll be sharing more details, including when we’ll be starting a UK public Beta (with UK postcodes, no less). One thing I can say is when we do launch in the UK, gamers will have the benefit of everything we’ve learned from the US launch, as well as the latest OnLive features. Also, unlike the US launch, where we are ramping up with PCs and Macs, then introducing the OnLive MicroConsole™ HDTV adapter later, the UK will launch on PC, Mac and HDTV from the get-go. Still, I’d like to make it very clear that we still have a lot of work to do before we launch in the UK.

What’s great about Western Europe geographically is that so many countries are within a 1000 mile (1600 km) radius, which is within the latency limit for a single OnLive data center. For a technical explanation see Beta Testing at the Speed of Light. This means that all gamers in Western Europe can play multiplayer games together through OnLive. It will be pretty amazing.

Lastly, we’ve designed OnLive from the start to be a global service. Community features of OnLive work fine at any distance through the Internet, so this means US and Euro gamers will be able to spectate and chat with each other, and check out each other’s user profiles and Brag Clips™ video captures.

We’re really excited about OnLive’s potential in Europe, and looking forward to kicking it off in the UK through our partnership with BT.

—Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder & CEO

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More News from OnLive!

Posted in OnLive 2009 with tags , , on March 11, 2010 by Steve Perlman
OnLive Game Portal

OnLive Game Portal

Yesterday, I announced the launch date of the OnLive Game Service, and shortly thereafter OnLive held a session about how to port games with our Software Development Kit (SDK). The room was packed to overflowing, forcing us to request that people return today for a repeat of the session. It’s great to see that the development community is so excited about moving games to OnLive!

As I mentioned in my last blog post, between now and the public release of OnLive on June 17, we’ll be continuing to announce other OnLive offerings. These extensions of the service illustrate the scope of possibility with OnLive and serve to expand the overall consumer value proposition.

So, I’m pleased to announce the OnLive® Game Portal, a companion offering to the OnLive Game Service that I described on my blog yesterday.

The OnLive Game Portal is for gamers looking for direct access to OnLive games without being required to subscribe to the features of the full OnLive Game Service. Through the OnLive Game Portal, gamers will be able to play select games directly on a rental basis as well as game demos for free; subject to available OnLive service capacity and whatever usage limits are associated with each given demo. Rentals will be priced on a per-game basis. There is no service fee for the OnLive Game Portal.

We think this is a great offering for gamers to try out games, or if they prefer, play games they’re interested in for a particular period of time. We also think it’s a great way to get a taste of the OnLive experience to see if they want to join the greater OnLive community on an ongoing basis through the OnLive Game Service.

Of course, like all games in the OnLive Game Service, games in the OnLive Game Portal start instantly, are always updated, and don’t require high-end hardware to play high-performance games. It only takes seconds to install OnLive’s small browser plug-in, and only seconds more before you’re playing a top-tier game. And, of course, OnLive Game Portal games will also play through OnLive’s MicroConsole TV Adapter on an HDTV.

The OnLive Game Portal will be rolled out in 2010 at some point following the June 17th OnLive Game Service Launch and will be subject to the Terms of Service applicable to that offering.

And, we have more cool stuff coming! Stay tuned.

—Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder & CEO

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OnLive: Coming to a Screen Near You

Posted in OnLive 2010 with tags , , , , , , , on March 10, 2010 by Steve Perlman
The OnLive Game Service

The OnLive Game Service

After almost 8 years of development, thousands of partner meetings, millions of lines of code, and an uncountable number of all-nighters…

Drum roll please…

On June 17, 2010, during the E3 2010 show, the OnLive Game Service will be available for users in the 48 contiguous United States!

Everyone here at OnLive is just incredibly excited about this milestone. It’s the realization of a dream that we knew would be a huge undertaking, but also one that would change everything.

OnLive fundamentally transforms the way users experience games and interact with each other, and in time, will transform the way games are developed and marketed. By distilling specialized game hardware out of the equation, OnLive will allow games to be played as a pure media experience on virtually any device, with the same flexibility and instant-play experience that we’ve come to expect from online video and music.

For gamers, this means you never have to do anything for your gaming experience to keep getting better. And developers now can unleash unbounded creativity to deliver state-of-the-art gameplay that they know will reach virtually any gamer—instantly.

Today we also announced OnLive’s base service pricing, and a pretty cool special offer.

The base month-to-month service fee is $14.95. Loyalty programs (e.g. multi-month pricing) and other special offers will be announced by the start of E3. We’ve got a great special offer for starters: The first 25,000 qualified people to register on the OnLive Game Service will have their first 3 months’ service fee waived. You’ll find all the important details here, and note that the service fee does not include the purchase or rental of games.

Included in your monthly service fee are OnLive-exclusive features such as instant-play free game demos; multiplayer across PC, Mac and TV platforms; massive spectating; viewing of Brag Clips™ video capture and posting; and cloud-saving of games you’ve purchased—pause, and instantly resume from anywhere, even on a different platform.

Also included in the monthly service fee are features you’d expect from standard online games services such as gamer tags, user profiles, friends, chat, but with a twist: everything is live video. You’ll be friending through multiplay, Spectating, Brag Clips, or by flipping through video profiles of friends of friends of friends. OnLive is delivering the first instant video-based social network. It’s really cool.

Once you are on the service, instant-play, top-tier, newly-released games will be for sale and for rent on an à la carte basis. Specific pricing will be announced as games are released, so you’ll hear about the pricing of the first games by E3, but needless to say, we expect them to be offered at competitive prices. Games are always updated with the latest versions, and purchased game add-ons are playable instantly.

Initially, we’ll be offering the OnLive Game Service for PCs and Macs through a small browser plug-in. Later this year, we’ll announce the public availability of the MicroConsole™ TV adapter. And, we’ll be steadily expanding to other devices over time.

So, there it is. After a long and arduous journey, OnLive will be coming to a screen [really] near you.

—Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder & CEO

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Learn How to Develop Games for OnLive at GDC

Posted in OnLive 2010 with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 26, 2010 by Joe Bentley

Here’s a post for all the game developers out there.

Unreal Tournament 3 on the OnLive Game Service

Unreal Tournament 3 on the OnLive Game Service

Hi, Tom DuBois and Joe Bentley here. We’re focused on the OnLive Software Development Kit (SDK) and getting titles on the OnLive platform, so we want to shamelessly plug our upcoming sessions at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC), Wednesday at 1:45pm, and Thursday at 10:30am.

If you attended the DICE 2010 Summit (slides) last week or read about the sessions there, you might be wondering, “How did Steve launch Unreal Tournament 3 in under five seconds?” UT3 is the one of the first titles on Beta we ported to the OnLive SDK, to test and maintain integration with the Unreal Engine, the most widely used game engine in the industry.

As Steve explained in his “Server Hopping” post last May, when users launch games on the OnLive service, we actually transition the user from server to server, to provide users with state-of-the-art performance. To create that instantaneous load experience, the game has to be running already, and this is where the OnLive SDK enters the picture, allowing us to dynamically bind in the user’s data, effectively pushing load times down to zero.

We will be providing more details on the OnLive SDK and the functionality that it enables, along with best practices for getting video games onto the OnLive platform at GDC. So stop by and be one of the first kids on your block to learn how to get your games up in the Cloud.

—Tom DuBois, Executive Producer
—Joe Bentley, Director of Games and Media Development

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