Archive for December, 2010

OnLive on the Go

Posted in OnLive 2010 with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 7, 2010 by Joe Bentley

If there’s one thing you should know about the crew here at OnLive, it’s that we don’t like constraints. That’s the whole point of cloud gaming, right—get an awesomely sweet gaming experience wherever you are by tapping into our awesomely powerful servers. We’ve shown it on Mac and PC—anyone who has experienced the full-scale magic of Just Cause 2™ on a low-end laptop can vouch for that. And we’ve shown it on TV with the OnLive Game System, which just last week began delivering the hottest games instantly to the living room. But when you call up the OnLive Viewer on your iPad™ or Android™ tablet and see real, high-end video games being played in real time, you start to finally understand the magnitude of where cloud gaming can take us.

Today, it is my pleasure to announce the first-ever cloud gaming app for a mobile device: the OnLive Viewer, a free app that lets you become a spectator to millions of live game sessions as they are happening around the world. Available now on iPad and in beta for Android tablets, the OnLive Viewer gives you a window into the OnLive world while you are on the move. You can watch live gameplay and trailers of amazing new titles, flip between game sessions as if you were changing channels, cheer or jeer your friends, rate their Brag Clip™ videos and use other social features, all on your Wi-Fi or 3G network. And even though you can’t play games yet—no high-end games are programmed for touch-based tablets just yet—you’ll be seeing touch- and motion-aware high-end games in the future.

By harnessing the power of the cloud and delivering rich media experiences from our high-performance OnLive servers, we can turn even lightweight tablets into supercomputing powerhouses, anywhere, letting you break a few constraints of your own. In fact, our CEO Steve Perlman gave a technology demo where he used the OnLive Viewer to run other previously impossible applications on both an iPad and Android tablet at the D: Dive Into Mobile conference this morning, including high-speed browsing with full Adobe® Flash® compatibility, Autodesk® Maya® and the full version of Microsoft Windows® 7 Touch. High-end games won’t be long in coming, letting you get in the game—instantly—virtually anywhere.

Times are a-changing, almost faster than we can imagine. But imagine we will, and keep on building. In the meantime, you can get a taste of OnLive on-the-go with the free OnLive Viewer mobile app for iPad here. And keep cloud gaming at your fingertips, anywhere you go.

—Joe Bentley, VP of Engineering


OnLive PlayPack: All-You-Can-Game for $9.99/month

Posted in OnLive 2010 with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 2, 2010 by John Spinale


Imagine dropping into a world of amazing video games where you can pop in and out of any game instantly whenever you want, for as long as you want—all for a low monthly rate. Blaze through a little of this, leap over a little of that, puzzle, role-play and multi-play. Channel surfing for games.

Yes, you asked and we heard you: OnLive has added the “PlayPack” flat-rate plan to our instant-play offerings! Play games all day, every day, for just $9.99/month. It’s gaming at your fingertips 24 hours a day: power on, jump in. Gamer nirvana.

Between the new PlayPack and existing PlayPass plans, OnLive has something for every budget and any gamer, and what’s great is you can choose to participate in either or both plans. Here’s how they work:

  • PlayPass plan: largely new-release games available for free demo or 3-day, 5-day or Full purchases. Current prices range from $2.99-$49.99.
  • PlayPack plan: recent, classic and indie titles. Access to the full PlayPack library is $9.99/month.

Some games will only be in the PlayPass or PlayPack plan, some will be in both, and over time, you’ll see PlayPass games added to the PlayPack library as they get older. For example, NBA 2K11 just came out, so NBA 2K10 has been added to the PlayPack. But what’s great is game saves are kept seamlessly between the plans, to give you complete flexibility if you’ve been playing a game in one plan and then move to the other.

When the PlayPack plan is released to all OnLive members on January 15, we’ll have over 40 great games available with LOTS more coming, but we wanted to toss in a little surprise for everyone pioneering the new OnLive Game System. When we ship you an OnLive Game System, you get access to PlayPack Beta for free until January 14 (if PlayPack Beta is listed in My Games, your OnLive Game System has shipped). So, as we fill out the PlayPack library over the next few weeks, you’ll have free access to all the PlayPack games on the OnLive Game System as well your PC or Mac. Go wild.

Lastly, we want you to know we hear you. You asked for a flat-rate tier and it’s here. You asked for more games and they’re coming weekly for both PlayPass and PlayPack plans (and here’s the list of PlayPack titles so far).

We thank you again for believing in us. There’s more great news coming soon!

Yep. It’s all about choices. Choices are good and waiting is bad. If we didn’t believe that, we wouldn’t be doing this whole cloud gaming thing, would we?

—John Spinale, VP of Games & Media

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 272 other followers