That’s right – the highly anticipated OnLive service that promises to deliver the hottest new games in high definition to gaming computers unable to meet the standard requirements, and also to set-top boxes in the future, unveiled some details such as the release date and pricing for membership today.
Bottom line: $15 a month gets you everything you need other than a Mac or PC, of course … oh, and also no games.
The big announcement came today as OnLive announced that their browser plug-in gaming service would launch to the public on June 17th for Mac and PC, with set-top box service coming at a later time.
Other news from Onlive:
From their blog announcement:
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.
Yes, you read right – you get the equivalent of XBOX Live, which costs ~$55 a year, for $180 per year. So what about the games? There things get a bit murky!
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.
I am assuming that ‘competitive’ means that you ‘buy’ the games for $50-60, and ‘rent’ for ~$10. Of course we’ll have to wait for more details, which the company says are coming by E3. Another critical thing that isn’t known is what happens to your ‘purchases’ if you quit the service. The assumption is that similar to GameTap your access would simply disappear.
Call me cynical, but paying $50 to ‘buy’ a game, and then needing to continue paying $15 in order to maintain access of that game becomes a very expensive proposition. The core idea – keeping all data on the cloud and turning the gaming experience into one that doesn’t require the latest PC hardware or console system – is very attractive. But when it suddenly becomes a requirement to keep paying a hefty fee just to maintain access to the games you ‘bought’, you suddenly realize that $60 was just an ‘ongoing rental’ fee … and perhaps it is not the greatest solution after all. We’ll have to wait and see … and I get the feeling that is what most folks will do …
Source: OnLive.com
