The cloud gaming service OnLive, first announced last year, finally has a set launch date.
Starting June 17th in the U.S., users can pay $15 a month to play games from major publishers EA, THQ, 2K Games, Warner Bros., and Ubisoft in the “cloud.”
“This marks a huge milestone for both OnLive and the interactive entertainment landscape as a whole, changing the way that video games are developed, marketed, accessed and played,” says Steve Perlman, Founder and CEO of OnLive. “We are opening the door to incredible experiences for gamers and enormous opportunities for developers and publishers.”
The service includes standard features such as voice chat, profiles and gamer tags and will allow for pausing and resuming of games. OnLive is available for PC and Mac users.
“The OnLive Game Service creates a new opportunity for consumers to play the latest games without spending hundreds of dollars on a hardware system to make it happen,” adds Mike McGarvey, COO of OnLive, via Gi.biz. “As a Mac user myself, I’m excited about the opportunity to help bring high-end gaming to this new and significant market.”
New and popular titles that will be included are Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age Origins, Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands, Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed II, and Metro 2033.
Result for: consumers
RealNetworks has announced that they have settled their outstanding lawsuits with the major Hollywood studios over their Real DVD ripping software, effectively killing the product off after making just 2700 sales.
Additionally, Real will pay $4.5 million to pay off the legal costs of the litigation.
“We are pleased to put this litigation behind us,” adds Bob Kimball, president and acting CEO for Real. “This is another step toward fulfilling our commitment to simplify our company and focus on our core businesses. Until this dispute, Real had always enjoyed a productive working relationship with Hollywood. With this litigation resolved, I hope that in the future we can find mutually beneficial ways to use Real technology to bring Hollywood’s great work to consumers.”
The settlement also terms a permanent injunction that will block RealDVD and similar technologies forever from sale in the US or abroad.
The $30 USD software application allowed users to make a copy of their DVDs and it play it back on their PCs, allowing for, what Real thought, were legal backups. Clearly, Hollywood did not agree, despite the fact that Real’s backups also included DRM to stop sharing of the backups.
Result for: consumers
In February 2009, LA resident Emma Alvarado filed a lawsuit against Microsoft accusing the software giant of profiting from consumers downgrading from Windows Vista back to XP.
Alvarado’s complaint says Microsoft forced customers to first purchase the new operating system, before they could downgrade to the operating system they really wanted, XP.
The case was tossed out this week.
Writes U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman: “Nowhere does she allege that she paid to downgrade or that she did not receive a copy of Vista when she freely chose to purchase her new computer with that software. That she chose to downgrade to XP without extra cost does not demonstrate that Microsoft retained a benefit without giving value. Nor does the fact that she chooses to use only one version nullify the fact that Microsoft gave her value for the bargain.” If anything, “it appears that Plaintiff obtained two versions of Microsoft’s operating software for the price of one,” Pechman continued.
“We’re pleased the Court agreed that Plaintiff’s complaint failed to state a viable claim and dismissed it in its entirety,” Microsoft spokesman Kevin Kutz responded.
Alvarado claimed she had to pay a $59.25 fee to downgrade from Vista to XP, although Microsoft does not charge such fees. Those fees are imposed by computer makers, such as Lenovo, which charged Alvarado for the downgrade. Lenovo was not named in the suit.
