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: files
In a letter to the Financial Times, BT Group Chief Executive Ian Livingston suggested that persistent file sharers caught breaking copyright laws should face fines instead of technical sanctions proposed by the UK government. He said that suspending service for persistent infringers as spelled out in the Digital Economy Bill could deny a fair hearing for the accused.
Instead of the technical sanctions outlined in the DEB, Livingston said people could choose to pay a penalty or fight the accusation. Those who dispute accusations could take their case to a new tribunal instead of the courts. The suggestion brings BT in line with the Open Rights Group, which believes such a system would be fairer and less risky than the proposed suspensions and other sanctions.
In the letter - which was also signed by the bosses of TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Orange, as well as Facebook, Google, eBay and Yahoo! - a recent amendment to the Digital Economy Bill faced considerable criticism. The amendment made last week would allow copyright holders to injunct ISPs and force the blocking of specific web addresses.
The measure would be used to fight against files posted on “locker services”, such as Rapidshare. “Endorsing a policy that would encourage the blocking of websites by UK broadband providers or other internet companies is a very serious step for the UK to take,” the letter reads.
“Put simply, blocking access as envisaged by this clause would both widely disrupt the internet in the UK and elsewhere and threaten freedom of speech and the open internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended.”
[More]>>
Result for: files
A look at the minimum system requirements for the upcoming blockbuster Just Cause 2 shows that the title won’t work on installations of Windows XP. This would represent one of the first high profile releases not to be supported by the still-popular Microsoft operating system. The requirements specifies that an operating system newer than XP is required, and provides a hint why.
The game requires at least DirectX 10. Windows XP can only officially go as far as DirectX 9, meaning that gamers would need to be using Windows Vista or Windows 7 to play the game. A recent hardware/software survey from Steam showed that 42.15 percent of its users were in fact still running the Windows XP operating system, although Windows 7 was becoming popular very fast.
Of course, there have been several methods used to install DirectX 10 on Windows XP since it was launched, none of which are supported by Microsoft and several of which have no support from their original authors either. So maybe it is “technically” possible to run it on Windows XP, but it is a shame that users should have to install a hacked DirectX 10 package and probably patch the game files themselves to play it on Windows XP.
Amazon.com incorrectly lists XP as supported in search results.
Minimum System Requirements
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)
Processor: Dual-core CPU with SSE3 (Athlon 64 X2 4200 / Pentium D 3GHz)
Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce 8800 Series / ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro with 256MB memory or equivalent DX10 card with 256MB memory
[More]>>
