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: mass effect
In an update to our main Microsoft E3 summary article, it appears the software giant is set to put some added pressure on retail chains, announcing they will start “on-demand” downloads of games for the Xbox 360 through Xbox Live.
It’s as simple as that. If you want to buy the game, simply log into XBL, search it, buy it, download it, and play.
The service will begin in August and will start with 30 games including Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, Call of Duty 2, Crackdown, Mass Effect, and Oblivion. You can purchase the games using a credit card, or using Microsoft Points, and although the pricing isn’t clear yet, it appears it will be similar to retail, only slightly cheaper.
It may be time to upgrade your HDDs as well, as these games will certainly eat up a 20GB or 60GB hard drive in no time.
Result for: mass effect
The large publisher
Electronic Arts has announced that they have joined Valve’s digital distribution platform Steam, bringing notable titles to the service such as Spore, Warhammer Online, Mass Effect and Need For Speed Undercover.
In the next month the publisher will add Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, Mirror’s Edge, and Dead Space as well.
Steam currently has 15 million active user accounts globally.
“We are pleased to extend our holiday titles to gamers worldwide via Steam — a revolutionary technology that is one of the game industry’s most successful digital distribution services,” added EA COO John Pleasants of the deal.
Also notably, it appears as if Spore will have its DRM removed, according to this post on the Steam forums: Does Spore still have DRM?
