A new generation of gaming begins today, as the Cloud-Gaming system OnLive officially launches in the UK.
OnLive brought their cloud gaming system to the EuroGamer expo in London to show it off yesterday, after the service received a warm welcome and a lot of success in the U.S.
The product consists of a small black box and an Xbox 360-style gamepad controller which is used to play your games. You can hook the box up to your TV, PC or Mac and connect it wirelessly to home broadband. It’s this broadband connection which gives you access to OnLive’s huge online catalogue of games.
Over 100 top-title games can be played through the internet, without the need to own the physical product. You might think the game titles available won’t be too great, but if we told you that Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Formula 1 2011, Football Manager 2012 and Bulletstorm were available to play, would you change your mind?
OnLive explains the service in their own words: “OnLive is a revolutionary new concept in video games, instantly delivering the latest high-end games on demand through the Internet to virtually any device, regardless of its performance capabilities, with the simplicity of streaming video.
“No console, no high-end computer, no discs, no huge downloads. Plus unprecedented community features like massive spectating, Facebook integration, Brag Clip videos and spectating voice chat, both throughout the UK and across the Atlantic.”
Games can be purchased as a 3 day PlayPass, 5 day PlayPass or on a permanent basis. These usually cost around £3.50, £5.50 and £35 respectively, though you’ll also be able to trial games for a short period of time. You can also subscribe to the PlayPack bundle for £6.99 a month, giving you unlimited play of over 100 games, plus a 30% discount on new game purchases.
To coincide with the UK launch of OnLive, the company have partnered with BT to provide three month’s free cloud-gaming to BT broadband customers. BT customers will be given access to play ‘Playpack 1’ which contains over 100 games.
Where do the games come from? Well, OnLive hosts all of the games on their servers which put them online for thousands of users to play at a time. Provided you have a decent broadband connection, you’ll be able to play these games virtually latency free at 30 frames per second. OnLive say that if you have a stable connection of 5Mbps or higher, you should be able to stream games in 720p HD quality – awesome!
The service is going to become available to play on Android tablets and the Apple iPad in the near future, by means of an app which gives access to the online game content.
The service is live now and you can sign up on the OnLive site for free, so go check it out and let us know what you think.