Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’m very late to the OnLive party. Cos I’ve got a PC that can play the games just fine, so, well, I’ve not yet taken the time. And then I saw news that they’ve now got it working on smart phones. I can play PC games on my phone? On my phone? And indeed I can. PC gaming is getting a lot more complicated. It’s getting a lot more complicated to know if it’s even PC gaming any more.

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Cloud gaming service OnLive is banging its drum for new members in the UK again, so they’re reactivated their remarkable £1 offer (which they’re surely making a massive loss on – they must have ton of marketing money stored up). Your first purchase after joining currently costs just 100 pennies, and that includes the likes of Batman: Arkham City, Saints Row 3, LA Noire, Lord of the Rings: War In The North and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. All PC versions, but tweaked for OnLive – which in Arkham’s case means no GFWL. Woo! OnLive has its issues, but I really rather like it – I’ve played quite a lot through it now, and while the experience differs from game to game for a lot of titles on a decent ISP the experience is pretty incredible. Especially if you have the microconsole thingy and are sat back on a sofa – with your face stuffed directly into a monitor the cracks are that much more visible.

Oh, and if you already have an OnLive UK account, that doesn’t stop you from creating a new one purely to nab a game for £1. Repeatedly, in fact – you just need a different email address every time. Snicker.

Wondering whether to buy Lord of the Rings: War in the North? Depending on where you are in the world, you may have that option right now (US), on the 9th of November (EU) or in the distant future of the 25th of November (UK). All sorts of things can aid a purchasing decision, primary among them being our wise words, but few would argue against the use of a demo in addition. There is a demo for War in the North but it’s exclusive to the Onlive service, allowing a 30 minute trial starting from the beginning of the game. It should be available in the US and the UK right now.

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Cloud-based (that means it streams to your “device” from the internets, rather than being rendered by local hardware) gaming service OnLive is launching in the UK… now! You can sign up on the site and begin streaming games within a couple of minutes, apparently. The games on offer cost between £1.99 and £39.99, and the “micro-console” which allows you to stream to TVs is £69.99. I am just logging in now and will post some thoughts in a bit.

(Launcher hanging… Hmm. Maybe later then.)

Update: This astonishing story on Ars reveals that GameStop – the US’s largest games retailer – is having staff remove the vouchers because it competes with their own online service, Impulse.

Apparently people still sometimes buy games in shops! Imagine that. And if you do that with the US retail version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, according to VG247 you’ll get a code to play the game via OnLive. That’s the service that lets you stream the game via your internets, so it’ll play on any machine with a decent connection. It’s an interesting inclusion. And makes me wonder – have you tried OnLive, or any similar service yet? What have your experiences been?

Just to be clear – in case you’ve just returned from five years living in the jungle – OnLive is a cloud-gaming service. That’s a clever thing whereby you stream the game’s visual data from a remote server over the internet, rather than rendering it on your own PC. We’re all a bit sceptical about how well it will work, but we could soon be in a position to test it for ourselves. It’s going to launch in the UK next month, and sign up will be free. It’ll allow you to play any game for 30 minutes (goodbye lack of demos, at least) and spectate “from the arena”, whatever that means. It’ll apparently launch with 100 games, with more to follow. Those games can be rented or bought outright, depending on your wallet and taste.

It’s going to be interesting.

In cloud news today, I saw a cloud that looked like a tug boat cresting on a wave. Behind that was one which resembled a cuddly Batman symbol. And oh, to the left was a really big one that looked like a catfish! OK FINE. Actual news: Cloud Gaming company Gaikai are making it known that they’ve got their eyes on the prize. Speaking to Reuters, Mr Perry spoke about the service’s superiority to those clunky old console things, and argued that the speediness of his tech made up for latency issues: “Gaikai’s servers are running at 60 fps. We’re using modern hardware and not five-year-old hardware.” Take that, old hardware. Perry also spoke of “new deals”, signalling a broader range of services to come.

Read on for some more thoughts on this.
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The Cloud-based streaming game service OnLive arrives on our shabby shores later this year, which is a great thing if your PC is rubbish but your internet connection is great, because it means you will be able to play a bunch of top-whack games for cheap(ish). The UK site will be open for “registering interest and gamertags from 8pm Tuesday next week”, according to the company. OnLive are also keen to stress that they will soon have 100 games on the service – with Red Faction: Armageddon being the 100th – and that they have new tech coming to complement the service. This tech is a controller that should work with any of the wide range of devices that OnLive can stream to. It is “a Wireless Controller that is as universal as the OnLive Game Service itself. The Controller not only works with OnLive’s own MicroConsole TV adapter, but works with almost any OnLive-compatible device.” This means you’ll be able to use their gamepad with a tablet, or even some stuff like certain Blu-Ray players. So that’s clever.

I’ve still not see this service running with my own eyes, but I am keen to try it out. We’ll take a proper look later this year.