onlive-game-service posts

The OnLive streaming game service continues to add new features and today the company announced new ways that its users can link and communicate to friends. In its latest blog post the company's VP Joe Bentley stated that the service will now let people who have a GMail account connect to anyone on your GMail contact list who also uses OnLive or send referrals to those who don't have an OnLive account. More providers besides GMail will be added "soon".

The service also now has an upgrade to a user's game list with personal stats for things like "total play time, last played and achievements earned (when available)." Another new feature generates an automatic Brag Clip if you reach a key moment in certain games. Bentley says, " ... we reached out to game developers to identify critical Achievements throughout each game" and as a result if you get that big kill that raises your stats above a certain level the Brag Clip is generated without you having to do anything.

The OnLive streaming gaming service will continues to add new features for its users, according to a panel on the service at GDC 2011 this week. According to our sister site Joystiq OnLive's VP of engineering, Joe Bentley, stated that OnLive will have support for game achievements at some point in the future.

Other upcoming features include voice chat, games invites and the ability for users to upload OnLive's cool Brag Clips feature (where you can record and save cool gameplay from your titles) to YouTube. Theses features are expected to be made available before the end of the year.

The OnLive streaming PC game service was first announced two years ago at GDC and officially launched in June 2010 just after E3 ended. Since then the service has expanded to include PCs with WiFi connections and connecting TVs to the service via the OnLive Microconsole. Earlier this year OnLive launched its PlayBack service which game people a chance to stream and play from a library of games for one monthly $9.99 fee.

Today OnLive announced that the PlayBack service has added several new games from publisher Square Enix including games in the Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief, Mini Ninjas and Hitman series. Also from now until March 4 a number of indie games on the OnLive service are on sale for as much as 80 percent off. It includes The Ball ($5), The Maw ($2), Trine ($5), World of Goo, ($2.50). Shatter ($2.25) Madballs in Babo: Invasion ($2.50), and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! ($4.99).

The OnLive streaming PC game service continues to add games to its library of titles. On March 15 OnLive will add THQ's upcoming first person shooter Homefront on the same day that the game is released in stores or via download. However, OnLive is giving its users a chance to get a couple of free extras if they purchase Homefront between now and its release date.

One of them is a free game, 2010's shooter Metro 2033. The other freebie is especially nice. Pre-orders of Homefront via Onlive will also get a free Microconsole to experience OnLive's service on your TV. That's a $99 value. It sounds like OnLive is expecting a lot of orders from this as the offer is only "when supplies last."

A few months ago OnLive claimed it had the patent secured for its streaming PC game technology. Now VentureBeat reports that a previously unknown UK company called T5 Labs has claims it had secured a patent for the same kind of streaming tech several months before OnLive filed for its patent in 2002.

T5 Labs stated in an email that the company "is considering its legal rights, including deciding whether to commence a procedure in the U.S. Patent Office known as an "interference" to establish that t5 labs, rather than OnLive, is the first inventor and entitled to the patent rights on video gaming inventions ..." OnLive has yet to comment on this development. It's not known why T5 Labs has not tried to commercialize its technology like OnLive has. OnLive officially launched its service in June 2010 and can now stream a number of games to PCs, Macs and TVs (the latter with a Microconsole).

Update: Our sister site Joystiq has gotten a response from OnLive about T5 Labs' claims, saying that in its opinion, T5 Labs's patent has "no relevance whatsoever to OnLive."

Valve, under the leadership of co-founder Gabe Newell, launched its Steam PC game download service back in 2004. It has since grown into perhaps the dominate service of its kind in the PC game industry. In a new article profiling Newell on the Forbes.com web site Newell says that Valve, while still not revealing specific financial numbers, is "tremendously profitable". However the rival OnLive streaming PC download service is aiming to take a piece of Steam's market share. In the article Newell says that while he admires OnLive's technology he feels that ultimately that its streaming method is "inefficient and expensive."

Not so, counters OnLive CEO and co-founder Steve Perlman. In the same article he claims that the privately owned OnLive is already profitable (it launched in June 2010) and that the costs to stream games to consumers are in line with what Netflix says it costs to bring its films to movie watchers (about 3 cents per gigabyte). Perlman also slams the Steam service as being "limited to people who have a high-performance computer." OnLive's games can be played even on low end PC netbooks and on TVs via a MicroConsole and OnLive have already announced deals that will have it installed inside Android phones and Visio TVs later this year.

[via Blue's News]

The OnLive streaming PC/Mac game service continues to add new features for its users. Today the OnLive blog site announced that PC, Mac and users of the OnLive Microconsole hardware can listen to many of OnLive's library of games in SRS 5.1 surround sound. More info on how to enable this new audio support can be found at this OnLive web page.

In related news, the mobile phone maker HTC has announced that it has invested $40 million into OnLive's business. That likely means that OnLive's PC games will soon be playable on Android and Windows-based mobile phones made by HTC. There's no word yet on when that might happen.

The OnLive streaming PC/Mac game service officially expands today with its PlayBack "all you can eat" feature. The PlayBack service, which has been in a free beta for the past several weeks, allows its users to play a number of games for as much as they want for $9.99 a month (with one free month to start out with).

OnLive has 38 older and indie games in its Netflix streaming-like PlayBack service (you can see all the games after the jump) and more will be added in the coming months. The service can be canceled at any time and OnLive will save all data from those games for up to a year. If by that time the person rejoins the PlayBack service OnLive will let players continue to play those games at the point which they left the service.

OnLive will continue to offer its main streaming game service for PCs, Macs and its MicroConsole for more recent and "day and date" game titles.

January is close to being over but Sunday still has some one day PC game sales that you can take atvantage of. For example, the Impulse download site now has Helldorado, the Wild West-themed tactical strategy game from developer Spellbound, on sale for today only for a mere $2.49.

Also the OnLive streaming PC/Mac gaming service has the recent PC port of the THQ console game Darksiders on sale for today online for just $19.99. By the way, Monday is supposed to be the last day that OnLive's beta of its upcoming "all you can eat" PlayPack service will be made available for free before OnLive begins charging $9.99 a month to play full versions of a number of games.

It's a Saturday. You might be outside shoveling snow or inside trying to watch some golf but you are at your PC most likely trying to play some games before the weekend is over. Before you get too wrapped up shooting virtual Russians or hitting some monsters with a freeze spell, there are a couple of one day PC game sales that have shown up on the nets:

• Over at Impulse they have the Hearts of Iron III Mega Pack on sale for just $15.59. That includes the original WWII strategy game plus the Semper Fi expansion and all eight of the game's sprite packs.
• Users of the OnLive streaming PC game service can get Metro 2033 for one day for just $19.99, a 50 percent price cut.