onlive posts

After a couple of years of teases and months of closed beta testing, the Gaikai streaming PC game service is now officially live. The CEO of Gaikai, Dave Perry, announced that the service was open to anyone to try out on his official web site late on Friday.

The streaming service is concentrating only on limited game demos, at least for now (unlike the OnLive service which has full games to play). The official Gaikai web site is offering a streaming demo of Mass Effect 2 (access to the demo pops up on the right hand side of the site after a few seconds). Gaikai is also being used to demo other EA games such as Spore and The Sims 3 which didn't have traditional PC demos released for them. Most interesting is that Gaikai is the only place to play a PC demo of the recent sci-fi horror game Dead Space 2 (after you fill out a survey). We've played it and on our connection it's pretty smooth. There's also a way to try out the quasi-MMO game Second Life via a Gaikai connection.

On his web site Perry states that at GDC next week he will be demoing a Gaikai-powered game running inside a Facebook page. He also states that " ... we will show some really high-end, high-performance games running at 60hz with no work needing to be done by the publishers / developers."

It's a lazy Saturday for some but for others who are on a constant lookout for a bargain there are a few more PC game sales that have poppped up on our radar today:

• Steam has a week-long sale for both games in the Spellforce series. Spellforce: Platinum Edition, Spellforce 2: Gold Edition and the newly launched Spellforce Universe two game bundle are all on sale for 50 percent off until March 3.
• The OnLive streaming PC game web site has both Borderlands and Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition on sale for today only for 50 percent off.

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]

It may be the day before Valentine's Day but some of you might be in love with today's one-day sales PC game sales deals from various download outlets. Feel the love.

• Direct2Drive's final one day sale on 2K Games-published titles is for Civilization V. You can buy the strategy game from now until 1 pm Eastern time Monday for $37.50, a 25 percent price cut.
• Impulse has the first game in the Mass Effect sci-fi RPG trilogy on sale for today only for just $4.99.
• Finally the OnLive streaming game service has Batman Arkham Asylum on sale today only for just $14.99.

You can't seem to get away from some good PC game sales. Today two download sites and the OnLive streaming PC game service have cut the price of one game in their library for today only:

• Direct2Drive has cut the price of the first person shooter Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition from now until 1 pm Eastern time on Sunday to just $14.95.
• Impulse has a price cut on the survival horror game Resident Evil 5 from now until 1 am Eastern time on Sunday to just $14.99.
• OnLive has the action game Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days on sale for today only for just $5.

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.

What do you know? After Thursday's "super" PC game sales post, some more savings have also popped up on the interwebs.

• Direct2Drive has a selection of recent and upcoming games that are eligible for a 15 percent sales discount if you apply the promo code "snowblows" at checkout.
• THQ's online store has a number of downloadable PC games on sale for 75 percent off until February 6. Among the games are Metro 2033 and Darksiders for $10 each or Frontlines: Fuel of War for a mere $5.
• Electronic Arts' online store has the original Dead Space on sale for this weekend only for $9.97.

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.