Free subscription for OnLive early adopters
One year’s access and a game free for first 25,000 sign-ups to streaming service
Game-streaming service OnLive is offering a year’s free subscription to customers who pre-registered last year.
The service had originally offered a three-month complimentary subscription for early adopters, but this has been extended to a full year and a free game for the first 25,000 people to register.
After that, users will be required to pay a monthly subscription of $14.95 – although final plans for international pricing are yet to be revealed. Both rental and ownership plans are promised.
OnLive is no longer accepting new sign-ups ahead of its US launch on June 17.
UK, Europe and rest of world launch dates remain unnanounced, though in Britain OnLive will be available to BT broadband customers in an exclusive deal, and through other ISPs.
Even before that announcement, analysts had expressed concern that the eight years-in-development cloud gaming service may offer too small an install base to retain larger publishers’ interest. The generous new subscription offer may change that.
OnLive's ambitious promise is that gamers will low-spec PCs and Macs will be able to play high-end titles running remotely on powerful servers, streamed to the client via high-speed internet connections.
So far, OnLive is confirmed to include a range of big-name PC games from EA, Ubisoft, 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. The service will also include a variety of social networking tools, comparable to Steam or Xbox Live.