OnLive Offers First Year Free to Founding Members

OnLive is a service that wants to try out a new approach to the way games are played in the living room. The idea is that the company will stream content to any computer, regardless of its specifications, with the actual PC games being run by super-computers back at the OnLive's facilities. Many have been skeptical about this possibility, given the current state of the Internet connections around the world.

OnLive offers the first year free to United States citizens that subscribe until the 15th of May. The second year will also be cheaper for the founding members of OnLive, as they will be charged with 4.95 dollars a month. The games will still have a price, though, ranging from 9.99 dollars to 49.99 dollars, depending on the title. For those who do not want to pay for something they don't really own, three- or five-day rentals for five dollars will be available instead.

Another useful piece of information is the fact that OnLive will require at least a five-megabit connection to work and, obviously, a constant wired connection to the Internet. The service is available for both the Mac and the PC. Apple computer users can be happy, as even the Windows-only games will run on their devices because of the nature of OnLive. There are a lot of titles playable with OnLive, including big names like Mass Effect 2, Prince of Persia the Forgotten Sands, Dragon Age: Origins, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Just Cause 2 or Assassin's Creed 2.

Reports from the OnLive setup at E3 say it works pretty well with no image break-up or controller lag. The Electronic Entertainment Expo took place in Los Angeles and the server that hosted the games played through the service was located in San Francisco. This means that OnLive may actually work, contrary to what almost everyone thinks.