More details coming

Mar 11, 2010 18:01 GMT  ·  By

OnLive, the cloud-based videogame streaming service that has been in development for more than one year, announced at a GDC press conference that it planned to have an official launch on June 17 in the United States, on both the PC and the Mac. Registrations for those interested are open now for a priority list that will probably determine the order in which customers will be served once the service is live.

OnLive is also saying that the service is set to cost 14.95 dollars for one month and that the first 25,000 gamers who register for the priority list will not have to pay for the first three. The tag does not include any games, just the price of the streaming service itself.

Players will need to buy or to rent videogames directly from the publishers. Initial offerings will be coming from Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, 2K Games, Warner Bros. and THQ. It's not clear how much the companies will be asking for their titles. The big name missing is Activision Blizzard.

Steve Perlman, who is the Chief Executive Officer of the project, revealed that “This marks a huge milestone for both OnLive and the interactive entertainment landscape as a whole, changing the way that video games are developed, marketed, accessed and played. We are opening the door to incredible experiences for gamers and enormous opportunities for developers and publishers.” He also promised that special loyalty programs and other offers would be delivered in the coming months to make signing up for OnLive more attractive for players.

The concept behind OnLive is to offer videogames without the need to install and run the program on local hardware. All the data will be streamed to players via the OnLive service and the concept will also be available on normal television sets, as long as an adapter is being used.