OnLive has launched in the UK

The streaming video game service OnLive has launched in the UK with a few deals.

Purchase your first game for £1.00 to get yo started. There are some decent games on offer through this deal.

Pre-order saints Row 3 and get the micro console to connect directly to your TV for free.

A monthly pass of £6.99 will give you access to a large amount of games.

The service streams video to your computer / online console and uses up your bandwidth quite quickly. BT have struck a deal with online where Onlive data does not count towards part of your data limits. This will run until early next year.

Services with capped limits such as Virgin media cable will eat through their data limits quickly then see their download speed capped at a much lower rate than recommended by the online service unless you are with the 50mb package which has no cap.

You can sign up and try demos of all the games.

http://www.onlive.co.uk

Onlive have a stand at the EG expo and I believe that they may be handing out a limited number of kits for this FOC. If so, I shall be on my best blagging behaviour to see if I can grab a few

The concept is great but the reality of it at this point in time with the disparate quality of broadband across the country makes me believe this is going to take a long long time to get fully established.

lol didn`t see this post before i posted about it but i am with onlive at the moment as i got 3 months free with BT, and so far its really good 100+ games in my playback bundle that i can play anytime without paying a penny all those free trials of new releases and even the rental. i do think this is the future of gaming. Although now its out will be interesting to see if MS or Sony come out with something similiar

I managed to swipe a kit for free yesterday and have a months free trial so at some point I will be giving it a go. It looked impressive on the stands at EG but those sets will have been set up to optimise the system. Graphically some of the games looked really impressive - as they should seeing as they are PC games being streamed.

I will let you know my thoughts when I get chance to try it

Smithy wrote:Although now its out will be interesting to see if MS or Sony come out with something similiar

I don't know how they will try and counter it tbh but it may have a positive impact on say the Games on Demand service. Even paying £6.99 per month sub equates to just under £84 which is the equivalent to buying 2-3 full price retail games. Seeing as there is an extensive catalogue available already it promises a lot of value for money which hopefully will knock on to how M$ and Sony price their own products online.

In order for the service to really compete and take off, in the Uk at least, broadband providers are going to have to support it. Ive said before the limits that virgin media users have will impact its performance. On my 10mb connection i can play for 3 hours with online before i go over the small cap limits virgin media place on me (1.5gb, online uses about 500mb per half hour playing) then I'm throttled down by 75% of my speed which takes me down to a measly 2.5mbs for the next 5 hours.

one are where the system could potentially take off and explode into the mainstream is having the software integrated into all the new internet enabled tv's. Having a service already integrated in your tv and playing a game is as simple as switching over to your games channel, browsing the list of games and hitting play may really throw gaming into the masses.

There is currently a rumour going round that microsoft may be in discussion with tv manufacturers to have xbox live integrated into tv sets, in what form that may be who knows. XBLA or may be a full xbox 360 inside them. Microsoft had nothing to comment on the matter as usual

WTF the online game service is currently full, you will be connected shortly. This could potentially be annoying, can't play your own games due to capacity issues, hopefully just teething troubles

Just discovered that the online service (on the mac at least) automatically uses my wireless xbox receiver so i can now use my wireless xbox controllers with the service. Tropico 4 is far better to control now than with mouse and keyboard.

Im now very tempted to sign up for the monthly playback service. And may consider getting one of the micro controllers now

N1NJA FWG wrote:I managed to swipe a kit for free yesterday and have a months free trial so at some point I will be giving it a go. It looked impressive on the stands at EG but those sets will have been set up to optimise the system. Graphically some of the games looked really impressive - as they should seeing as they are PC games being streamed.

I will let you know my thoughts when I get chance to try it

Smithy wrote:Although now its out will be interesting to see if MS or Sony come out with something similiar

I don't know how they will try and counter it tbh but it may have a positive impact on say the Games on Demand service. Even paying £6.99 per month sub equates to just under £84 which is the equivalent to buying 2-3 full price retail games. Seeing as there is an extensive catalogue available already it promises a lot of value for money which hopefully will knock on to how M$ and Sony price their own products online.

the consoles are selling on ebay for about £55

I bet there is a flood of them on there as well Calum as they gave out 3000 consoles for free at the expo and had made provision to post the free if they ran out as long as you were willing to pay the P&P.

Normally I would be tempted to get rid but I do want to give this a go first

I have been having a think abot this and am going to give it a miss as I don't see where I will find the time to use it. If anyone is interested in a brand new unused Micro Console, pm me with a sensible offer and it could be yours otherwise it will be going up on ebay at the end of the week

I'll give you what you paid for it

stick it on ebay some idiot on there will buy not realising you can get a free one when you pre-order saints row 3 on the service for about £25 if you have the playback bundle or £30 if you don't. Instead they are paying around £55 for it on ebay, the fools

sorry its £35 for saints row pre-order

I did get your message the other day Calum, just not been able to load the Onlive App as my internet connection is too shit at this moment in time

well that will teach u guys to go with companys like virgin and sky lol they boost great stuff but then throttle it..........I`m with BT and my connection stays the same 24/7 never throttled get a constanat 10-11meg connection all the time

Tried to do the BF3 beta last nite but my laptops graphics chip just couldn`t handle it shame really but by the looks of it u gunna need a top end card to play ( the pc version ).

Lol smithy, my connection has always been shit, BT haven't upgraded my telephone exchange yet, so max I could probably get is around 2mb download speeds. For some reason the Onlive App let me launch it the other day hence being to start the set up of my account, however haven't been able to get on since

what speed are u paying for? i am on the upto 20meg service and if i was only 2 meg they wouldn`t get me of the phone till they gave me what i was paying for lol don`t take no shit of em I have had quite a few ppl tell me they got rid of BT cause of useless service but in the years i have been with em i`ve not had many probs....there was 1 prob i had my Hub kept resetting itself, but i made sure they sent someone out the next dsay to fix it, turns out nothing wrong with hub but they were trying to have my upload speed set to high and was causeing the reset, the lowered it and not a problem since mabe i`m just one of the lucky ones lol

Im not paying at the moment. Im on Sky, and get their 'Lite' packaging free with Sky Talk, which offers ups to 20mb download speeds, the same as their unlimited package.

My problem is the phone line, which is over 2 miles away from the exchange and from all the tests I have done probably wont support anything over 2.5mb anyway. I get around 1.3mb at the moment. Although the download speeds are crap, my line seems to be very stable and generally dont have any issues playing online.

BT havent upgraded the telephone exchange for their Infinity service yet, and according to their website, isnt due to be done until December 2012

Also, Virgin's fibre optic service is not available either