onlive

OnLive ended the guessing game about its future late Friday, confirming the sale of its assets to an unnamed suitor who will continue to offer its cloud gaming service.

For most of the day, the company did its best not to engage with reports that it might have fired all of its employees and was prepping for a bankruptcy filing.

OnLive has now released the following statement:

We can now confirm that the assets of OnLive, Inc. have been acquired into a newly-formed company and is backed by substantial funding, and which will continue to operate the OnLive Game and … Read more

In 2010, OnLive introduced online-streaming games to PC and Mac users. Last year, it extended the platform to mobile devices. And this year, the company is focusing on productivity apps, starting by offering free basic Microsoft Office functionality to iPad users.

Beginning on Thursday, U.S. iPad users will be able to download an app from the iTunes App Store to use the free service. Users can sign up early, starting Tuesday.

The free service provides 2 gigabytes of storage. After an initial testing phase, OnLive will offer a $9.99-per-month OnLive Desktop Pro version with 50GB of storage and … Read more

If you have a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play smartphone, you're more than likely a gamer, and this is something that will interest you this holiday season.

OnLive, the pioneer of cloud-based gaming, announced Thursday that its free OnLive app for Android has been updated to support the slide-out game controls on the phone. This means the phone's owners now can enjoy almost all OnLive games, including the latest AAA console-class titles.

Unlike other Android-based smartphones, the the Xperia Play combines the traditional touch-screen control with slide-out dedicated gaming keys, analog touch joysticks, and shoulder buttons, making it an … Read more

Cloud gaming service OnLive has boasted since its inception of its ability to act as a game trial service that can save game developers from having to develop their own separate demos. Today, OnLive announced that functionality will sit side by side next to game reviews, through a partnership with review site GameSpot (disclosure: GameSpot is a property of CNET parent company CBS).

The idea is to let game consumers quickly get hands-on time with a game they've read about. Because OnLive hosts the game code on its remote servers, there's no demo version to download. Instead, you click the link from the game review page, which launches the OnLive application. You will also need an OnLive account to play the demo.… Read more

Update: Joystiq reports that GameStop is now offering a $50 store credit and a two-for-one used game offer for customers affected by the Deus Ex: Human Revolution coupon controversy.

Before this week, if you mentioned OnLive's cloud-gaming service to dedicated gamers, you'd hear lots of skepticism. Whether it's doubts about OnLive's responsiveness or reservations about the absence of a local copy of games that have been paid for, OnLive has met with plenty of consumer resistance (although we like it) since it emerged in 2009.

This past week, though, OnLive seems to have earned itself some good will. At the start of the week, gamers discovered a coupon for a free OnLive version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution in their boxed copies of the game's PC version. Putting the service, and a copy of a well-received fan favorite game, in the hands of gamers who risk nothing by giving OnLive a spin can only help win fans.

Then, a few days into the week, news broke that retailer GameStop was pulling the OnLive coupon from its Deus Ex copies on the grounds that OnLive is a competitor to GameStop's own forthcoming streaming service, due to hit beta later this year. That move, of course, met with outrage from the gaming community.… Read more

Last week, Electronic Arts announced its gaming service. Origin on the PC feels familiar, offering a friends list and a digital storefront for EA games, making it essentially a single-publisher competitor to Valve Software's Steam service.

On the mobile front, Origin's launch is murkier. EA launched no standalone mobile Origin app, instead integrating into only its iPhone version of Scrabble. We spoke with Electronic Arts' General Manager and Senior Vice President Chip Lange, who provided us with some insight into EA's strategy for Origin on mobile devices and consoles, and how Origin is different than similar efforts from other publishers.

Q: What can you tell us about EA's plans for Origin on the various mobile devices?

A: EA has always been a platform-agnostic company with the customer at the center. And when you think about the opportunity of creating a platform-agnostic user ID and gaming network [like Origin], those types of opportunities really don't come into play unless you have a couple of things in place.

One is the content deployed across different platforms. Then you need a back end capable of capturing, containing, and utilizing your data across those different platforms. Being able to connect those PC gameplay experiences to a similar, though not identical, game on a mobile device really opens up a number of creative opportunities for us, whether it be for a game like Scrabble or a game like Battlefield or anywhere in between.

It's easy to say that we're creating a store, and that's Origin's focus on the PC right now. On the mobile side it's different. Apple already has a great store. What we're looking to do is get the social component of mobile side activated more quickly and more easily so customers starting can start enjoying it today.… Read more

Gaikai CEO David Perry announced the launch of his company's cloud-gaming service on Friday. Designed as a platform to allow game publishers and others to embed streaming gameplay trials on their Web sites, Gaikai has been in development since 2008. Gaikai investors include Intel and Limelight Networks, and the service counts Electronic Arts among its game publisher partners.

While Perry said in his blog that Gaikai is live, the corporate site still lists the service as being in beta. Perry's blog lists trial versions of five games available to play now, including Dead Space 2, Spore, and The Sims 3.… Read more

Expanding its game offerings in terms of both payment structure and game library, cloud gaming service OnLive announced that its all-you-can-play PlayPack service officially launched today.

For $9.99 a month, the PlayPlack subscription service lets you play as many games as you want, as much as you want. The list of games is separate from those available from its a la carte plan, and the PlayPack titles skew toward older mass market games, as well as some lesser-known indie titles.

OnLive lists 38 titles among the current PlayPack offering, including Lego Batman, 2008's Tomb Raider: Underworld, NBA 2K10, … Read more

OnLive CEO Steve Perlman hinted this summer about his company's interest in integrating its cloud-gaming service directly into television. It seems OnLive has achieved that goal after this morning's announcement of a partnership with Vizio.

Previously confined to Macs and Windows systems through downloadable software, as well as its own dedicated MicroConsole set-top box, OnLive debuted last year as the first major cloud-gaming service. With its partnership with Vizio, the OnLive service will now extend to Vizio HDTVs, as well as Vizio's newly announced line of Via tablets, smartphones, and Blu-ray players.

Details in OnLive and Vizio'… Read more