OnLive PlayPack free for three months to BT broadband users

BT broadband customers eager to get their game on will be delighted to hear they can get three months' free subscription to streaming service OnLive.

Sign up to OnLive before 31 January and you'll get three months' access to what it calls the PlayPack Bundle, worth £6.99 per month, where you can play over 100 recent and classic games for free. The offer's open to any BT broadband customer and the service won't count towards your data usage until 2 January.

OnLive works by streaming the action directly over the Internet to your screen from a superpowerful computer, so you don't need an expensive PC to play the latest games at the highest settings. It does eat up your data allowance though, so it's only recommended if you're on an unlimited package.

It has a range of pricing options, from buying access to games outright to renting them for three or five days, to free trials. The PlayPack Bundle on offer here gives you free access to top games from a couple of years ago, such as Batman: Arkham Asylum and Borderlands, and ancient gems such as Fallout 2 and Unreal Tournament 3.

The bundle also gives you 30 per cent off everything else on OnLive, so you could rent Saints Row 3 for £4.20 for five days, or buy Assassin's Creed Revelations for £24.49. No, it's not amazing, but it's free, and that's always better than a kick in the cobblers.

Why only BT customers? The company owns a stake in OnLive and is keen to promote it as part of its range of online services. It also offers BT Vision+, a Freeview PVR and Internet connected set-top box with iPlayer, 4oD and a bunch of on-demand movies.

In our review of OnLive, we found the streaming worked pretty well, although there was occasionally some annoying lag. It's very versatile though -- you can play it on a TV via a mini console or on a tablet via an app.

But as you might have gathered from the titles listed above, its selection of games is disappointing, with very few real must-haves in there. It's early days for the service though, and the more people try it, the better it will be able to persuade publishers to put their games on there.

Have you used OnLive? It's free to try, so you might as well -- you can learn more at BT's offer page. Let us know what you think of the service in the comments below or over on our Facebook page.