OnLive prices flat-rate 'PlayPack' plan at $10 per month, begins MicroConsole shipments

by Randy Nelson on Dec 2nd 2010 12:01PM

When we last wrote about OnLive, the "cloud gaming" service had just announced a price and ship date for its MicroConsole hardware. At the time, we also reported that it was planning to launch a flat-rate pricing plan for access to older "back catalog" titles and indie games, with a price to be announced. This morning, the company has set what's now known as the "PlayPack" plan at $9.99 per month, and will make it available to all OnLive users on January 15, 2011.

PlayPack is available right now to those with the OnLive MicroConsole -- or soon to get one, as they've begun shipping to Founding Members today -- in "beta" form, free of charge until the official roll-out.

Currently, the PlayPack beta offers access to a collection of about a dozen games, some new to the service (like Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider: Underworld) while others, like Unreal Tournament 3, have been on the service since it launched last summer. OnLive says it will have a library of 40 games ready for PlayPack subscribers when the for-pay tier launches in January. Looking at the finer print, some of the games "require a mouse and/or keyboard" -- which are supported in both wired and wireless flavors by the MicroConsole. Check out a partial list of games included in the PlayPack beta after the break.

Show full PR text

OnLive Offers $9.99/month Flat-rate Video Game Plan; OnLive Game System
Shipments Begin

Flat-rate Plan Offers Unlimited Access to Growing Library of
Instant-Play Games

Palo Alto, Calif., December 2, 2010-OnLive, Inc., the pioneer of
on-demand, instant-play video games, today announced details of its new
$9.99/month "PlayPack" flat-rate plan, which is immediately available in
beta to OnLive Game System owners and available to all OnLive members on
January 15, 2011. OnLive will continue to offer its current free trials,
3- and 5-day rentals and Full PlayPass options for a la carte
new-release games in addition to the new PlayPack flat-rate plan for
access to a growing library of recent, indie and classic games.

"OnLive's PlayPass and PlayPack plans give players maximum flexibility
to try or buy video games," said Michael Pachter, Managing Director,
Equity Research Wedbush Securities. "Top-tier titles are available as
individual rentals and purchases, while everything else is available at
a flat rate. With these programs, OnLive is effectively offering the
equivalent of an iTunes/Netflix combo for gaming."

OnLive today also began shipping the OnLive Game System, a $99
controller and MicroConsole(tm) bundle, providing instant access on
HDTVs to all OnLive games.

The PlayPack option is available, in beta, starting today for owners of
the OnLive Game System free of charge. The PlayPack game library will
steadily expand up to and beyond the January 15, 2011 launch date. After
this introductory beta period, the PlayPack flat-rate plan will be
available as a $9.99/month option for all OnLive members, including
those PlayPack beta members who choose to continue with the plan.

The PlayPack flat-rate plan will comprise more than 40 high-quality
games when officially launched, incorporating major franchises
immediately recognizable to any gamer. A sampling of the current
PlayPack beta game library includes:

* Prince of Persia(r), Ubisoft

* NBA(r) 2K10, 2K Sports

* Tomb Raider(tm): Underworld, Square-Enix

* F.E.A.R. 2, Warner Bros

* Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.(tm), Ubisoft

* Unreal Tournament(r) 3, Epic

* Vin Diesel Wheelman(tm), Ubisoft

* LEGO(r) Batman(tm), Warner Bros

* Defense Grid(r) Gold, Hidden Path

* Saw, Konami

* World of Goo, 2D Boy

Like all OnLive titles, PlayPack games play instantly on TVs, via the
OnLive Game System, or on a PC or Mac(r) via a small browser download.

"OnLive's new PlayPack plan is another example of unique value and
convenience unlocked through cloud gaming technology," said Steve
Perlman, founder and CEO of OnLive. "People love flat-rate plans for
instant-play media, so it's exciting to introduce this offering to the
video game market for the first time. With PlayPass games priced from
$3.99 to $49.99, along with the new $9.99/mo PlayPack plan, OnLive's
growing library of games will suit any budget and any type of gamer,
from casual to hardcore."

Some PlayPack games require a mouse and/or keyboard. The PlayPack
flat-rate plan will be offered on a month-to-month basis and can be
cancelled at any time.

For more information about the PlayPack flat-rate plan, visit
www.onlive.com/playpack. For additional details on the OnLive Game
System, visit www.onlive.com/game-system.

About OnLive
OnLive is the pioneer of on-demand, instant-play video game services,
delivering real-time interactive experiences and rich media through the
Internet. With groundbreaking video compression technology, OnLive
harnesses cloud computing to provide the power and intelligence needed
to instantly deliver the latest, premium game titles to any HDTV via the
OnLive Game System or nearly any PC and Mac via a small browser
download. OnLive technology is backed by hundreds of patents and patents
pending. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. OnLive
investors include Warner Bros., Autodesk, Maverick Capital, AT&T,
British Telecommunications (BT) and The Belgacom Group. More information
is available at www.onlive.com.

# # #

OnLive, Brag Clip and MicroConsole are trademarks or registered
trademarks of OnLive, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of
their respective owners.

Tags: cloud-gaming, mac, onlive, pc, playpack, prince-of-persia, Tomb-Raider-Underworld, unreal-tournament-3

Reader Comments (26)

Anyone around here tested out connectivity and lag issues with online yet?

@Jack Kevorkian Yes. I tried it the other night. Download of the OnLive service app was very quick. I don't have numbers for my internet connection but I know it's shared as I live in a condo and have BrightHouse (Time Warner) cable internet. I played at peak hours (7-9pm) which is supposed to reduce internet speed on shared cable connections. Tried a demo of Aliens vs. Predator. Control lag was almost non-existant and easily playable without annoyance. Graphic, sound, and frame rate quality were absolutely stunning on my crappy $300 laptop which can't play most modern games.

I really don't understand why this hasn't caught on yet. The only thing I don't like is the price of games, which is reasonable compared to retail and on par with Steam. This subscription plan is even better. But I get xbox games nearly free from Goozex by trading games back in for the same price (points) I paid for them. So even $40 games are really expensive when I can get them for a couple dollars in shipping. Even if I buy a $60 game at retail I know I'm actually buying multiple games because I can trade it in on Goozex for another game, and that for another, over and over.

@Jack Kevorkian also I was playing over wifi.

@Jack Kevorkian I tried it the other week. I was surprised with the quality of the video, but it went downhill from there.

In AvP, I kept overaiming due to lag
In Dirt 2, I kept oversteering due to lag, and the video stuttered heavily
In Assassin's Creed 2, attack combos were impossible because the timing was way off due to lag.

I was playing on my PC (which is perfectly capable of gaming on its own) on a wired 15Mbit cable connection, in Canada.

It was interesting as a tech demo, but other than that, completely unplayable. Unless OnLive has a server farm near you, stay the hell away.

@foomojive

i think the main reason it hasnt "caught" on is because they are marketing to gamers.

who would already either have a PC or a console, and most wouldn't see the need for this.

Then when you buy the game, you lost it when your subscription expires (unless they changed that, or there is this model mentioned in the post, where you pay a flat fee for old ass games)

@BrianH They changed that a long time ago. There is no subscription fee any more to play games you "own" through OnLive. I don't get why people still think this so often. The change was widely publicized.

@foomojive

Pretty simple why it hasn't taken off: you have to pay full price for games that you can only play through Onlive.

So you pay 60 bucks and find out that the visual quality or control lag is unacceptably bad...you're screwed, period.

I tried a few of the free demos and the image quality and lag were horrendous. At least 100 MS either way, to put it in layman's terms, it makes singleplayer games like the laggiest COD match you've ever played.

This with a 700 KB/S connection. Maybe if you have a crazy 2 MB/s connection or something it works great, but I doubt it, and the image quality is still garbage. (borderlands looked ridiculously bad, worse than on consoles)

@foomojive Thanks for the in depth mini review. I'll look into it

@Invigilator To say you have to spend 60 dollars only to find out the game doesn't play well is pretty much just flat out wrong. First of all, I have seen no games, even new full price ones, over 49.99. Secondly, that is why there is a 30 minute trial playing the full version of the game for every game. And if you still haven't decided, rent it for 5 bucks.

People complaining of games being "unplayable" are one of the 3 circumstances:

1. They are too far from one of Onlive's 3 current datacenters (The guy in Canada).
2. Their connection is laggy/they are playing over wifi (which adds extra lag).
3. They are using a mouse/keyboard and expecting the instant response 0 latency you get on a PC for an FPS (that is not going to happen). Plus if you use a wireless mouse/keyboard, add on that latency.

I just wish people would take their own situation into account and not assume their particular experience is exactly what everyone else has. I've used the service near their servers (northern Cali), in Southern Cali, and in Seattle and it has always been highly playable.

A typical Ethernet card has a latency less than 1ms. The Internet backbone as a whole also has very good latency. Here's a real-world example:

* The distance from Stanford to Boston is 4320km.
* The speed of light in vacuum is 300 x 10^6 m/s.
* The speed of light in fibre is roughly 66% of the speed of light in vacuum.
* The speed of light in fibre is 300 x 10^6 m/s * 0.66 = 200 x 10^6 m/s.
* The one-way delay to Boston is 4320 km / 200 x 10^6 m/s = 21.6ms.
* The round-trip time to Boston and back is 43.2ms.
* The current ping time from Stanford to Boston over today's Internet is about 85ms:

[cheshire@nitro]$ ping -c 1 lcs.mit.edu
PING lcs.mit.edu (18.26.0.36): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 18.26.0.36: icmp_seq=0 ttl=238 time=84.5 ms

* So: the hardware of the Internet can currently achieve within a factor of two of the speed of light.

So the Internet is doing pretty well. It may get better with time, but we know it can never beat the speed of light. In other words, that 85ms round-trip time to Boston might reduce a bit, but it's never going to beat 43ms.

@Invigilator Either you don't know what you're talking about, or you are lying. Onlive won't even let you connect to the service without at least a 3MBPS connection, which isn't very fast to begin with. It's recommended you have a at least a 5MBPS connection for quality gameplay.

@foomojive
This hasn't caught on because people like to have the things they buy.

@Darthus

The exact price wasn't my point: PC games are usually 50 bucks anyway. Why should I pay 50 bucks for a PC game that has response lag and shitty image quality when I can pay 50 bucks for the EXACT same PC game from a retailer or digital distribution and get it with 2 ms response time and 1080p maxed out visual quality? I can buy AC2 through Onlive and have 100 ms response times with crappy visuals at 720p, or I can buy it from Best Buy and have 2 ms response time with maxed out visuals. It's lose-lose for me to go Onlive.

The difference is day and night, yet the price is the same. What is the advantage of Onlive in this scenario?

@stickzman

Really? Because I went to their site and downloaded the client and it worked just fine.

Are they measuring in megaBITS or megabytes? Most telecom companies give their speed in megabits to make it seem higher. My connection is a 5Mbit connection, which boils down to around 600-700 kb/s for downloads.

I have a feeling that you're the one who doesn't know the difference between bits and bytes and the one in the wrong here.

I've tried it, while the lag isn't terribly, it is noticeable in high action games (like darksiders), and the image quality definitely suffers

OnLive works great and that is on the college internet connection!!! I only have a 2.4-2.5Mbps sustained connection at home but that isn't fast enough for OnLive. Waiting for them to launch their Standard Definition (1.5Mbps)!!!

worked great for me. I only played a few demos though

Ive had no lag at all even on wi-fi.

Man, this service sounds so neat, and I do love me some fancy new tech. But since I have all the gaming systems and a good PC I can't justify purchasing this.

But this monthly thing is a great way to help me change my mind though.

I think playing over wired and using a wired keyboard and mouse would help.

It's cool that this sounds like it's working tho. Maybe I'll get this instead of a PS3.........................................................

It was working fine for me.
I tried it over wifi so I had a little bit of input lag but nothing major. Still need to try it at my own house with my modem and test results

Seems like people with the biggest problem aren't close enough to a server. So I'm guessing they'll be putting up even more if it catches on.

I'm just waiting to see what exclusives it gets.

If they added a video streaming service to this monthly flat rate and fixed the user input lag issues I would sign up.

I have the beta and the lag breaks the game play for me.

I just dont trust my internet enough, neat idea though

I'm perfectly happy with my high end pc, ps3, and steam. I can't dream of why I would get this.

I'm personally in the "Its an interesting tech demo" crowd. The reason at least in my most humble of opinions, has not taken off is because it introduces too many points of failure into the system.

The main point that it introduces being latency. Be that video latency, controller latency or server latency .... actually in most cases all three in tandem.

It also until recently hasn't made much financial sense, being that an onlive subscription (YES I KNOW THEY SCRAPPED THAT PLAN BECAUSE IT WAS STUPID AND PROVED HORRIBLY UNPOPULAR BUT THEY DON'T GET TO JUST PRETEND IT NEVER EXISTED) over a projected consoles life time actually priced Onlive substantially higher than purchasing a new console every cycle. I will give them now it is actually more financially palatable if they can hammer down the latency issue.

Now they are also going to be dealing with all the net neutrality issues that are cropping up. Service providers shaking down popular internet sites for preferential allotments of bandwidth and trying to tier their customer internet and charge by the MB ......... sorry but the deck seems stacked against OnLive.

If I was going to compare OnLive with a technology. I would compare it with 3D cinema. Not the 3D we have today but more the forgotten bi-colored 3D we had decades ago that was popular in passing but fell by the wayside for decades. Until it was resurrected at a later date with improved technology. Which comes full circle back to, Its a nice tech demo.

Tomb Raider: Underworld

OnLive prices flat-rate 'PlayPack' plan at $10 per month, begins MicroConsole shipments

Reader Comments (26)

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 12:09PM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 12:31PM foomojive said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 12:32PM foomojive said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 12:42PM AirIntake said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 12:42PM BrianH said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 2:20PM foomojive said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 2:28PM Invigilator said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 2:57PM Jack Kevorkian said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 4:00PM Darthus said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 4:44PM Unvrfd said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 4:50PM stickzman said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 7:16PM Jovrick said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 7:18PM Invigilator said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 7:21PM Invigilator said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 12:12PM BrianH said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 12:18PM GameGoal said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 12:24PM lessthankris said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 12:30PM ohheysean said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 12:54PM comics4andy said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 12:58PM Marco le Polo said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 1:33PM Jawmuncher said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 2:27PM SteveoftheGods said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 3:43PM 2tall2hide said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 5:21PM tstorm said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 5:48PM JimmyBoy said

Posted: Dec 2nd 2010 6:29PM Scuffles said

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