OnLive Brings Console-Class Games to Tablets & Phones: Gives Away a FREE Game
By: Ed Krassenstein
Touch Controls begin rolling out now, and the OnLive wireless controller goes on sale in the US and UK soon. The Android/iOS apps should be available shortly, and OnLive is giving all those who download the mobile apps a free game. Scroll to the bottom of this article to listen to our 15 minute+ interview with OnLive Founder & CEO Steve Perlman. Also see the twitter contest we are holding for those who retweet this article.
OnLive tablets smartphones android ipad
OnLive Inc. has just announced that they are bringing console-class video games to mobile tablets and smartphones. Gamers will now be able to play games such as L.A. Noire, Defense Grid, Warhammer 40K: Chaos Rising, DiRT 3, LEGO: Batman and more via touch controls on over 500 million tablets and smartphones.
In wake of this announcement, OnLive will be giving LEGO: Batman to gamers for free, just for downloading the OnLive app. LEGO Batman will be automatically added to a user’s ‘My Games’ list within 24 hours of connecting to the OnLive Game Service from the OnLive app for Android (or iPad when available).
All-in-all there will be a growing library that already consists of over 25 games (see list below) that will have touch controls enabled. Virtually all of the nearly 200 games on the service will be playable on tablets, and smartphones using the new OnLive wireless controller. The new wireless controller will be compatible with most tablets and many smartphones. It will utilizes OnLive’s exclusive adaptive wireless technology to automatically find an optimal wireless connection for a given tablet, smartphone, PC, Mac, TV or Blu-ray player. This controller should be available very soon in the US and soon after that in the UK, via the online OnLive store which can be found at
www.onlive.com/store and
www.onlive.co.uk/store. Perlman informed us that there could be a slight delay in shipping the controllers to users, due to some back order issues, but the delay should not be too significant. The price will be set at $49.99 (US) and £39.99 (UK). OnLive PlayPack members can take an additional 30% off these prices.
The highlight of this news story, is the fact that games that couldn’t have even been considered playable on tablets or smartphones in the past, become as simple and easy to play for these mobile devices, as they have been on PCs and consoles decades.
Developers have been working with OnLive for quite some time. More specifically, Rockstar Games has been working frivolously to bring genuine touch controls to L.A. Noire, exclusively for OnLive. The developers of the game actually created a version specifically for use on tablets through the OnLive service. This is just the start, and just one of over 25 games that are available with touch controls already.
In talking about the touch controls for L.A. Noire, OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman said to OnLiveFans, “It’s a very immersive experience, and [Rockstar Games] has done just an absolutely beautiful job.”
Perlman also briefly talked to us about his experience with touch controls on another popular OnLive title, Defense Grid.
“In Defense Grid, there is a lot of zooming in and zooming out, so they did swipes and pinch & zoom,” explained Perlman. “And it’s incredible. I think the best experience is with touch on [Defense Grid].”
The entire list of games that should have touch controls enabled at launch are as follows:
4 Elements
Ancient Spirits
ARES Exctinction Operation
Around the world in 80 days
Bastion
Cake Mania 3: Lights Camera Action!
Darksiders
Defense Grid
Dirt 3
Flock
Future Wars (not yet released)
Kingdom for Keflings (not yet released)
Lara Croft
Lego Batman
Lego HP 1-4
Lego HP 5-7
Mini Ninjas
Osmos
Puzzle Chronicles 2
Puzzle Quest
Royal Envoy
Space Chem
Split Second
Steel Storm
The Ball
The Maw
Virtua Tennis 2009
Warhammer 40K: Chaos Rising
“Today marks a major milestone: OnLive is now delivering the latest, console-class, top-tier games—literally to your fingertips—on mobile tablets and phones for instant on-demand play anywhere, anytime,” said Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder and CEO. “Through the free OnLive app, tablet and smartphone, gamers can play top console and PC titles like Assassins Creed: Revelations and L.A. Noire—one of the most highly acclaimed, graphically sophisticated games to date—with exclusive OnLive Cloud Touch controls or with the new mobile-compatible OnLive Wireless Controller. Tablets and smartphones, the fastest-growing consumer product categories in history, are now capable of running the hottest, highest-end games. Gaming and mobile devices will never be the same.”
Gamers will be able to connect to OnLive via tablet and smartphone using a Wi-Fi connection or AT&T and Verizon’s 4G LTE cellular service. OnLive is unveiling compatibility with these 4G LTE cellular services, enabling full, HD-resolution, low-latency cloud gaming everywhere there is 4G coverage on devices such as the HTC Jetstream, Samsung Galaxy Tab and Motorola Xoom. With this new compatibility, OnLive is truly playable everywhere, whether indoors, outdoors or even in the back seat of a car at highway speeds, for the first time bringing complete mobility to console-class gaming.
When talking about playing OnLive on a 4G LTE connection, Perlman said, “LTE is the first cellular standard that was designed for cloud gaming. When AT&T invested (in OnLive) a couple years ago, the very first thing they did was say, ‘hey look, we’re rolling out this new high performance standard,’ and our wireless guys met with their wireless guys. We made sure there was a mode in LTE that was very low latency, specifically for cloud gaming. If you use OnLive on LTE tablets, it’s really incredible. You can drive on a highway, and the kids are in the backseat playing OnLive, and it’s fine.”
The HTC Flyer is the only current tablet that comes with the OnLive app already installed. However, users of all other tablets and a large amount of smartphones can simply download the app from their respective app stores. The OnLive app will be available in the Android Market as well as the iOS App Store and the Amazon Kindle App Store.
OnLive will run on 3G and non-LTE 4G devices, but there could be a few issues with with latency. Smartphones will run a lot better on the slower, lower bandwidth connections than the tablets will.
As for the growing list of games, that will have touch controls enabled; OnLive will continue to implement touch into both current and future games. Many developers will also begin adding touch controls into their games with OnLive in mind.
“The effort required to go and add the touch capability to a game is relatively small, compared to the development effort of making the game overall,” said Perlman. With that said, there are some games that aren’t really amenable to touch.”
The rollout of touch controls begins at the time this article was published. The Android and iOS apps should be available very soon, but that’s entire in Google and Apple’s hands right now. Hopefully we should see these available sometime tomorrow.
Originally Posted by TheRealSpiders
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