OnLive the cloud based gaming service that promises to stream games over the Internet has gone live. The new service as Bit-Cast has previously mentioned will allow game play on virtually any device that has a decent broadband connection. Thus removing the need for expensive hardware and makes gaming ubiquitous across all platforms, be it Windows, Mac or Linux and with the addition of the onLive micro console due for launch this year the service will be accessible from nothing more than a television. The ramifications of such a service could be profound on the gaming industry in the coming years as it has the potential to completely and utterly change the way consumers play games and how developers make and publish games.

onLive CEO and founder Steve Perman had the following to say about the launch, "This launch is just the beginning for the OnLive platform. We'll be rolling out new features, capabilities and performance improvements, continually adding new content along with the latest releases, and extending the service to more people,". He continued by saying, "Today we're taking the first step toward a future where video game content is increasingly free from the restrictions of device and location, while showcasing the ability to instantly play the latest, most advanced games at the touch of a button."

To mark the launch, onLive have announced the 'onLive Founding Members Program' which will basically offer the service for free for one year to those who showed the service a bit of faith and signed up to it back when it was still in Beta. However it's a time/availability limited offer, so if you did sign up to the service months back then you'll have to be quick to get this great offer. As an added bonus the second year will be just $4.95 per month instead of $15 which is a pretty good deal if you ask me.

Now to the nitty gritty...what games can actually be played at launch? The simple answer would be there are around 23 launch titles including the following:

• aaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
• Assassin's Creed II (Ubisoft)
• Batman: Arkham Asylum (Square Enix / Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)
• Borderlands (Take Two Interactive Entertainment)
• Brain Challenge (Gameloft)
• Defense Grid: Gold (Hidden Path)
• Dirt 2 (Codemasters)
• Dragon Age: Origins (Electronic Arts)
• FEAR 2: Project Origin (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)
• Just Cause 2 (Square Enix)
• LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment) demo now full version available at official launch
• 6/29
• Madballs in Babo: Invasion (Playbrains)
• Mass Effect 2 (Electronic Arts)
• MLB 2K10 (2K Sports)
• NBA 2K10 (Take Two Interactive Entertainment)
• Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Ubisoft)
• Puzzle Chronicles (Konami)
• Red Faction Guerrilla (THQ)
• Shatter (Sidhe)
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction (Ubisoft)
• Trine (Frozenbyte)
• Unreal Tournament III (Epic)
• World of Goo (2DBoy)

More titles will be added in the coming months, but expect the following games to be released to the service very soon:

• Alpha Protocol (SEGA)
• Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (Ubisoft)
• Darksiders (THQ)
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Square Enix)
• DRIVER San Francisco (Ubisoft)
• F.E.A.R.3 (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)
• Homefront (THQ)
• Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days (Square Enix)
• LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment)
• MLB 2K10 (2K Sports)
• Red Faction: Armageddon (THQ)
• Shaun White Skateboarding (Ubisoft)

For a demo of the service "working", check out the video below of it being shown off on Apple's iPad, via WiFi.

Video by touchArcade.com

It remains to be seen how popular this service will be or even if it will work as intended but if the video above is anything to go by then this could simply be huge. Also consider this, if the technology didn't show potential then why would  so many large game developers invest the time, expense and risk of getting their content onto the onLive platform? It's a huge risk for them to take and if it wasn't a promising technology then there wouldn't be so many developers on board from the off, right? With over 25 developers on board, including some big names such as Electronic Arts, Take Two Interactive Software, THQ, Ubisoft, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Square Enix, SEGA, Capcom and Konami Digital Entertainment, there must be something in it for them.

Also consider the fact that onLive could kill game piracy, something which is considered the scourge of the market and is blamed for decreasing games sales. What's more is that developers only have to develop for one platform instead of multiple platforms like Windows, Mac, Xbox, PS3 and so on. The net result could be a far more streamlined development process, hence quicker to market games with fewer development costs. The savings could then be passed on to us the consumer. Of course I'm speculating here, but it makes sense to think this way. One platform, one expense, one set of problems.

What's certain is that the gaming industry has and will be changed forever and it will be interesting in the coming months and years to see how things pan out.

For more information see the official onLive blog and press release.

This will be short but sweet. Tomorrow (May 22nd) will mark 30 years since the release of pacman, probably one of the most famous and fondly remembered games ever created. Despite being 30 years old it's still as addictive today as it has always been. In their traditional style Google have decided to honor this historic event by replacing their home page logo with one that pays homage to pacman (see below).

Nothing new here you might think as Goolge regularly updates it's pages to mark some special event, Google calls affectionately calls them 'doodles'. The awesome difference this time around though is that you can actually play pacman right on Google's home page and navigate a Google logo maze. Just go to Google and wait for the classic music to kick in and your good to go with your keyboard arrow keys.

You will also notice that the 'I'm feeling lucky' button has been replaced by an 'Insert Coin' button. Clicking that will start the game right away instead of waiting for it to auto start. But not only that, if you click the button again you can play two player pacman! Awesome or what? The second player controls the game using the WASD keys.

Enough said I think, get to it people!

Does Google rock, or does Google rock?

No industry is safe from Google at the moment with the search and advertising colossus dipping it's fingers into almost any market it can right now. Until now though the gaming industry has been pretty safe and largely overlooked by Google but if a company job posting is anything to go by then that stance could soon be changing.

TechCrunch has reported that over at Google's Job listing page the company is looking to employ a "Product Management Leader, Games", which strongly indicates that the company is going to be dipping it's toes into the gaming industry. They have already bought Israeli game developer LabPixies and hired Mark DeLoura who was Nintendo's Lead Engineer as Developer Advocate for Games. Such activity strongly suggests that Google are taking a serious look at the gaming industry after previous attempts to enter the market fell flat. Whether Google are aiming to develop causal online and mobile games or full blown 3D games is unclear. By my guess if this whole story turns out to be true is that Google will go down the latter route at some point; Google's an ambitious company after all but it makes sense for them to first get some content out for the Android platform and get a feel for things before offering full blown 3D games.

According to the posting, the job applicant will need to be an "experienced senior leader who will be responsible for developing Google's games commerce product strategy". Not only this but the applicant will also need to have experience in the "online content business", suggesting that whatever they are upto will be cloud based as you'd expect from Google.

So what's the deal? The deal in my view is Android and Chrome OS in particular. If one looks at the markets Google is trying to enter and think about how they might all be related you might see where Google are heading.  For cloud based services to function (Google's products rely heavily on cloud computing) as intended on Google's Chrome OS they will require a super fast broadband connection, that's a key requirement for the future of Chrome OS or any other web centric platform that relies heavily on cloud based solutions. 

Hence to achive this and ensure the infrastructure existis, Google announces plans to enter the ISP market touting 1Gbps speeds. Google also has plans to enhance the HTTP protocol with it's own SPDY protocol. Initial tests have been encouraging and have shown significant speed increases over the aging HTTP protocol. Chrome OS is merely a window or access point to next generation web content and services, some call the whole notion Web 3.0. It's weakest point is the Internet connection it will interface with. If Google can provide and ensure a stable, fast and reliable connection to Chrome OS a world of possibilities for the platform will open up in the years to come. Which leads into the world of cloud gaming, a market that has the potential for huge revenue and one that could reinvigorate the gaming industry.

Chrome OS has been shot down by gamers as it's a completely web centric platform, hence no or little locally installed content. If Google can provide a cloud based gaming service to the masses that is similar to onLive albeit a trimmed down version then they can make it so much more of an attrative option to potential users of the platform, as I doubt your run of the mill flash games will appeal to hardcore gamers. That's all Google need is the platform for publishers to distribute their content on. Not only this but Google in their traditional style would probably offer the service for free or a nominal fee at the very least because remember the service can be provided over Google's fibre network with minimal overheads/costs to Google themselves.

onLive in contrast is at the mercy of the ISPs to provide their services that onLive requires. Many ISPs throttle or limit their customers speeds when they consume too much bandwidth. No doubt, a lot of ISPs will frown at the prospect of onLive providing a constant stream of bandwidth intensive content to consumers.

If Google can figure out a way of streaming game content over the Internet as onLive claim to have then there is no reason why they couldn't offer a similar service, no reason at all. After all Google has already ported quake 2 to run in the browser with HTML 5 and javascript and achive 30FPS even at this early stage. If anyone can Google can it seems.

One thing's for sure, good or bad, Google continues to intrigue.

BT announced today that it has entered into a partnership with OnLive Inc. The deal will mean that BT will be the official and exclusive supplier of the game streaming service when it launches in the UK, thus stealing a march on rivals Virgin Media who currently have the biggest cable broadband network in the UK. BT plan to bundle the onLive services with their own broadband packages.

The company also cemented it's commitment to onLive by taking a 2.6 percent stake in the cloud based gaming company. BT will announce further details later in the year, however it is quite likely that the service will end up being integrated into BT's on-demand TV service 'BT Vision' in some form or another.

Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT Retail welcomed the partnership and said: "Entertainment is going to be at the heart of what we offer customers in the future. The partnership with OnLive complements our existing BT Vision service. It's great for our customers - they'll have access to a huge catalogue of games, available instantly on their TV or PC without expensive hardware. And it's great for BT - it will enhance our premium broadband position and we'll be entering into a market that's worth more than £2billion."

As previously discussed, onLive is a potentially market changing gaming platform that will provide gamers with a new way of buying and playing video games. Instead of downloading or installing content to their PCs or Macs, onLive allows players to stream game content in real time over the Internet. It has the potential to change the distribution model of games forever.

All game content is processed in onLive's data centres before being packaged up and streamed out to the user via proprietary video streaming technologies developed by onLive over the past seven years. onLive say that the proprietary compression algorithms used for streaming game content will give the player lag free gaming providing they live within 1000 miles of a data centre and that their broadband connection is a sufficient speed. This concept of playing and distributing game content is hotly contested by many who are sceptical that the service can work.

Despite this onLive has gone through a successful beta period says the company and is all set to launch in the US this summer for $14.99 per month, sans game purchases.

The beauty of onLive is that it will have a catalogue of games from many of the worlds best known publishers and will allow gameplay on virtually any platform be it PC, Mac, Linux or via a TV. Since games aren't processed on any local machine the user doesn't need expensive hardware to run the games they wish to play. The other great thing with this concept is that all the games can be played as the developer intended; with all graphics settings maxed out.

onLive CEO, Steve Perlman had the following to say about the BT, onLive partnership: "The UK market is extremely important to OnLive and our videogame publishing partners as we expand into Europe. We view BT as the ideal UK partner. As gamers are moving increasingly to online game distribution, OnLive delivers video games as a pure form of online media, playable instantly on almost any video-capable device attached to the internet. The implications are nothing short of transformative to video games and in time, all interactive media. OnLive is delighted to be pioneering this revolutionary technology in the UK together with BT".

OnLive the cloud based, gaming-on-demand service that has the potential to kill game piracy and also kill traditional gaming platforms will go live this June in the US. The service has the potential to fundamentally alter the way games are developed, distributed and played forever, if it succeeds.

OnLive was announced last year and has since drawn widespread intrigue, scepticism and often hatred from gamers and analysts alike. Many gamers think the service will fail after them questioning whether games can be streamed over the internet without any input lag.

Whilst others think it will take too much control from the gamer and kill the enthusiast market and modding communities alike, which is something PC gamers in particular hold very dear. PC Gamers and console gamers rarely see eye to eye but having read a lot of reaction to the service, it would seem that both sets of gamers for the most part want this service to fail and aren't willing to even give it a chance.

OnLive have tried to reassure gamers by stating the service uses a propriety video compression algorithm which enables broadband connections of no more than a few megabits per second to use the service without any input lag. This is providing their access is no more than 1000 miles away from the OnLive data center providing them with a service. There are currently three such centers across the US. One in California, and the other two being in Texas and Virginia. At the moment these centers are providing the the service in beta form.

If it works the platform will give the gamer the illusion of playing any game locally as they do now. No impression of the game being streamed over 1000 miles should be felt. However it still is not clear how multiplayer games across different territories will work. For example will gamers in the US and UK be able to interact in the same games and at the same times?

If it delivers, OnLive promises to allow even the most demanding of games run on old or budget hardware since the game is streamed over the net, rather than being processed on the client computer. All the intensive on the fly rendering is done within OnLive's data centers and not through the gamers own hardware. This means we can all experience Crysis and any other game for that matter at the highest quality settings the game has to offer. That's if it works of course.

To help the service become as ubiquitous as possible, OnLive will also be releasing their own MicroConsole that will allow access via nothing more than a TV. The diminutive console will also come with a wireless controller although this device will not be launching at the same time as the service. The MicroConsole features a USB port, HDMI, Ethernet and Optical inputs on the back and two USB ports on the front.

OnLive has been in development for eight years and has cost millions to get to the point of release. OnLive CEO and founder Steve Perlman welcomed the announcement and  said "Everyone here at OnLive is just incredibly excited about this milestone. It’s the realization of a dream that we knew would be a huge undertaking, but also one that would change everything."

He continued by saying, "OnLive fundamentally transforms the way users experience games and interact with each other, and in time, will transform the way games are developed and marketed. By distilling specialized game hardware out of the equation, OnLive will allow games to be played as a pure media experience on virtually any device, with the same flexibility and instant-play experience that we’ve come to expect from online video and music."

The service is due to finally launch in the US on June 17th after several months of beta testing. Access to the service will cost $14.95 and does not incorporate the cost of game purchases or rentals. You will still have to cough up for those separately. Loyalty programmes, game pricing and other special offers will be announced by the start of E3.

OnLive could fundamentally change the way the gaming industry operates. With such a service, piracy could be wiped out as the games' are hosted rather than distributed. This has another affect in that developers and publishers will no longer need to go to the expense of having to box games up and physically distribute them. "OnLive breaks the console cycle. We don't need new hardware devices," said company founder Steve Perlman.

If OnLive takes off (I'm seemingly one of the few that thinks it will), then it could hit a lot of retailers hard, particularly those selling physical goods. If publishers are no longer distributing content to the high street, then many companies who's sole business model is based around the idea of selling games and renting them out could quickly be cut out of the market all together. This is the way it could well end up going with some of the industries leading publishers and developers providing top titles from day one. These include EA, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Brothers Interactive and THQ.

Gamers from outside the US will have to wait for the service as no details have yet been released. The focus for the company right now is getting the US up and running with the service before expanding to other territories.

What are your thoughts and prospects for the service? Do you think it's the best thing since Mario or do you think and hope it will be an embarrassing flop? Let us know by leaving your thoughts below.

According to Activision Modern Warfare 2, which was launched last week to much fanfare continues to break records at the box office. Modern Warefare 2 has become the biggest entertainment launch in history by first becoming the most lucrative first day launch (it sold over 1 million copies accumulating to a sales figure of £47 million in the UK; a record) and now it has become the highest grossing entertainment title across it's first five days on the shelves.

Activision say that the game which is developed by Infinity Ward has gone on to make $550 million in it's first five days. These figures are estimates from Activision them selves and if accurate will put it ahead of any other video game, book or film that has been released to date.

The $550 million figure smashes that of the former highest grossing earner, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which raked in $394 million in its first five days. Other noteworthy figures include Modern Warfare 2 holding:

• The largest reported five-day opening domestic [US] box office gross figures, held by The Dark Knight ($203.8 million)
• The largest reported five-day worldwide video game sales record, previously held by Grand Theft Auto IV (6 million units, $500 million)
• The largest reported opening first-day domestic [US] box office gross figures, held by The Dark Knight ($66.4 million)
• The largest reported first-day book sales in dollars, held by Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows ($220 million)
• The largest reported first-day worldwide video game sales record, previously held by Grand Theft Auto IV (3.6 million units, $310 million)

Modern Warfare 2's opening success is not limited to money alone. Microsoft have confirmed to Activision that on its first day alone over 5.2 million multiplayer hours were logged on Xbox Live and more than 2.2 million unique gamers played the game on its first day of release setting an Xbox LIVE record.

Robert Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard, Inc said, "In just five days of sell through Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has become the largest entertainment launch in history and a pop culture phenomenon." he went on to say, "The title's success redefines entertainment as millions of consumers have chosen to play Modern Warfare 2 at unprecedented levels rather than engage in other forms of media."