Onlive announces Game Portal (rentals and free demos WITHOUT subscription)

[NJ5]

I bolded the important parts:

Yesterday, I announced the launch date of the OnLive Game Service, and shortly thereafter OnLive held a session about how to port games with our Software Development Kit (SDK). The room was packed to overflowing, forcing us to request that people return today for a repeat of the session. It’s great to see that the development community is so excited about moving games to OnLive!

As I mentioned in my last blog post, between now and the public release of OnLive on June 17, we’ll be continuing to announce other OnLive offerings. These extensions of the service illustrate the scope of possibility with OnLive and serve to expand the overall consumer value proposition.

So, I’m pleased to announce the OnLive® Game Portal, a companion offering to the OnLive Game Service that I described on my blog yesterday.

The OnLive Game Portal is for gamers looking for direct access to OnLive games without being required to subscribe to the features of the full OnLive Game Service. Through the OnLive Game Portal, gamers will be able to play select games directly on a rental basis as well as game demos for free; subject to available OnLive service capacity and whatever usage limits are associated with each given demo. Rentals will be priced on a per-game basis. There is no service fee for the OnLive Game Portal.

We think this is a great offering for gamers to try out games, or if they prefer, play games they’re interested in for a particular period of time. We also think it’s a great way to get a taste of the OnLive experience to see if they want to join the greater OnLive community on an ongoing basis through the OnLive Game Service.

Of course, like all games in the OnLive Game Service, games in the OnLive Game Portal start instantly, are always updated, and don’t require high-end hardware to play high-performance games. It only takes seconds to install OnLive’s small browser plug-in, and only seconds more before you’re playing a top-tier game. And, of course, OnLive Game Portal games will also play through OnLive’s MicroConsole TV Adapter on an HDTV.

The OnLive Game Portal will be rolled out in 2010 at some point following the June 17th OnLive Game Service Launch and will be subject to the Terms of Service applicable to that offering.

And, we have more cool stuff coming! Stay tuned.

http://blog.onlive.com/2010/03/11/more-news-from-onlive/