OnLive to Offer Cloud-Based Gaming Without Monthly Fee

Free Windows Games

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Gamers who love to take advantage of OnLive but hate the monthly fee will soon feel some growth in their wallets. The cloud-based gaming service has announced it will no longer charge a monthly fee, according to a Computer and Video Games article.

Steve Perlman, CEO of the service that allows users to play resource intensive games on low-end machines, said the new two-tiered business model was created to provide a simpler, more accessible service.

The key thing for OnLive in keeping the service free is that it simplifies the company’s pricing structure. Now, the platform is completely based on games and not on access. Perlman said this capability provides more flexibility and is easier to understand than a two-tiered structure. Plus, the company knows the business model works.

Prior to the introduction of the two-tiered model, users were required to pay $4.95 per month, and payments for games was charged on top of that amount. The beta phase revealed that the service could be sustained without the monthly fee. And, no fee is expected to help effectively drive adoption.

"We actually got the first indication that the business could be supported without a monthly fee when we let beta testers start purchasing games before we launched the service," Perlman said in the Computer and Video Games piece."So, to hedge our bet, we established our Founding Member promotion to defer the monthly fee for a year for everyone. Well, after getting to scale, we found that what we had suspected was true: that the business model works without a monthly fee. This allows us to continue without a monthly fee on an ongoing basis." added Perlman.

In September, OnLive announced the introduction of significant new features, including a service-wide WiFi (News - Alert) Beta rollout, along with an extension of the AT&T Founding Members Program through the remainder of the year.

See original article on TMCNet.com