OnLive, the online games on demand service, is announcing today it has added Borderlands to it's-all-you-can-eat subscription service known as PlayPack. The PlayPack library is very similar to Netflix subscriptions. In this case, you can access a bunch of games for a flat fee of $9.99 a month.
And with the addition of Take-Two Interactive's Borderlands, the games in the library are getting better and better, said Steve Perlman, chief executive of OnLive in Palo Alto, California. There are now more than 50 games available in the PlayPack library. That's far less than Netflix, but its growth shows that game publishers have growing confidence that OnLive is becoming a better and better game distribution channel, just like Netflix proved itself as a viable movie distribution system, Perlman said.
Borderlands (from Take-Two's debuted in October 2009 and it won numerous awards as one of the best original titles of the year. Gamers are still playing the game (it ranks pretty high on Valve's Steam online game service) because it has a rich multiplayer version. Other popular titles offered in OnLive's PlayPack are prince of Persia, Tomb Raider Legend, Lego Batman and Just Cause 2. Perlman says the games on PlayPack essentially cost 20 cents per month to play.
These games are all pretty popular as used games and were best sellers when they first came out. But publishers are releasing them for use with OnLive because-unlike the used games sold in stores such as GameStop- the game publishers can make money from OnLive's PlayPack library. More high-profile games will arrive on PlayPack in coming weeks, Perlman said.
Another new feature is debuting on OnLive today, In the past, you had to enter your credit card number to demo free versions of the games in PlayPack. Now you don't have to do that. Players who don't want to pay a subscription fee for a library of older games can also pay a la carte, either renting or buying games one by one.
And players can also buy brand new games on the very day they come out in stores. Onlive is starting to promote some deals very aggressively. For instance, you can buy Duke Nukem Forever at regular price on OnLive when it comes on June 13. OnLive will give away either a free game or a free MicroConsole ($99 value) with the purchase of the Duke Nukem forever game. That's a good deal.
Perlman said OnLive can afford to do that because it is subsidizing the costs as part of a promotion. The MicroConsole is a strategic device that OnLive wants to get into a bunch of living rooms (it connects a TV to OnLive so users can play Onlive games on a big screen TV). So Perlman said OnLive will offer temporary promotions to help the MicroConsole take off.
OnLive first launched its PlayPack in February. The company doesn't disclose results, but Perlman said the library is profitable and it will continue to grow bigger over time in terms of numbers of titles.
Perlman said that PlayPack strategy is aimed at vastly broadening the company's potential market of game customers. With a flat rate subscription. OnLive will pursue the same path that Netflix has successfully followed, attracting users who don't necessarily want to dish out a lot of money for one title but don't mind paying a monthly fee to sample a bunch of game. For premium new games, OnLive offers a la carte pricing, much like Apple's iTunes store does.
PlayPack game ibrary source :
VentureBeat
