OnLive has teamed up with British game retailer Green Man Gaming to resell subscriptions for OnLive’s cloud-gaming subscription service. The deal is the first of its kind in which a game retailer resells OnLive’s online bundles of games delivered via web-connected data centers, or the cloud.
For the first time, players will be able to get OnLive subscriptions outside of the OnLive ecosystem. Green Man Gaming will offer OnLive’s “play anywhere” subscriptions to its customers.
Starting today, the new OnLive Games Bundle subscription, priced at £9/$13/€10, will be available from Green Man Gaming. The service includes a free three-day “no commitment” trial for all its customers. Customers will also be able to use Green Man Gaming rewards to access Mountain View, Calif.-based OnLive’s services.
The OnLive Games Bundle subscription combines all the features of OnLive’s PlayPack (which gives you access to 250 games) and CloudLift (which lets you play on multiple devices via the cloud) subscriptions while giving players a 25 percent savings on individual packages. Subscribers can get unlimited instant access to a library of over 250 hit games like The Witcher and The Witcher 2, Civilization V, Darksiders 1 and 2, Metro 2033, Deus Ex, Saints Row: The Third, and BioShock.
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Subscribers can play those games on OnLive-compatible devices, including low-powered laptops, Macs, TV, Android consoles, tablets, and smartphones. Players can play titles like Tropico 5, Grid Autosport, and Dead Island: Epidemic anywhere without having to download or install them — even if they don’t own a gaming PC. Players can get cloud features such as global spectating and “brag clips,” where you can share your best gaming moments with friends.
“Our core mission is to always go beyond a sale,” said Paul Sulyok, the CEO at Green Man Gaming, in a statement. “Offering our customers the ability to now play their games wherever they like on multiple platforms, as well as welcoming a new audience to Green Man Gaming thanks to OnLive’s subscription services, makes this not just a very exciting partnership but [also] a great time to be a gamer.”
Green Man Gaming was founded in May 2010, starting with an online catalog of 500 games from 26 publishers. Now it has 5,000 titles from 350 publishers. In July 2012, Green Man Gaming acquired Playfire, a global social network of hardcore gamers.
Rick Sanchez, the vice president of product marketing for OnLive, said in a statement, “We’ve been tremendously impressed by how Green Man Gaming works for its community, continuously shaping their offerings to a seemingly individual level. We see a great fit for OnLive with Green Man Gaming’s audience, which is why we’ve created a special free trial that will enable them to check OnLive out for themselves with no commitment while trying out some of the all-time classic games they may have missed, as well as playing their latest games on different devices or when they’re away from their gaming rig.”
OnLive launched its service in 2010. It went through a change in ownership in 2012, with investor Gary Lauder taking over as chairman. Earlier this year, the company hired Mark Jung as its new executive chairman and relaunched its services.
The OnLive game service is already available in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. It is rolling out in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, The Netherlands, and Ireland.
Above: Green Man Gaming
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