OnLive to offer game portal with free demos in addition to paid game service

OnLive keeps rolling out news for its games on demand service. On Wednesday, the company announced it would launch its server-based game service on June 17. And today the company said it will launch a game portal web site that will offer game demos for free.

Steve Perlman, chief executive of OnLive said tonight at his company’s after-party at the Game Developers Conference that OnLive Game Portal will be a free companion to the OnLive Game Service, which will charge gamers $15 a month for social networking and multiplayer game play.

Any player can visit the portal and use the OnLive-enabled game demos for free. Players can get a feel for what a game will be like.

OnLive also held a couple of sessions for game developers to talk about its Software Development Kit, which lets developers create games for the platform. Perlman said both sessions were packed.

“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,” Perlman wrote on his company blog today. “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.”

The whole idea is to give gamers a taste of the service so that they will consider a paid subscription. It will also help game publishers get exposure for their games. The free game demos or rentals are instantly available, as with other games in the paid service. The portal will roll out in 2010 after the official game service launch.