iGame Radio

Check out our great interview with OnLive’s Brian Jaquet during PAX 2011.
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What’s inside this episode:

• Host Omaha Sternberg and co-host Peter Cohen of The Loop talk about the two big events for Macheads and gamers the past week: E3 and WWDC.
• E3: Omaha and Peter talk about the Wii U, and how Real Racing 2 HD will mimic this Nintendo product when iOS 5 comes out; also Onlive will be coming out with an iPad client. An Assassin’s Creed Revelations trailer was released, and we’re sure to see this game on the Mac someday soon. And what’s this PS Vita thing? A vitamin supplement?
• WWDC: Major Game Center updates were revealed in the WWDC keynote. Steve Jobs also mentioned that the Mac App Store is now the #1 channel for PC software purchases…what does that really mean? Also, the expected announcement of iCloud. What does that mean for gamers and their games? Plus, the announced Apple Design Awards…a significant number go to games.
• Omaha and Peter talk about games that they’ve played in the past week.

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Rich Carlson featured music from Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space.
• Digital Droo featured music from Neon Tango.

OnLive, the online streaming game service, has announced that they would not be charging a monthly fee for account holders. Citing the need to grow to a large enough user base to understand usage patterns and operating costs, OnLive stated that they now know a monthly fee is unnecessary.

Account holders will get free access to instant-play demos, spectating, brag clip videos, messaging and friending. Credit cards will still be needed to purchase 3-day, 5-day, or full PlayPasses, but not monthly fees will be charged for ongoing access. Of course, up to this time, any monthly fee has been waived as all account holders enjoyed a year of gaming free from monthly charges. However, it’s great to know that after that time period is up, we won’t be charged.

This follows in the path of Steam, Valve’s gaming service that, while not a cloud-based streaming service, has shown that it can be profitable without monthly fees.

OnLive is also promising some more announcements in the upcoming months, including news about MicroConsole television adapters and OnLive game pad controllers that are currently in manufacturing right now, accessible by Founding Members first, as well as improvements in video quality and latency issues.

You can get more information about OnLive and create an account on their website.

When OnLive went live a couple of months ago, they made a large number of Windows only games available to the Mac with their streaming gaming service. All but one: Mass Effect 2. This popular game developed by Bioware and published by EA was the one game that Mac gamers were not allowed to play on OnLive with their Macs. At the time, I speculated that this could only mean that Mass Effect 2 was actually being ported to the Mac platform.

At PAX, I got confirmation.

Speaking to an OnLive representative, I talked about the games available and mentioned that Mass Effect 2 was still the only game not available for Mac players. He said that this was due to contract requirements for restrictions regarding which platforms the game could be on. I said it was mighty strange that for a company whose goal was to provide platform agnostic gameplay that this one game would be negotiated in this fashion.

At that point he admitted that the game would have a Mac port. “They are making Mass Effect 2 for the Mac,” he said.

Though this doesn’t come as a complete surprise, it is terrific confirmation of a rumor, and acceptable justification for why the game cannot be played with a Mac using the OnLive service. I have contacted both Electronic Arts and Transgaming regarding this article. EA has not made a response as of the posting of this article. Transgaming’s reply was, “No comment.”

At this point, the real question is whether the port is being performed in-house or with another company. My guess is that they are using Transgaming’s Cider technology, as was used for the Dragon Age: Origins and subsequent DLC. I’m also guessing that they will be trying to get this ready in time for the Christmas rush, as waiting until early spring would
make less sense from a business standpoint.

However the story plays out, it is great to hear that this game that we Mac gamers have been wanting will finally be coming out.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Corey Tamas of MacGamer gives a review of GodFinger for the iPhone by ngmoco. Use your finger to be god. I mean, what else would you use your finger for? Make charming critters worship you, then roast them when you had a bad day. All for free!
  

Show Notes:

• Omaha Sternberg and Corey Tamas of MacGamer talk about the iPhone 4 first impressions. Despite over 1.7 million iPhones sold in 1.5 weeks, only 48 apps have been updated for iOS4. What gives? Omaha and Corey talk about what that means. Also, what do people think about the gyroscope, multitasking, and retina display so far?
• OnLive is live. But Omaha can’t connect. Find out why.
• Feral Interactive has announced a teaser for their next game announcement, and Omaha thinks she knows what it is.
• Virtual Programming reissued X3: Reunion as a native Mac port because they didn’t feel the Cider was “good enough”. Omaha and Corey talk about what the means, and whether this is the start of a trend.
• Contests! More contests than you can shake a crashed iPhone at!

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Matt Jarvis for featuring music from Osmos.
• Bobby “Glorian” Slavov and Victor Stoyanov for featuring music from Eschalon: Book 1.

Less than 17 hours from the release of LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 through the OnLive site, the first winner of the OnLive Harry Potter contest was revealed. Alex Schlee was announced via the OnLive Twitter feed as the first player to collect 200 gold bricks and receive the grand prize…a new iPad.

The first runner up, Kenneth Dailey, was also announced approximately half an hour later, also through the OnLive Twitter feed. All five runner ups will receive a free iPod Touch. There are still four more runner up slots to go, who will also presumably be announced via Twitter.

OnLive, the digital gaming service that streams games to your computer no matter whether it’s a PC or Mac, launched their first contest with LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4. The game was released just after midnight Tuesday, June 29th on the OnLive service, playable on both PC and Mac.

The deadline for the game is July 6, and the decision will be made on or about July 7. You can review the complete list of rules for more info.

OnLive, the digital gaming service that streams games to your computer no matter whether it’s a PC or Mac, has launched its first contest to stimulate the seething masses of founding members flooding the service. And that contest will get you a free iPad…but you have to beat Harry Potter first.

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 will launch just after midnight tonight, Tuesday, June 29th. And apparently OnLive members get to play the game first, regardless of which platform they are playing on.

To commemorate this, the first OnLive member to make it all the way through LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 will win an iPad, and the next five OnLive members will win an iPod Touch. To win, players must do the following:

• Have a PlayPass for the game to participate in the contest. OnLive recommends that you log in at 12:01AM to be sure your Marketplace list is refreshed and all PlayPass options appear for the game.
• Collect all 200 Gold Bricks in the game and become Lord Voldemort. To prove it, you will have to take a Brag Clip video.
• Alert OnLive via email as soon as you have completed the game. Entrants will be ranked based on when OnLive receives a properly completed email.

The deadline for the game is July 6, and the decision will be made on or about July 7. You can review the complete list of rules for more info.

Wolfire Games has posted a wonderful discussion regarding the OnLive streaming game service that launched officially (for some definition of “officially”) yesterday at 6PM PT/9PM ET. Jeff from Wolfire Games has been participating in the Beta for OnLive, and had some very good and smart insights into the service that detail the merits and downfalls of OnLive well.

However, during the post, he let slip an interesting tidbit that lead to some exciting thoughts.

From the OnLive FAQ:

Unfortunately, because of licensing restrictions, we can only offer Mass Effect 2 for play under Windows. So, if you do not have access to a PC, your only option to play it on a Mac is under Windows using Boot Camp or a similar system. We apologize for the inconvenience. OnLive has no other games in the pipeline that are Windows-only, and we do not expect to have any others.

This is ridiculous on so many levels and a great example of why OnLive is so fascinating and controversial. I might be able to virtualize OnLive in Parallels, so that I would be playing Mass Effect 2 through OnLive on Windows running inside of Parallels virtualized on Mac OS X. It feels bad enough when publishers don’t make the effort to support Mac OS X and Linux, the fact that EA has actually gone out of their way to make ME2 inacessible to Mac OnLive users is worth examining in its own blog post.

Worth examining indeed. So I’ll beat Jeff to the punch and examine it now. Why would Mass Effect 2, amongst all the other games available on the OnLive service (such as Assassin’s Creed 2, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction from Ubisoft, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Just Cause 2 from Square Enix, etc) be unavailable on the Mac through OnLive?

I think it’s because EA, or a Mac publisher in conjunction with EA, has Mass Effect 2 for the Mac in the pipeline right now.

OnLive right now is still an experimental service. Let’s face it, most of the people who are going to sign up for it are early adopters (like me) who can’t wait to try out something new and cutting edge. My neighbor next door isn’t going to try it out now (Mac user though he is). And certainly my older friend whose laptop I just helped fix won’t. It’s going to be another year or more before this service is going to be anything other than early adopter fodder.

We early adopters are also the biggest source of revenue for a new game on the Mac that requires a higher end Mac. Like Mass Effect 2. If EA were to bring Mass Effect 2 to the Mac in another 1.5 years or longer, those “higher end Macs” would start to become lower end Macs. A wider audience would be picking the game up.

Except that biggest group would have already played it. They’ve played it on their boot camp partitions. They’ve played it on their Parallels/VMware Fusion/Crossover virtualized Macs. They’ve played it on their PCs (horrors!). If any buy it at that time, it’s for nostalgia and because they want to see what it’s like to run a native game on their Mac.

Why wait if EA can get in the high-end, early adopter range to buy the game now, from OnLive? Then they could bring the game to the Mac natively later, if they still want to, for the lower end machines.

That would work…only if they didn’t have a Mac version in the pipeline now.

I dunno…maybe I’m dreaming. But this certainly seems to be the most logical answer to that question to me.

Yesterday, OnLive, the streaming gaming service, launched. Or rather, they opened their doors a little and allowed a few people to enter a little bit at a time. Not apparently ready for a full-scale launch, OnLive has presented the Founding Members offer, which will allow select members who join between now and July 15th access to a free account for a year. Those who register for the Founding Members offer actually get put on a waiting list with hopes of getting chosen in their area.

However, upon reviewing the OnLive Terms of Service, one finds some disturbing requirements. Read more

OnLive, the streaming game service for PCs and Macs, has announced today that it is going live this Thursday. In beta since < ?>, OnLive allows you to play games instantly through broadband connections from cloud-based servers and brag about your experiences through Brag Clips. Most games can be spectated, and you can make Friends from spectators, then watch their games, too.

The catalog of games will start at launch with 20, including Assassin’s Creed 2, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction from Ubisoft; Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins from Electronic Arts; Batman: Arkham Asylum and Just Cause 2 from Square Enix; Borderlands, NBA 2K10 and MLB 2K10 from Take Two; Red Faction: Guerilla from THQ, Fear 2: Project and DiRT 2 from Codemasters.

If you notice, there’s not a lot of games listed that play on the Mac. This makes me question the viability of actually creating an account with OnLive to test things out when there may be only a few games that I can play. However, OnLive has made it possible to test the service out for free.
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