Just wondering if anyone here has heard of/tried/is using Onlive.com’s streaming video game service:

http://onlive.com

Basically it’s like Netflix for video games. I was skeptical at first, several years ago, but my best friend who is super super into gaming got hooked on it and started getting really involved with it. He created a podcast all about the service, started moderating the community forums, and did such a good job that they hired him. Dude is making $20 an hour to play video games at home in Colorado while smoking medical and recreational legal green while he moderates the forums and shit. I’ve been to his house a few times (When he still lived here in NJ) and played games on the console and the shit works. The graphics are really nice for streaming, look decent even on HDTV, sound is nice, gameplay is smooth. For a streaming service it’s pretty awesome.

They have a console you can buy for around $100 that hooks into your existing internet connection, connects to your Onlive account, and lets you play on your TV that way. You can also play it on your smart phone, PC, Mac, or tablet PC. I haven’t tried getting it to work in Linux yet but I hear it’s possible.

BEST OF ALL, YOU CAN TRY IT FOR FREE. Unfortunately, you do have to enter your real information and have it linked up to a debit/credit card and remember to cancel before the month ends so you won’t get billed, though.

You can use a keyboard and gamepad or either/or. Even my old ass Logitech Rumblepad 2 is supported.

I’ve been doing some volunteer web design work for them through my friend. He got me the "in" since he knows what I can do and since, well, he works for them and they trust him. I’ve been designing their subreddit on Reddit.com (it’s not there yet, I’m still tweaking the design) so my buddy’s boss gave me a free pass for the Cloudlft and Playpack service. I finally booted back into Windows 7 to try it out and I gotta say it’s NICE. It works well. They have a huge inventory of games and you just pick what the fuck you wanna play and BAM you’re playing it.

If things go well I may get hired on when they have more budget for payroll. In the interim I’m going to keep helping them out. It’s something I can put into my portfolio, on my resume, and I spoke to my friend’s boss today in a conference call and he likes what I’m doing so far and is going to talk to his web dev team and pass my name around. He also gave me a free month’s pass for the Cloudlift and Playpack service (he owes me a 3 month pass to each still though) so I’ve been playing for most of the night and I gotta say this shit is a really decent service. They’ve got some good games from some of the major consoles but they also have a lot of shit games to sort through. The biggest complaint from people is that they need more of the games that people WANT and not just "more games".

It’s worth it to check it out, but just remember since you have to put in your credit card details to mark down when to go in and manually cancel it before you get billed unless you like it and want to keep it. I can’t see the prices now since I put my free codes in but for either service I think it’s less than $10 a month.

I’m not a hardcore gamer so for me I’m really digging the service. Lots of fun new games to try out. I hope some of you enjoy it.

I can answer almost all questions ’cause if I don’t know it I can ask my buddy who works for them.