Gaming Blog | Gaming opinion pieces
OnLive UK price and launch offers
Author: Smokey Beef
Posted:
22nd September 2011 at 16:35
Category: Blog
Cloud-gaming service OnLive has officially launched in the UK as of today, bringing with it high expectations on whether the time is right for video game streaming.
The service works by having technologically-advanced servers do all the processing work for the games and then they simply send a video feed to the player, which can be seen via the OnLive application or on TVs using the “mico-console”.
There is no charge for the actual OnLive software, users can sign up and download it for free. However, the micro-console is a separate piece of hardware and can be bought from GAME and Gamestation for a retail price of £69.99.
Games can be rented for 3 or 5 days, or gamers can opt to buy a ‘full pass’. Additionally, OnLive offer a subscription service called ‘PlayPack’, which allows subscribers to access a catalogue of over 100 games – this costs £6.99 per month. PlayPack subs also benefit from a 30% discount off all normal prices.
To celebrate the launch, OnLive are running a couple of short-term promotions:
- The first game any newly registered user purchases will only cost them £1 (excludes pre-orders)
- Anyone who pre-orders Saints Row: The Third gets the Professor Genki’s Hyper ordinary Pre-order Pack for free. Not only that, they get a free OnLive micro-console (excludes P&P)
Steam: Portal for free all weekend
Author: Smokey Beef
Posted:
16th September 2011 at 15:34
Category: Blog
Portal for Free
Steam have being running an initiative called ‘Learn With Portals’, which involves educators teaching using the Portal games to help their students understand physics and puzzle-solving capabilities. And it will also teach them that meddling with AI and human emotions is a bad idea.
As part of this scheme, Steam has announced that this weekend the first Portal game (i.e. the one without a ’2′ in the title and no Stephen Merchant voice work) will be free to download and play to your heart’s content.
If, somehow, you haven’t had chance to play Portal yet; do it. Do it now!
Portal will remain free of charge until September 20th.
Batman: Arkham City UK exclusive pre-orders
Author: Smokey Beef
Posted:
13th September 2011 at 10:14
Category: Blog
It’s too easy to lose track of which retailer is offering what pre-order bonuses these days. It seems like it’s impossible to get all the content for a game now without placing 10 different pre-orders, thanks to the fact every shop seems to be given their own exclusive* deal. The cheapest deals at the moment are at ShopTo.net, where it is £34.95 for both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game and £31.85 for the PC version.
* It’s worth noting that the term ‘exclusive’ tends to mean ‘timed exclusive’ now – so you probably can get all the content if you’re willing to wait a little bit longer
To lighten the load for you, I’ve come up with a breakdown of the exclusive pre-order incentives currently being offered for Batman: Arkham City in the UK.
Tesco
£39.70 (PS3/360)
Joker’s Carnival Challenge Map pack (with Joker Steelbook Edition)
ShopTo.net
£34.85 to £59.86 (PS3/360) or £31.85 to £34.85 (PC)
1970s Batman Suit – Alternative Batman character skin
GAME / Gamestation
£39.99 (PS3/360) or £29.99 (PC)
Robin Edition – Robin playable character, extra character skins and 2 challenge maps
This is by no means an exhaustive list; if you know of any more exclusive pre-order bonuses let me know in the comments and I’ll get them added to this page.
Whatever happened to PS3 XMB multi-user login?
Author: Smokey Beef
Posted:
27th July 2010 at 16:28
Category: Blog
One of the best features of the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, for me at least, has to be the fact you can always login up to four players no matter what the game. Even just being able to do this on the dashboard is a great perk, because you can easily compare stats and achievements with each other. A basic form of this feature briefly made an appearance on the PlayStation 3, but it never really took off.
Why PlayStation Move is better than Kinect
We’re here to take a look at what the PlayStation Move brings to the motion-controlled gaming table. If you haven’t already, why not take a look at which features make the Kinect better than the Move?
