At the GamesBeat portion of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this morning, Steve Perlman, CEO of OnLive, finally announced details for the launch of the cloud computing gaming service. A year after the service was first unveiled at GDC in 2009, Perlman was able to point to E3 2010 as the official launch of OnLive.
June 17th is the date, and according to Perlman the service will be up and running in all 48 contiguous United States at that time.
Perlman also revealed a price point for the service's monthly fee: $14.95. This is the month-to-month rate -- different pricing options will be available for people who sign up for longer term commitments. He also mentioned that the first 25,000 people to register for the service will get the first three months of charges waived. However, it was a bit unclear as to what the service fee would buy you -- it's obviously access to OnLive and to all of its features (gamer tag, friends, spectator viewing, free demos, etc.), but in terms of the actual games there will be charges for buying and renting them, and we don't yet know what those rates will be.
One thing that was unclear is when the actual OnLive MicroConsole (the box you plug into your TV) will available -- the June 17th launch only refers to the service being up and running for PCs and Macs. And in terms of when the service hits in the rest of the world, Perlman says that more details will be available later this year.
But anyway, at least we now have a date for the initial launch. And E3 2010 is sounding more and more exciting.
Originally posted on 1UP.