One of OnLive's biggest stumbling blocks, it's double pay-to-play setup that, in theory, would have had users dropping coin on a game rental in addition to a monthly subscription, has been ditched as of last afternoon. The service from this point forward no longer requires a monthly subscription fee, though to be fair, it probably never collected one to begin with--the Founding Members program, which has offered a free year of the service to anyone that has joined the service since it went live, has made that impossible.
In a recent blog post, company CEO Steve Perlman described the decision to even mention a subscription cost from the get-go was a necessity bore from being trailblazer. OnLive has since found that it can, apparently, operate without the $15 a month fee.
"… we wish we could have confirmed no monthly fee from the get-go, pioneering a major new video game paradigm is hard," Perlman says, "we had to first grow to a large base of regular users before we could understand usage patterns and operating costs. Now that we’ve reached that stage, we can confidently say a monthly fee is not needed, which deserves a double WOOT! WOOT!"
== TEASER ==In addition to this, Perlman also announced that the mini-console TV adapter device and its companion controller are in manufacturing. However, Founding Members are to "get first dibs" on both.
I should note that you can now sign up for the service without a credit card, meaning you can check out the PC/Mac interface and jump into demos at will. Only rentals, from three-days to "full," will require your precious digits. Uh, woot?
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