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Last August, GameFly announced that they would be testing an “Unlimited PC Game Play” feature this holiday season. Now, I don’t know if you’ve been to a mall recently, but the holiday season is here. So, we were understandably concerned that GameFly wasn’t going to make their deadline. However, yesterday, the company announced that they have launched the public beta of this upcoming feature. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the system, I’ll let GameFly’s co-founder do the talking: “It’s kind of like a Spotify or Rhapsody or a Napster,” Sean Spector told USA Today. “You have access to the content as long as you are a subscriber, but when you are no longer a member, the content then disappears.” Actually, it would probably be more accurate to compare it to Netflix’s streaming service. As a Netflix customer, they’ll send you physical DVD’s as well as giving you access to their streaming service. GameFly works the same way, except the games are downloaded and stored locally. 
At the moment, the only other company who offers a similar service is OnLive, and their technology is significantly different (and a tad more flexible). However, OnLive is a streaming service, which has already garnered some criticism, due to several performance issues. By Josh Engen |