OnLive Introduces Social Features For Finding Friends

OnLive has added several new social features to its cloud-based console and game-streaming service, including new tools for finding online friends and automatically recording "Brag Clips". Launched in North America last June, OnLive enables its service members and MicroConsole owners to play demos, rent, or directly purchase almost 50 games, which are run on remote servers and streamed to players. It offers features like the ability to watch others as they play, voice chat, and more. The company has added new features to the service designed to make it more social, such as a new tool that will load users' Gmail contacts, then find any of their friends who may also have signed up to OnLive. They have the option of sending sign-up referral links to their contacts who haven't joined, too. Once players have attached Gmail details to their OnLive account, they can set up email notifications for the service's friend requests, chat messages, and video sharing. The game-streaming platform says it will support additional email providers in the future. The cloud-based service has also updated users' games list, now displaying stats for their total play time, last played time, and achievements earned (when available) for each title. Users can check their friends' profiles to compare those stats and achievements. It's added an instant playback feature, too, that automatically records a "Brag Clip" video when players reach key moments in a game (e.g. hitting a level milestone), which they can then share with friends. Previously, OnLive users needed to manually record Brag Clips. "With each of these new features, we’re taking another step toward making OnLive even more engaging and unique—a social gaming world where you can play, watch, chat and share experiences in ways you just can’t do anywhere else," says OnLive's Engineering VP Jo Bentley. Bentley continues, "Sure, 'social gaming' has always been inherent to OnLive. But when you look at the potential, you’ll see we’ve only just scratched the surface of what it can—and will—soon become."