Today the video game buying and renting service, GameFly, has announced that they be launching a game streaming service to deliver AAA titles to your living room. The company also announced that they have recently acquired Playcast Media Systems Ltd., which is a cloud based gaming company that that provided game streaming services to other devices, like Samsung Smart TV’s. With the acquisition of Playcast, GameFly will be able to utilize their game streaming compression engine to deliver titles quickly and efficiently. What makes the news a bit more interesting is that GameFly’s launch partner will be exclusive to the Amazon Fire TV.
“We’re excited to offer the GameFly streaming service worldwide with Playcast’s market ready and scalable technology,†said David Hodess, CEO of GameFly. “This represents the perfect evolution of GameFly by extending its mission of providing the highest quality video games available to gamers however they want to play. We are also very pleased to launch on Amazon Fire TV to make the service available to US consumers.â€
“We are thrilled to offer Amazon Fire TV customers exclusive access to GameFly’s streaming service,†said Steve Rabuchin, Vice President, Amazon Appstore. “Amazon Fire TV’s quad core processor can enable powerful streaming of GameFly’s top quality gaming content, which was previously only available on high powered PC’s or consoles.â€
The initial launch will bring gamers a number of monthly gaming options that are segmented into various packs; Action, Adventure, Gamer, Speed, Fun and Lego. Each gaming pack includes titles that fit that genre of gaming and will run you $6.99 a month per pack. The launch titles are pretty solid games too, not your unheard of indie developer titles. Not that there aren’t some amazing indie games out there though. Here is the current list at launch, but more will be added over time.
Action Pack (7 titles) - $6.99/month includes F.E.A.R. 3, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, Red Faction: Armageddon, Red Faction: Guerilla, Mafia II, Sleeping Dogs, and Hitman
Adventure Pack (7 titles) - $6.99/month includes Dark Void, Overlord II, Darksiders, Darksiders II, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City, and Batman: Arkham Origins
Gamer Pack (16 titles) - $9.99/month includes F.E.A.R.3, Red Faction:Armageddon, Red Faction: Guerilla, Sleeping Dogs, Hitman, Darksiders, Darksiders II, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City, Batman: Arkham Origins, Shank, Shank 2, Dark Void, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, Mafia II, and Overlord II
Speed Pack (7 titles) - $6.99/month includes Ace Combat, Dirt 3, GRID, GRID 2, MotoGP13, Ridge Racer Unbounded, and WRC 4
Fun Pack (7 titles) – $6.99/month includes Flock!, PAC-MAN Championship Edition, PAC-MAN and the Ghostly Adventures, LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams – Rise of the Owlverlord, and BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
Lego Pack (7 titles) - $6.99/month includes LEGO Batman, LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, LEGO Lord of the Rings, LEGO Harry Potter 5-7, LEGO Marvel: Super Heroes, and LEGO The Hobbit
Digging into their site I discovered that the service is set to launch officially on June 2nd in the US. They list out various controller options that will be supported, like the XBox 360 controller, Logitech F-310 or Logitech F-710 game controllers. For an optimal experience they are recommending a wired internet connection with at least 10Mbps of bandwidth, but they also say a 5 GHz Wi-Fi service connection will do the trick too.
If you opted for a Fire TV Stick rather than a Fire TV box, you are out of luck initially. However, GameFly does say they are working on a version of the service for the smaller, less expensive device. Like all things, they don’t offer up a timeline of any sorts.
As an avid gamer, this shows some promise for those that picked up an Amazon Fire TV device. You might want to look at grabbing an extra controller or two if you are planning to give the GameFly streaming service a run. You can find those links down below. To get yourself started with GameFly streaming you will want to head over to the website and submit your name and email address for more information.
Via GameFly
