After months of beta testing and plenty of speculation as to whether the OnLive service is really ready for primetime, the company announced the launch of its service today at GDC in San Francisco.

While we've been able to observe the Onlive gaming service in controlled environments, the true test of cloud gaming is when it's finally available to the public at large. The creators of Onlive will put their service to the test when it launches on the PC and Mac platforms on June 17. Onlive will cost US$14.95 per month, though the company is promising cheaper multi-month bundles (to be announced at E3), as well as a major incentive for early adopters - the first 25,000 users to sign up for Onlive will get their first three months for free.
Right now, however, it's unclear as to how much gaming the US$14.95 fee will get you, as the announcement notes "the service fee does not include the purchase or rental of games." It seems as though at least some games will carry premium fees, as the announcement states "top-tier, newly-released games will be for sale and for rent on an à la carte basis."

For now, we await Onlive's ultimate test, as it comes to home computers in June, with a TV adapter set to be announced later in the year, followed by Onlive "steadily expanding to other devices over time." Hopefully, we'll be able to play Crysis on the iPhone sooner rather than later.
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John Davison and Dave Rudden