Important note: The SL Go service is to be shut down on April 30th, 2015. For more information, please read this report.
In March 2014, Linden Lab and OnLive, the games streaming service, announced the open beta of OnLive’s new SL Go service, a means by which SL users could access Second Life via tablets and mobile devices using a full viewer streamed directly to the user’s device.
At the time of the launch, I was one of a number of people who were able to provide a review of the service, having been offered access to it ahead of the launch.
One area of upset with the service which quickly became apparent was the payment plan, which was based on a pay-as-you-go approach, with an hour of use costing $3.00, three hours $8.00 and ten hours $25.00. In response to criticism of the model, OnLive sought to make it clear through various mediums – notably Designing Worlds and Drax Files Radio Hour – that the plan was only an initial step, a means to gain data and feedback, and that options such as subscription plans had not been ruled out. The service also came in for criticism that it was only available in the USA, UK and Canada.
On Thursday April 3rd, OnLive followed-up on these comments by announcing they are both introducing a revised payment plan and extending the service to more regions. Linden Lab also followed-up with a post of their own. The OnLive announcement reads in part:
Since launching the beta of SL Go about a month ago, OnLive reports they’ve seen a very positive response to the Second Life® Viewer for Android™ that allows users to access Second Life over wifi or 4G LTE on tablets and laptops.Today, OnLive has updated the SL Go beta with new pricing:
- Monthly unlimited-use subscription for $9.95 (USD) / £6.95 (GBP). No contract and no commitment
- Reduced hourly rate: $1 / £0.70 per hour.
The previously available offer of a 20-minute free trial still stands.
In addition, and with the announcement, SLGo is now available in 36 countries worldwide, including Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Luxembourg, Scandinavia – even the Vatican City! The full list of supported countris can be found in the OnLive blog post.
Commenting on the move, OnLive’s Vice President of Product and Marketing, Rick Sanchez, said:
We’re grateful for the opportunity to support the Second Life community, and pleased to be working with such a passionate and creative group. We look forward to further developing SL Go with their feedback and suggestions.
How popular this makes the service, remains to be seen. But for those on low-end computer systems who would like to have access to Second Life in all its glory, $9.95 might not be considered too much to pay per month until such time as they upgrade their systems.
Certainly, the $9.95 price-tag for the monthly is lower than the figure I had been anticipating following post-launch activities by OnLive; I’d been expecting the price to perhaps be on a par with their CloudLift service ($14.95 a month), which launched at the same time as SL Go. Similarly, dropping the pay-as-you-go rate to flat $1.00 per hour should make the occasional access via tablet or mobile device even more attractive you those who might need it. For those who are interested, and following-up from my initial review, I also have an article about running SL Go on a Nexus 2013 HD.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
It would be good if the put this for free in SLpremium accounts to desktops. That way premium have something inmtressting and for users the can run it on weaker hardware.
Then people get something really usefull with premium.
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SL Go isn’t a LL service. It’s supplied by OnLive, and runs through their servers and services, and they cost money to operate. While it may not be impossible for LL and OnLive to reach some form of agreement, vis. Premium accounts, it would still potentially be a headache to set-up and support, so might not be seen as a cost-effective option.
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This pricing model is actually quite tempting.
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This pricing change is far more reasonable than I anticipated. I too thought they’d struggle to beat their desktop subscription fee.
I do think there’s an opportunity for LL and Onlive to work together, either on a revamped premium package which is more expensive than standard but comes with SL Go or whereby LL see subscriptions for SL Go from a LL store.
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* LL sell subscriptions for SL Go from a LL store.
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If the service provided, can handle and deliver the same, for one or one million users, then Sl Go now can be a good choice to acess SL!
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I have to agree with all of you, this price drop is far more than I expected and totally reasonable. And yay, it’s available on my country, too 🙂
The bad news is that I have no tablet, just ancient Macs (one of which I use for presentations about SL, but due to the low quality of its graphics, it almost always fails to impress the audience), and for some reason, when I install the SL Go application for the Mac, Second Life fails to appear on the “My Games” folder, as the instructions claim. I’m surely missing a step somewhere…
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SL Go app on the Mac? Don’t you mean the OnLive client?
The client was updated to support the new OnLive CloudLift and OnLive Go (of which SL Go is a part) services. Here’s how I access SL Go from my laptop:
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Much, much better. Nearly 100% of the bad reviews this app received was about pricing, now maybe it’ll be judged for a lot more than that.
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One would hope, yes!
BTW – did you see my report on running SL Go via my Nexus (as per your request that I try to provide follow-ups?). I’ve not had cause to use the app since then.
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I’ve tried SLGo on my Kobo Arc 7, last year model, and it runs at least as well than on my Mac Pro with its Radeon 4870HD card
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