If you’ve been following AFTVnews for a while, you may remember when Playcast Media began beta testing their new cloud gaming service on the Amazon Fire TV nearly a year ago. It was a big deal and reviewing the service proved it to be a very enjoyable experience. Playcast has now merged with GameFly, the video game rental company, to officially launch GameFly Streaming exclusively on the Fire TV. The service promises to “bring high end PC and console games directly to your Fire TV.” Cloud gaming works by running games remotely on high end servers and streaming the game’s video to your Fire TV. Your Fire TV then sends your controller input back to the server running the game. The back-and-forth transmission of controller input and video stream happens in a fraction of a second in order to make you feel like you’re playing the game locally.
The biggest hurdle for cloud gaming is lag. If your controller input or the video stream is delayed by too long, the gaming experience falls apart and is not enjoyable. That’s why it’s important that you have a fast internet connection and are physically as close to their servers as possible. They recommend a 5Mbps or greater speed and suggest that you use the Fire TV’s wired ethernet connection instead of wifi.
The GameFly Streaming service allows you to try every game they offer for free. To continue playing, you must purchase game packs which start at $6.99 per month. Game packs give you unlimited access to the games included in the packs. See the list of currently available game packs below.
- Action Pack (7 titles) – $6.99/month
- F.E.A.R. 3
- Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
- Red Faction: Armageddon
- Red Faction: Guerilla
- Mafia II
- Sleeping Dogs
- Hitman
- Adventure Pack (7 titles) – $6.99/month
- Dark Void
- Overlord II
- Darksiders
- Darksiders II
- Batman: Arkham Asylum
- Batman: Arkham City
- Batman: Arkham Origins
- Gamer Pack (16 titles) – $9.99/month
- 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
- Overlord II
- Speed Pack (7 titles) – $6.99/month
- Ace Combat
- Dirt 3
- GRID
- GRID 2
- MotoGP13
- Ridge Racer Unbounded
- WRC 4
- Fun Pack (7 titles) – $6.99/month
- 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
- BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
- Lego Pack (7 titles) – $6.99/month
- 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
- LEGO The Hobbit
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Very cool but I just bought an Alienwear Alpha which uses STEAM, great to have more gaming choices on the FireTV though! Love my FireTV which is now the main media hub for our home Netflix/Amazon Prime/HDHomerun Prime viewer! Gaming is the sole purpose of my alienwear alpha and it is a very nice unit.
No price break for beta testers? No “all in” subscription? I may have to wait before I jump on this though my daughter wants to play Arkham City and a couple of others so I may not :)
Can anyone post the apk to sideload?
Greece here
Thanks
Did you get it? I would like to have it as well. Thanks from Munich.
Sounds good. My internet speeds are faster than most but as far as being close to the servers–i have no idea.
Either way, a test trial (even if its just trying out a game for an hour) seems like a given.
I use a ouya controller with aftv. Wonder how well itll work?
I did the Playcast trial/test/beta with AFTV wired to a reliable 150Mbps connection (up and down) and I am in PA. The server seems to be the same one now that I tried the games (you can play them for 10 minutes) in VA that I was getting connected to during the trial. The ping is lower than it was during the trial and it seems to perform better.
I assume I’ll get very good results based on my connection speed, ping, and proximity to a server but I will test more before plunking down $$.
Thanks. I actually tried it earlier from the northeast with the same speeds as you and was pretty impressed.
For 7 bucks it seems worth it. My ouya controller worked ok with Sleeping Dogs but 10 mins isnt long enough! On that game it was literally like 6 minutes of credits and storyline.
I am impressed so far though…
Thanks for the initial report about the Ouya controller too. I have one but haven’t tried it, I find it easier to use the Amazon Fire Game Controller when playing alone, and I can add Xbox controllers beyond that as they work well.
That makes me realize, sadly, that I use neither Ouya itself or the controller very much :(
This sounds really nice. Hopefully it will work out better than OnLive.
Good so far with a 10mb internet connection outside US. My problem is that i have a Mad Catz Gamepad works great with some titles. But i wish i could change gamepad keymap buttons in many games that are not playable
Considering that I’m using wifi and Fire TV unfortunately doesn’t support the wireless AC standard I’m pretty impressed with how smooth it is. A bigger game selection and more subscription options (including just for one game) would make me want to pay for it. I’m glad they have the 10 minute trial so you can test how well it works in your setup.
Any fancy linking apk for sideloading
Just realized with this that Fire TV now has an answer to pretty much everything the Shield Android TV can do. It can stream local pc games with moonlight game streaming and can now do cloud gaming as well. There are exclusive android games for shield but fire tv has Sev Zero and hopefully other amazon produced games coming.
Shield obviously has better specs and is better able to offer those services but something to keep in mind for fire tv users or those considering fire tv.
Id like the sideload aol.
I mean apk.
Please the apk