OnLive Adds Group Voice Chat, Parental Controls And Facebook Achievement Sharing

Cloud gaming service OnLive has been getting better and better. We had a blast checking out the OnLive booth at E3 this year, and you better believe the service’s usage will have gone up since GameStop inadvertently gave OnLive a ton of great publicity yesterday. But OnLive isn’t resting on its laurels, as new features are rolling out today.

The first on our list is Parental Controls, which is kind of a necessity on just about any gaming platform. Where there are games, there is gruesome, violent, and profane content. Definitely not suitable for small kids. Parents can now set certain restrictions on the account to block M-rated games, chatting with strangers, Brag Clips, or spectating.

OnLive has also introduced a beta version of Group Voice Chat. Before today, OnLive already had a strong social element with its Game chat (for multiplayer sessions) and Spectator chat (for people watching others play). Group voice chat will let you chat with friends whether they’re playing, watching or picking their nose. Even in beta, the Group chat feature should work fine on all of OnLive’s supported devices.

And rounding out our new feature line-up: yet another opportunity for you to brag on Facebook. OnLive has today integrated Facebook achievement sharing, which automatically posts any game achievement direct to Facebook. OnLive has already been doing this with Brag Clips, which are little videos of certain stellar moves or big-time wins you’ve done within a game. If it just so happens that your game has Brag Clip Achievement configured, the achievement will get blasted out to Facebook alongside a Brag Clip, so your friends have proof of your ability to dominate.

OnLive says these newest features are the product of customer requests, and that they’re far from the last. So if you’re an OnLive junkie and have a great idea to make the platform better, ask and ye might receive. No harm in trying, right?