Turner's GameTap set for Oct 3 launch

The Turner Broadcasting System, once known better for starting all its shows five minutes past the hour rather than for being in the game business, has locked down a date and pricing plan for its new GameTap service.

The broadband-only, PC-based service will let players choose from a selection of hundreds of games and play them anytime for one monthly fee. That fee, $14.95 a month, will get you access to a front-end application for GameTap that will serve as a hub for what TBS envisions as a network of sorts, much like its many cable networks, but strictly for games.

In a presentation to media today, the GameTap front-end appears clean and neat; it essentially lets you sort through the content on the GameTap network in several different ways. Since the service will emulate a variety of platforms, you can sort by system, giving you quick links to games from the Atari 2600, Intellivision, Genesis, 32X, Game Gear, Sega Master System, Dreamcast, PlayStation, arcades, and more. This will give you access to games like Pitfall!, BurgerTime, Asteroids Deluxe, Crazy Taxi, Sonic the Hedgehog, Astroblast, and so on. Even Pong is set to be included, though due to the difficulty in emulating games powered solely by discreet circuitry, it will instead be an accurate simulation of the original, rather than a pure emulation.

On the non-emulation side of things, the service will also let you play PC games.

The version of the service we were shown already had a smattering of Ubisoft PC games in place, including Rayman 3, Beyond Good & Evil, the first two Splinter Cell games, Worms Blast, and more. The games are downloaded into a fixed-size cache on your PC, so you'll face some download time on the front end--especially if you're playing a larger, more recent release--but once it's been downloaded, future attempts to access a game will be much faster. The service will launch with around 300 games already available, but Turner has already licensed around 1,000 games for eventual inclusion. The goal is to roll out somewhere between five and 10 new games on a weekly basis. But don't expect to see games hitting GameTap and store shelves at the same time.

Much like it takes time for a movie to get from theaters to pay-per-view, then to DVD, then to network television, and then to basic cable, most new releases will take their time in getting to the service. It's the GameTap team's hope that, in the future, game publishers and developers might consider releasing smaller or more-experimental games--the sort that currently has slim hopes of making a splash in the direct retail world--directly on the GameTap service.

GameTap will have support for parental controls, allowing parents to lock their children out of any individual game, but at the moment, the service won't contain any mature games. In the future, however, these games may be added in under a separate banner or service.

In addition to games, GameTap will also produce an array of custom video content for the service in the form of "commercials" for other games on the service, or shows designed to point users toward games they might not have noticed.

The beta version of the service also currently contains leaderboards for most games that keep score. But in the future, that community aspect will be expanded to include instant messaging support, contests and promotions, and, eventually, online support for all the service's multiplayer games.

The GameTap service is currently in a beta state and appears to be on track to meet its October 3 release date.