OnLive gaming service will hit in June, but is it worth the $15 monthly subscription?

Unless you count telling my kid the Wii is “broken” so I can play Kid Icarus for the better part of a weekend, I’m not exactly a hardcore gamer.

So I’m not sure what to make of OnLive, a service that charges you $15 a month to access, which doesn’t really seem to include “access,” per se. Plans to launch the service during the E3 2010 show on June 17th were announced today, and for a mere $180, you get the opportunity to stream all kinds of games to your Mac and PC without a fancy hardware investment. With your $15, you also get to demo games, watch people play games, play the games you’ve purchased with other people and store your game related stuff in the cloud.

You’ll be able to “rent” games with your subscription (pricing unavailable) but pricing for game purchase (also unavailable, but called “competitive” by OnLive) is expected to be in line with the going cost of games. OnLive told you what you get for your money in a blog post:

Included in your monthly service fee are OnLive-exclusive features such as instant-play free game demos; multiplayer across PC, Mac and TV platforms; massive spectating; viewing of Brag Clips™ video capture and posting; and cloud-saving of games you’ve purchased—pause, and instantly resume from anywhere, even on a different platform.

Also included in the monthly service fee are features you’d expect from standard online games services such as gamer tags, user profiles, friends, chat, but with a twist: everything is live video. You’ll be friending through multiplay, Spectating, Brag Clips, or by flipping through video profiles of friends of friends of friends. OnLive is delivering the first instant video-based social network. It’s really cool.

If you’re big into games and think the service has promise, the first 25,000 people to sign up get their first three months of OnLive free. The company says that in initial testing, players didn’t realize games were being streamed and that streaming quality is fantastic. But it remains to be seen how the service will work when rolled out to people across the continental US. (Hawaiian and Alaskan players are not eligible to use the service.)

So gamers, is this something you’re into, or does it sound like a big waste of money?