Reports have surfaced that OnLive, probably the most well known of the game-streaming services, has laid off all of its staff and ceased business. The company has issued statements to numerous websites denying the accusations but it doesn’t look particularly positive for them.
You’ll remember, of course, that Sony recently acquired OnLive’s competitor Gaikai in a $400 million deal that will see Sony TVs and hopefully PlayStation devices benefit from the presence of instant streaming videogames. OnLive has always been positioned to sell, building up a buzz and an install base by giving away many of the micro-consoles that offer a simple way to access the service. Has Gaikai’s acquisition beaten them to the punch?
InXile’s boss, Brian Fargo tweeted about the issue rather bluntly. “Just received an email that OnLive is closed as of today”
According to Mashable, many of the company’s employees were laid off on Friday and there are rumours that they may blame the CEO, Steve Perlman, for failing to sell the company despite the many opportunities he had.
It makes sense for someone to step in and attempt to acquire them now. That might be Microsoft – to compete with Sony’s Gaikai move – or Sony to seal up the many patents OnLive holds and strengthen their position. Perhaps a third party might take the gamble.
According to Twitter account seems blissfully ignorant of the issue and the PR approach seems to be to deny it, despite the apparent bankruptcy filing. There’s no word of what will happen with the current promotions or with customer’s existing subscriptions and purchases on the system but when we know more, we’ll update this report.
Radiitz
No way. Onlive is out of business? I cannot believe it. They had a really good thing going. I was going to become pretty much a full time user of their content once I got my own place. Such a shame :(
cc_star
Existed to be bought out, only the might of a platform holder or similar could scale it into a long term profitable business.
Big companies are traditionally poor at coming up with groundbreaking new stuff, startups are excellent at it & if they can keep going long enough most get snapped up by a big player who has the funds to scale up their project & go mainstream.
OnLive were full of bravado, but the buyouts never came or if they did they priced themselves out of the market.
Shame that if it keeps going in some form it’ll be a shadow of its former self & has no hope of attracting subscribers.
Being independent of large companies it was always in a hard place because pubs were reluctant to put their main brand new games on it in case it detracted from sales so it rarely got the aaa games when they were brand new. Whilst it was small there was not much to be gained by going with OnLive, but they were also worried about it being to successful and having OnLive dominate the market and pricing – the iTunes effect (same reason Apple has its work cut out trying attract cable operators to its TV platform)
As an independent startup it has no long term chance, they’re rumours of a buyout & some staff being taken on by the new company on 30 day contract, presumably while they try and extract some value from it our scour their patents for worthwhile ones before offloading/folding the shell of a company.
colmshan1990
Hit the nail on the head.
A great idea too early, but their own egos convinced them their time was now and to not sell up…
colmshan1990
If they’re not dead yet, this rumour has the potential to kill them.
Everybody who knows about Onlive also knows that they won’t own the games- who’s going to pay a subscription now when they know it could be shut any day and they’ll have nothing?
Uncertainty can and will kill a subscription service.
hazelam
sadly for the staff, and those who “bought” games on the service, i suspect you may be right.
even those who could get past the not owning the games they buy thing are going to be thinking twice after a scare like this, assuming Onlive even survives this.
this was one of the more practical reasons why i didn’t like these cloud gaming services, along with all my moral reservations.
Sympozium
Nooo……. Onlive why, honestly though I seen nothing about it in the city it was non-existent and worst randomers wouldn’t have been able to be aware of it. It did have a good sub deal, very handy (even if some were quite shit and basic).
Worst…. the doods that bought the games, they wouldn’t own it anymore. Which was I’m sure many peoples problem with Onlive and worst I can’t play Mafia 2 and Divinity… NOooooo.
Is the service is even gone? I haven’t even been using it much and I would’ve because I liked Mafia 2 and Divinty but I was quite busy with college and had no time for them.
ico
Sadly there’s no smoke without fire…
gaffers101
I bet Sony and Microsoft are talking to their accountants already to see what offer to make.
hazelam
i bet ea would be interested, they’d love nothing more than their games only ever existing in the cloud.
where people could buy them, but never own them.
deadwelsh
Hey sony, sell us a console with a 2 year free sub, £50 year sub after and give us all ace games, i hate you and think you are unspeakables but its the only way, get moving, if not MS Valve Apple Ouya should make things interestings
Sympozium
:/
The Lone Steven
I’m not surprised that they have gone bust as it’s too early for a streaming gaming company due to most people not having the connection that they require. That and streaming games can cause you to use up 100GB within a fortnight. I hope EA don’t end up buying it as they would love the chance to be able to feck us over by shutting down a few games thus forcing you to buy the newest version as well as just annoying you by denying you access to your collection.