[UPDATE]: Streaming game company plans to continue current products, rehire "large" number of previous employees.
[UPDATE]: An OnLive spokesperson confirmed to VentureBeat that the streaming gaming service's assets have been sold to another company. The spokesperson said users will experience no interruption of services or product roll-outs and the new company plans to hire "a large percentage" of its former employees. The original story follows below.
Rumors of OnLive's demise may have been greatly exaggerated.
When asked about reports that the company was shutting down entirely, a representative with the streaming game service told GameSpot, "We don't respond to rumors, but of course not." He went on to note that Vizio Co-Stars streaming media players with OnLive built in are just now rolling out to customers, and the company is in the middle of a three-week indie game giveaway promotion.
Earlier today, Mashable carried unconfirmed reports that OnLive laid off its entire staff. However, the business was said to be transitioning to a new phase in which a number of the staff could potentially be rehired. The report suggested the new-look OnLive could be driven by intellectual property and its numerous patents on cloud-based gaming.
Wasteland 2 developer and Inxile founder Brian Fargo posted on Twitter that he had received an email from an employee with the company saying that everyone had been laid off and it would be closed by the end of the day. He later tweeted that he had received a recall request on that same email.
Brendan Sinclair has been a games journalist since 1999. His tastes are eclectic, though he has a definite affinity for games with arcade roots. He's Canadian, but has also been at home in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, and San Francisco.
"He went on to note that Vizio Co-Stars streaming media players with OnLive built in are just now rolling out to customers..."Huh? Is that saying that Vizio TV's have a device built in to receive Onlive services? I know Brenden is a better writer than this, I can't understand that sentence at all, LOL.
If i were to sign up for OnLive today, I would be scare to buy anything from them just because I don't know what will happen to my purchase if they are not going to make it...
1 Like All of these cloud services are going to take a serious hit when internet providers switch to usage based pricing. Sad but true.
I think that the Idea onlive is built on is going to be the future of a Large part of gaming. Their just a few years to early.
I am happy with my steam, while I am able to play my games offline. At least, if Steam ever goes out of business, I can still play steam games offline, since they are downloaded in my system.
1 Like OnLive has huge potential for enterprise customers. If they started offering secure dumb terminals, they could make a lot of money without really taking a hit to their gaming capacity. Not that I'm really interested in it, because I don't think bandwidth and latency are really there yet, but I'd like to see it continue to improve and at least exist as an option (although I still prefer Steam).
4 Like I love my OnLive service. I own all current and many past generation consoles, but I get a lot of great deals from their marketplace. For instance, always being able to boot up Ghostbusters: The Game (or say, Darksiders 2) be it on my PC, my TV, or even my phone... well it's just flatout awesome. Saves me money, and it's everywhere. I like saving money everywhere.
1 Like These guys are 15 years too early. Even with a $1 million per month burn rate they wouldn't be around when this cloud market starts.
I remembered all the hoopla about Onlive and then all of sudden it went away and I never heard about them until now. Glad they are not going of business, but if this idea donot catch on, they might in the future.
1 Like Looks like Onlive is struggling to stay afloat. To be honest, I'm surprised it managed to stick around as long as it has.
Onlive really could be something if a larger well trusted company owned them. There is potential for the future of cloud gaming, but I think it is still a bit early for widespread adoption of the idea. Streaming services, in general, really need to get their business models worked out.
1 Like Not really all that interested other than to say good news that a company isn't going to sink.
1 Like It's always hard to be the first guy. You either strike gold or act as a warning for others.
If you have the proper internet connection for it OnLive is actually a great service. If there's a problem with a game they don't just sit back and let it happen like the console companies do, they actually get a fix for it asap. OnLive also lets much less capable computers run much more demanding games with ease. What's not to like?
1 Like Nah i predicted this would eventually happen, cloud based gaming is just that, in the clouds...
I wasn't surprised this idea would run into problems, might have worked in an earlier time but they really have a timestamp/expiration date after this run of technology moves on to bigger and better systems. I remember the scren size was something like the size of a cell phone screen on your 19 inch monitor... due to latency.
It's sad that they were laid off. I hope they find jobs soon. The job climate right now is awful.
Who do people dislike this service? I don't use it on PC but only on my Xperia Play and it works great. I was actually pretty satisfied with the service. Explain please
i tried a demo on my comp and it ran pretty smoothly but the only thing i don't like is can't change resolution to high level...
1 Like Perhaps Ouya bought them. you had to realize they did make a lot of cash for their launching campaign and Onlive was announce to be supporting the platform.
1 Like There''s a lot of squandered potential here. I played around with Onlive on my Laptop and, in the absence of a gaming PC, found it a promising concept. However, they've not brought in many major game releases and seem to be chucking lots of old stuff that most people already have or that can be easily downloaded (if you're so inclined) instead of moving forward. That coupled with their uncompetitive pricing means that unless they overhaul things pretty sharpish, they're going down the drain.
@Kenji_Masamune Vaporware? The first time i learned about Vaporware was when my hopes were smashed waiting for a PC game "the pc game" from konami software in 1995 called Champions... by Herosoftware... A really big dissapointment.
@Kenji_Masamune vaporware implies it hasn't yet existed. Once a product is launched it is no longer vaporware ...
6 Like Wish the employees the best of luck, but OnLive doesn't deserve a bit of sympathy from anyone.
Steve Perlman just screwed his employees in every way possible, and it wasn't due to incompetence like 38 Studios earlier this year. What he did was intentional and malicious--basically OnLive found a buyer and then decided that they would declare bankruptcy in order to invalidate their employees' stock options, cheat them out of things like their FSA contributions, and not even give severance when they fired the vast majority of them.
3 Like I wish OnLive the best of luck. Despite the haters, I really like the service.
Still can't compete with REAL pc gaming, but it nice to be able to log on and try the first half hour of any game.
1 Like Wow i didn't think Onlive had actually come out yet.... so when everyone said "fail" when it was announced...they were right?:P
1 Like @blakeney It has a cult following (me included) and a considerable amount of patents within the cloud industry to keep it alive. It most certainly isn't thriving though.
1 Like Never will since PC games have Steam as a major game supplier. Most games that Onlive had been already dated on today?s PC standards. It had a very small library and laggy servers. NO THANKS. Cloud gaming won't work until bandwidth limitations are lifted in some countries.
1 Like @sammoth I agree on the Bandwidth limitations, and we obviously have to come a long way before cloud streaming is the norm for gaming, but at-least they were willing to pioneer the industry. It has to start somewhere. Plus, Steam is great but it is simply a digital distribution service. It (currently) is incomparable to a streaming service. Now, if they roll out their rumored Steam-Box soon and at a low price point , then that would be a different story.
2 Like @Pyro978 Comcast won't cut it. They throttle data and therefore will not ever give optimum results for streaming services; Netflix, Hulu, Onlive, etc. I too am stuck with Comcast.
1 Like @mrboone01 Funny, you assume I haven't upgraded my hardware just because you haven't had a bad experience with Comcast. Do a quick google search for "Comcast data throttling". In some areas, especially dense subscription zones, Comcast forces shared bandwidth. Not always a bad thing, but it often requires data throttling to allow the proper bandwidth be shared between all of their subscribers.
@Evanrocknuma Funny, I have Comcast as well, and stream in nice full 1080p HD with no lag or loss of quality. Perhaps you should consider upgrading your hardware rather than trying to blame Comcast?
@Evanrocknuma I do fine with HULU and Netflix but Onlive never worked for me. Even when it was optimal there was still lag because the game wasnt really running off my machine it was off their servers.
3 Like @Pyro978 I've got a 18 mb connection which atr best gives me a 1.6 mo/s download bandwith, which is a little below average in my country, and the games are silky smooth, no lag, choppyness or frezzes. I only wished they'd let me increase the stream quality, because the encoding artifacts bother me.
Even if you are running a T-1 the games have limitations due to the bandwidth from the servers. In other words you?re going to lose graphic quality. Smaller resolutions/ lower textures etc.
Founder and former president of cloud-gaming company Steve Perlman exits firm to work on a "myriad of other projects."
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