RIP onLive ?

Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
10,376
762
126
Anyone see this yet ?
http://gamepolitics.com/2012/08/17/confirmed-onlive-closing-down-employees-laid

I think they were one of the first streaming game companies, and now, it looks like they are toast.
I wanted to send a note that by the end of the day today, OnLive as an entity will no longer exist," reads an email forwarded to Polygon. "Unfortunately, my job and everyone else's was included. A new company will be formed and the management of the company will be in contact with you about the current initiatives in place, including the titles that will remain on the service."
 

manko

Golden Member
May 27, 2001
1,846
1
0
I tried one of the free indie games last week, just to see if the quality improved over the preview gameplay. It didn't. I like the premise, but the quality doesn't compare to a mid-range system. Maybe it'd be good for a netbook.

I think they're giving away Space Chem and Space Pirates and Zombies this weekend.

SpaceChem and Space Pirates and Zombies free for Onlive
 
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KaOTiK

Lifer
Feb 5, 2001
10,877
8
81
I liked using them for demos. I wasn't worried with how a game would perform on my computer as it can run pretty much anything at high settings. It was a quick and easy way to just try a game to see if I found it fun to buy on Steam lol.
 

Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,413
1,570
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Bloodbath

a former onlive employee (who spoke on the condition of anonymity) described to gamepolitics the last meeting the cloud-based subscription gaming service will ever hold. Earlier in the day this source confirmed a rumor that the company had laid off its entire staff and ceased to exist as a company.

First, our source describes the meeting where employees learned that they had all been let go:

"so there was an 'all-hands' and we're in this big open space.. He [referring to onlive founder, ceo, and president steve perlman] literally had a presentation that he pitched to us and the punch line was '…and under this variation of bankruptcy which is valid in california the company as of this moment does not exist and portions of it are being acquired by a brand new entity but what that means is all of your options are gone.'"

"the most surreal part of the whole meeting is that he does the entire presentation, he gets to the end and typically at an 'all-hands' meeting you clap, right? Because that's just the right way to finish a meeting. I think because nobody knew how to react, everybody clapped. It was bizarre... Because you're clapping to thank him for taking the easy route out of the company. I think it was because everybody was in such shock that they just didn't know what to do. So i'm sitting there laughing because i'm watching people clapping because they don't know what else to do..."

when we asked our source if anyone inside the company saw today's events coming, they said:

"anybody keeping score within the company knew that money was getting tight. There were signs of it because budgets had been slashed and there were very long holds on getting business terms signed off on... But the expectation was "oh steve's going to go and get another round of funding. There were a few people hoping for the acquisition because that's really the end game, but if you were reasonably smart you knew that the likelihood of that was pretty low."

we asked if anyone was getting a severance package from onlive:

"no. We just got paid for the first half of august. We got 8 hours for the couple of hours we worked into the second pay period. We got our pto." one thing that is lost under the bankruptcy is contributions to federal savings accounts that employees made: "a lot of my colleagues put money in the fsa for child care, health care, whatever .. They did not have an answer for us, but it sounds like the person that makes the most noise will get reimbursed."

we asked our source what the aftermath of today's news is to employees, and if any of onlive's employees will be carried over into the new as-of-yet-unnamed entity:

"there were few people who had been given a one-month agreement with the new entity, which he did not explain. Basically by using this form of bankruptcy there's a certain amount of protection from the creditors... Obviously he lands okay and everyone else is on their own."

finally we asked our source how many people are going to this new company from onlive:

"a very small number.. I have no idea what the number is, but i would guess that a few people would stay to keep the service running because if you lose the content the value drains out of the company very rapidly. So they must be keeping enough people around to keep the service running. He'll keep around his core engineering team and people's he's worked with for years i'm sure are staying... And the one guy who knows how the analytics database works for financials (he does all the reporting and everything so) i'm certain he has a position. I'd guess 20 people.
 

Destiny

Platinum Member
Jul 6, 2010
2,309
1
0
Condolences for the employees... I'm thinking they may become content providers and streaming services for other hardware makers - and letting go their hardware dev and sales team...
 

Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,413
1,570
126
As the business day comes to a close, it looks like OnLive might end up pretty much where it started. Earlier today, rumors swirled that streaming gaming provider had issued pink slips to much of its staff, mostly sparked by a series of tweets from game developer Brian Fargo. According to Fargo, he'd received an email from an OnLive staffer with news of sweeping job cuts at the company, and hints that a reorganization of the service was afoot. Shortly thereafter, company spokesman Brian Jaquet issued a number of responses to reporters, ranging from "no comment," to "of course the company is not going out of business."

After hours of rumors, the company has finally issued an official statement via email:

We can now confirm that the assets of OnLive, Inc. have been acquired into a newly-formed company and is backed by substantial funding, and which will continue to operate the OnLive Game and Desktop services, as well as support all of OnLive's apps and devices, as well as game, productivity and enterprise partnerships. The new company is hiring a large percentage of OnLive, Inc.'s staff across all departments and plans to continue to hire substantially more people, including additional OnLive employees. All previously announced products and services, including those in the works, will continue and there is no expected interruption of any OnLive services.

We apologize that we were unable to comment on this transaction until it completed, and were limited to reporting on news related to OnLive's businesses. Now that the transaction is complete, we are able to make this statement.

As you can see, OnLive isn't disclosing the name of the new company nor the source of its "substantial funding," only that it's "newly-formed." Although many OnLive employees have been seen leaving the company's headquarters with boxes full of possessions, apparently "a large percentage" will be hired by this new company — though whether "large" can fairly be read as "a majority" isn't at all clear. OnLive also wouldn't confirm whether OnLive CEO Steve Perlman was a part of the new, mystery company.

The email ended a day of speculation and confusion as a variety of publications, including GamePolitics, Kotaku, and TechCrunch began to publish statements from anonymous employees about their firings, as well as rumors of both a bankruptcy filing and a potential acquisition. Some of the stories reported that OnLive president and CEO Steve Perlman issued the companywide layoffs in a bizarre all-hands meeting that ended with applause.

As reporters observed employees of the company streaming out of OnLive's Palo Alto offices — some with boxes in hand — it became clear that the email sent to Fargo was more than a fluke. The Verge observed workers headed to their cars with white printouts in hand and a variety of personal belongings. Some pretended to speak on their cellphones as reporters outside asked questions about the state of the company. Eventually, OnLive spokesperson Jane Anderson appeared and ushered media indoors to wait for the official word from the company.

That word finally arrived via email, but many questions remain. OnLive's customers will no-doubt be happy to know that service will be maintained, but beyond that we will have to wait to find out exactly what the reasoning is behind today's very strange drama.

txt
 

Dominato3r

Diamond Member
Aug 15, 2008
5,114
1
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I think the issue of low adoption may have been because they lacked scale and because of it the latency suffered. I imagine someone like a Google or Microsoft who have the datacenter infrastructure could do well providing streaming content/applications
 

llee

Golden Member
Oct 27, 2009
1,152
0
76
They were ahead of the curve. It will be interesting to see how similar companies, e.g., Gaikai, fare in the wake of this news.
 

Wreckem

Diamond Member
Sep 23, 2006
9,458
987
126
Pretty sure they are being bought out.

Whatever you want to call what they went through, it seems in the long run they are only going to be a patent holding company. That is specifically what the purpose of the ABC was for, to protect creditors by protecting the patents OnLive was recently granted. I expect the new OnLive Holding Company to sue Sony in the next year or so.
 

Red Storm

Lifer
Oct 2, 2005
14,233
234
106
The problem was you couldn't actually buy games with their service. You rented it for a long period of time, but then they would lose games from their rotation and it was confusing.

A great idea, just a few years too early.
 

M0oG0oGaiPan

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2000
7,858
2
0
digitalgamedeals.com
The company sounds like it was mishandled terribly. Sony doesn't really need to do anything with Gaikai. If they just use it to serve up demos/casual games it would be good way to get some impulse buys. Big Fish Games just started up a cloud gaming service called Big Fish Unlimited.
 

StrangerGuy

Diamond Member
May 9, 2004
8,443
124
106
Not a surprise. I mean how many people who wants to play hardcore games but doesn't have or want a gaming PC/console AND willing to subscribe to a thing like OnLive? Isn't that's like a tiny demographic to appeal to.
 

PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
21,729
559
126
I don't understand how people thought this product was going to work. Some people here suggest it might be ahead of its time or the project was mismanaged. Perhaps the consumer space will change in the future proving it was "ahead of its time" but there was no way to manage a demand for this product right now no matter how talented you were. To the end consumers it was a more expensive alternative to existing consoles with a crappy library and latency issues. End user hardware has never been cheaper or faster and broadband connections are being squeezed by ISPs instituting caps. I'd argue any tiny niche that this service might have had can still better and more cheaply filled with the rent to own xbox 360 and a gamefly subscription. It made about as much sense as selling scratchy wool bikinis to eskimos that were already receiving cotton ones for free through a government grant.

Everyone focused on whether it was technically possible when it was first announced, but what people should have been asking was whether anyone would even want it if it was offered.
 

Red Storm

Lifer
Oct 2, 2005
14,233
234
106
I don't understand how people thought this product was going to work. Some people here suggest it might be ahead of its time or the project was mismanaged. Perhaps the consumer space will change in the future proving it was "ahead of its time" but there was no way to manage a demand for this product right now no matter how talented you were. To the end consumers it was a more expensive alternative to existing consoles with a crappy library and latency issues. End user hardware has never been cheaper or faster and broadband connections are being squeezed by ISPs instituting caps. I'd argue any tiny niche that this service might have had can still better and more cheaply filled with the rent to own xbox 360 and a gamefly subscription. It made about as much sense as selling scratchy wool bikinis to eskimos that were already receiving cotton ones for free through a government grant.

Everyone focused on whether it was technically possible when it was first announced, but what people should have been asking was whether anyone would even want it if it was offered.

Back in the beta I was able to play Crysis 1 on my netbook at fairly decent quality. On my netbook. That was amazing. If they had kept the game in their lineup I could have been playing Crysis on my phone. How cool is that?

The other problems are what did them in, things like a shallow catalog, never owning games, games going out of the "rotation" and latency issues in some games (It was fine with Crysis and fine with some others, but then there were games that did have that slight input lag).

They should have been building for and advertising towards mobile users from the get go.
 

M0oG0oGaiPan

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2000
7,858
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what red storm said plus their console was very small and portable. let's say you went on a business trip. you could take the console with you and you could be playing the games on the hotel computer if there was a lan connection available. Or even your netbook and eventually what should have been the ouya/vizio co-star/tablet/whatever device.
 

Nintendesert

Diamond Member
Mar 28, 2010
7,761
5
0
Their business model is outdated in my opinion. Some of you think it was too far ahead, I disagree. It was setup on an old infrastructure model where everyone had unlimited data caps. Streaming movies gobbles up tons already and adding another service that streams was from the start going to be limited.

The other issue is the great acceleration of the integrated graphics APU type chips. You have Intel and AMD putting out chips that play games reasonably well in very small and cheap packages.

The need to pay for a service to rent games with all its drawbacks is simply decreasing. There is still a segment out there that likes the product and makes good use of it, but it's very small and in my opinion would continue to get smaller and smaller.

Had they found a way to bring their service to the mobile platform I'm sure that would be quite interesting as that's where a ton of growth is at. And had they done that perhaps Facebook would have bought them out to show them how to monetize that market. ;)
 

M0oG0oGaiPan

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2000
7,858
2
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Their business model is outdated in my opinion. Some of you think it was too far ahead, I disagree. It was setup on an old infrastructure model where everyone had unlimited data caps. Streaming movies gobbles up tons already and adding another service that streams was from the start going to be limited.

The other issue is the great acceleration of the integrated graphics APU type chips. You have Intel and AMD putting out chips that play games reasonably well in very small and cheap packages.

The need to pay for a service to rent games with all its drawbacks is simply decreasing. There is still a segment out there that likes the product and makes good use of it, but it's very small and in my opinion would continue to get smaller and smaller.

Had they found a way to bring their service to the mobile platform I'm sure that would be quite interesting as that's where a ton of growth is at. And had they done that perhaps Facebook would have bought them out to show them how to monetize that market. ;)

That's actually where they were heading. you could play quite a number of games on android devices using a touch interface. They came out with a universal controller that would also work across machines. They made an ios app that was never approved unfortunately for them. That pissed off a lot of people and I can understand why. OnLive basically said it was a done deal and it never came to fruition. Personally, I'm not really sure how they thought it was ever going to be approved.

That convergence of mobile to desktop to tv/console was supposed to be one of the benefits of their service. You could start playing defense grid on your pc. Hop on a plane and continue your game on your android phone/netbook. Once you landed, you could hook up your onLive console to the tv and it would let you continue your game every time.
 

gorcorps

aka Brandon
Jul 18, 2004
30,736
447
126
Back in the beta I was able to play Crysis 1 on my netbook at fairly decent quality. On my netbook. That was amazing. If they had kept the game in their lineup I could have been playing Crysis on my phone. How cool is that?

Sounds useless. I don't even like playing mario on a touchscreen, let alone something as complicated as a PC version of Crysis. How the hell would you even do that? Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you should or that anyone would want it.