OnLive Denies Rumors That the Company is Shutting Down [Updated]

[Torrijos]

Too bad, I believe they were on to something great, just a bit too early.

Now that a lot of consumer are going to go for cheap and less powerful devices, like the iPhones, iPads & iTV, a iTV-like device with an external controller (like the Ouya) could have had great success in streaming games way too intensive for the available hardware.
That way even your underpowered device could play the latest & greatest, as long as you have a good connection, with x265 coming this type of business model can only improve.

 

[aristotle]

Microsoft has a vast xbox live network that does everything with games other than streaming them. They also were streaming 1080p movies before netflix was. I think they got it.

The problem is that you have to buy a "Red Ring of Death" prone Xbox 360 console to play the games and it uses a "points" system for purchases.

You might not realize but many people have no interest in owning an Xbox 360.

I'm going to miss the Onlive game that I played on my iMac and the Onlive desktop service on my iPad. Notice how nowhere in that sentence was there an Xbox mentioned?

 

[initialsBB]

Hey guess what, all you people that invested in this DRM encumbered crap are losing all the games you "bought".

I haven't read the OnLive terms of service but I'm pretty sure that it says no where that you buy games, but rather license the right to play them... It's legal mumbo jumbo but there is a difference.

 

[Nova Sensei]

Yes, all of their customer will lose his license. His name is Greg. Very sad.

Haha, classic.

 

[AJH1993]

So for everyone who flamed me a couple months ago for questioning On-Live's success.

Who's laughing now?

 

[chrmjenkins]

The problem is that you have to buy a "Red Ring of Death" prone Xbox 360 console to play the games and it uses a "points" system for purchases.

What makes you think they would roll out such a service on a console near the end of its life? Also, why would they roll out the service on a GAME CONSOLE. Would they call it the Xboxzibit?

You might not realize but many people have no interest in owning an Xbox 360.

Again, nothing forces it to an xbox 360. This may surprise you, but they do PC games and mobile games too

I'm going to miss the Onlive game that I played on my iMac and the Onlive desktop service on my iPad. Notice how nowhere in that sentence was there an Xbox mentioned?

And nothing else but Mac. You hate one brand/service but love another. What makes me think you'd be an xbox/windows game streaming service customer in the first place? Otherwise, you must honestly think they'd buy it and leave it untouched? Ok.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

The Verge covers it... http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/17/3250495/onlive-layoffs-acquisition

 

[apolloa]

The problem is that you have to buy a "Red Ring of Death" prone Xbox 360 console to play the games and it uses a "points" system for purchases.

You might not realize but many people have no interest in owning an Xbox 360.

I'm going to miss the Onlive game that I played on my iMac and the Onlive desktop service on my iPad. Notice how nowhere in that sentence was there an Xbox mentioned?

Not true I'm afraid. The new Xbox 360 Slim has the issues with the original 360 all resolved. Mine has worked fine since February last year and the interface oozes class and it is a fantastic media hub IMO.

 

[Eric5h5]

PSN, Xbox Live, Apple App Store, Steam... they're all online stores... ya, I don't have much faith of them being around should any of these companies encounter financial difficulties.

You get to keep the games you bought no matter what, which is kind of a huge difference. (Steam being a little problematic because of the authentication, but they've claimed that if anything should happen it won't be an issue; don't know if true or not.)

While there were some pretty nifty things about OnLive, overall I think it was more of a harmful direction for games to go in than a benefit (everything you might have invested in it going *poof* being top of the list of bad stuff), and I can't really get too worked up about it closing I'm afraid.

--Eric

 

[LethalWolfe]

Microsoft has a vast xbox live network that does everything with games other than streaming them. They also were streaming 1080p movies before netflix was. I think they got it.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say streaming a movie isn't quite the same as playing a game remotely. I never said MS couldn't do it I said it might be cheaper and easier to buy an existing company so you get their IP, their experienced staff, their customers and you remove a competitor from the market place. No sense in reinventing the wheel when you have enough money to just buy a wheel.

 

[chrmjenkins]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say streaming a movie isn't quite the same as playing a game remotely. I never said MS couldn't do it I said it might be cheaper and easier to buy an existing company so you get their IP, their experienced staff, their customers and you remove a competitor from the market place. No sense in reinventing the wheel when you have enough money to just buy a wheel.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say streaming a single player game will be a piece of cake for a company that streams millions of multiplayer, latency sensitive, game sessions with full voice via Xbox live.

The 1080p example was merely showing their commitment to high bit rate streaming which would be necessary for server side compute functions where the graphic data must be streamed in addition to control, positioning, etc data for an online console game.

Yes, they could acquire, but they have no technical need i would imagine.

 

[Steve.P.JobsFan]

What about the $200 in games I bought from you, OnLive? What's going to happen to them?

 

[cuestakid]

a bit more confirmation on the re-organization

http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_21339527/streaming-game-company-onlive-changes-hands

 

[seamer]

So for everyone who flamed me a couple months ago for questioning On-Live's success.

Who's laughing now?

So if I claim at the release of every new service that it will fail, will I get points if just one of them turns out as predicted?

 

[damir00]

What were you reading?

"I'm sorry I can't be more specific."

This is a non-denial denial. Something pretty dramatic happened over there, that much is certain.

EDIT: Ah, I see the "reorg" story is now official.

 

[AJH1993]

So if I claim at the release of every new service that it will fail, will I get points if just one of them turns out as predicted?

Let me be more specific, because people here are so outrageously defensive I expected a flock of people to insult me.

The original post was more like "I really question the success of on-live, honestly I don't see this sort of thing succeeding because the amount of bandwidth it would need. How is it doing?"

And of course, a glut of "You're so stupid, On Live is awesome" etc, etc posts appeared.

So there's that .

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

I have a bad feeling about the buyer.

 

[cuestakid]

I have a bad feeling about the buyer.

Infinite Loop would rather people utilize airplay and buy apps from the stores. I don't see the reasoning of them getting it.
As for the guys down the road in Mountain View, I could see it....

 

[big-apple]

This is the same management team that 2 years ago were telling people that they had no competition... hmm... good luck with the "new" company.

 

[topmounter]

Facebook still has some money left (as of Aug 17th).

 

[Abazigal]

Just read online that in a low move, the CEO of onlive effectively nullified the stock options of his employees. Hope Apple has nothing to do with this company.

http://www.snsradionetwork.com/sour...nouncing-layoffs-promised-to-protect-patents/

 

[FrozenShivers]

The problem is that you have to buy a "Red Ring of Death" prone Xbox 360 console to play the games and it uses a "points" system for purchases.

You might not realize but many people have no interest in owning an Xbox 360.

I'm going to miss the Onlive game that I played on my iMac and the Onlive desktop service on my iPad. Notice how nowhere in that sentence was there an Xbox mentioned?

Xboxes haven't been 'prode to RROD' for a long time, learn what you speak before you speak it.

 

[malman89]

Kind of a bummer. I got in on one of the initial trial runs when it was first announced. I never paid a dime to OnLive. The membership was free (not sure if it isn't for non-beta new members) and you only paid for what you bought. I just checked out betas and free games for months. I must admit I haven't even done that in a couple years.

The game prices (a few years ago - not sure now) weren't significantly cheaper than their physical media siblings, or in some cases compared to a clearance or Steam sale, much more expensive, so I never saw the incentive to use OnLive as a paid service.

Never had any latency or lag issues, even playing on WiFi (get better internet/networking people). Fantastic idea, just not quite there I guess. You need an absurd amount of money and leverage to work over the gaming industry, so I'm not surprised by its downfall.

 

[damir00]

Just read online that in a low move, the CEO of onlive effectively nullified the stock options of his employees.

Why is that a "low move"? If the company is broke, it's broke, the options have no value and the capital structure has to be modified significantly.

 

[faroZ06]

The problem is that you have to buy a "Red Ring of Death" prone Xbox 360 console to play the games and it uses a "points" system for purchases.

You might not realize but many people have no interest in owning an Xbox 360.

I'm going to miss the Onlive game that I played on my iMac and the Onlive desktop service on my iPad. Notice how nowhere in that sentence was there an Xbox mentioned?

The XBOX 360 is a nice console with great controllers, but Microsoft rips you off at every corner for every feature of it, and it is so unreliable that there is an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to XBOX 360 technical problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_3...igation_of_Xbox_360_disc_scratches_.282009.29

I know XBOX Live isn't very expensive, but Microsoft is charging you money to use a peer-to-peer service. At least PSN is free. I don't even own either console except for a semi-broken 360 that someone gave us without controllers or a hard drive.

GameCube forever