Onlive Closed

[Demon_Skeith]

OnLive, the pioneers of cloud gaming, are in dire straits and are preparing to file for a form of bankruptcy, a source inside the company told Kotaku today. An OnLive spokesperson maintains that the OnLive service, which enables people to stream games to their computers and tablets without the need for dedicated hardware, will continue. But it seems as if the company itself is hitting some very hard times.

Update: GamePolitics has posted a story that confirms what we've heard about the meeting this morning at OnLive and the bankruptcy alternative they've filed.

Meanwhile, Engadget is reporting that an unknown third party has purchased OnLive.

source

Though short, Onlive was a very important stepping stone.

 

[Marc]

Rats.. and I just watched a video of their services being included in something much larger, just a few minutes ago, before reading this thread.

 

[froggyboy604]

Onlive is not dead. But, Onlive did lay off most of its staff, and sold the company to a new owner which will rehire most of the staff, and hire new staff over time. It also got rid of its expensive servers to replace them with less expensive servers. The rumor of it closing down is false according to

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.

http://www.engadget....nlive-confirms/

My best guest is it was some angry laid off employee which started a rumor Onlive was closing instead of being bought by a new owner which will rehire most of the old employees, and rehire some more after a few months.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

The onlive that started though is closed. Now it's like some company that uses it's name.

 

[GracefulAssassin]

It will continue though.

 

[froggyboy604]

From the press release on the article I link to it sounds like the Onlive Name will be changed soon to a different name, but will continue to use the same computers, and servers since a new company bought it.

People who bought games and subscription from Onlive will still get to keep their games and subscriptions. I think this is like Sony buying Gaikai Cloud gaming. I got a feeling the previous owner sold it for millions or even billions of dollars because he wanted to start another company.

I read online that the owner of Onlive have a reputation of starting companies to sell to make money to start other companies to later sell again.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

He may have sold it but he started something new that is becoming popular, one has to wonder if he stepped out too soon.

 

[froggyboy604]

I think he saw how much money Gaikai got sold for to Sony, and he decided to also sell his company to make lots of money rather then compete with Gamestop, Sony, and other bigger companies which also have cloud gaming services coming out soon, or are already out.

OnLive's new mystery owner is reportedly one person

http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/18/3250999/onlive-layoff-hp-bid-one-billion-asking-1800-concurrent-users the new owner is one person who possibly offer 1 billion or more US dollars to buy Onlive.

Joystiq's source says that OnLive was looking for a $1 billion buyout, and companies up to and including Hewlett-Packard made bids (we've heard that Sony also made an offer, before it purchased Gaikai instead).

When the meeting was called, CEO Steve Perlman allegedly told laid-off employees that their stock would be worthless.

Also, since the company has a new owner, and a company and name change, all the stocks which the employees were given for working at Onlive is now worth nothing according to the link I posted in this reply.