OnLive, the most prominent game streaming company is no more. The Company has apparently been experiencing financial difficulties, and had to lay off about half of its staff. People left the company with boxes late on Friday. The company says that its assets have been purchased by a “newly formed company with substantial funding”.
I’ve discussed the challenges of the cloud gaming business back in 2008, but the news came as a shock to the web industry as OnLive was seen has the “natural evolution” of traditional video games, and many were expecting high end game consoles to to be eventually replaced by cheap boxes connected to the network. That explains the recent noise about Ouya, a $99 Android console, which has raised 6 million of dollars in funding. OnLive was announced for Ouya recently.
The demise of OnLive is a stark reminder that the video game streaming business is an extremely difficult one, and that it is still very much “experimental”. That said, OnLive deserves some credit for pushing the model as far as they did. So… what happened? (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: OnLive to continue operations under new management [official], iPhone, iPad and Macs could be banned on Aug 24,
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