49 replies to this topic

[onlysublime]

so much for the future of cloud gaming with dumb terminals...

http://www.theverge....-staff-laid-off

http://mashable.com/...onlive-layoffs/

not until the Internet in the US is fast enough with lower latency and lower cost will these types of services truly be feasible.  I still don't understand why the US infrastructure is slower than other parts of the world.  The only thing I can think of is size of the country and how much territory there is to cover.

[Reaperman]

Wow that's a blow but I don't doubt at all.

Onlive hadn't been doing well at all for me performance-wise lately.  If it is on their end, they may not have had many customers at all over the last couple months.  I was really hoping to use onlive in the next generation as my solution for playing 'big games' without having to buy big hardware.

Maybe it was all just a scheme to prove that their technology worked so they could be patent trolls nearly expense-free for the next decade and a half.  Probably wasn't really the initial plan, but it looks like it's turning out that way.

Edited by Reaperman, Fri Aug 17, 2012 1:40 PM.

[godslabrat]

You know... I hate to be one of those gloom-and-doom posters, but a lot of us saw this coming.  Honestly, I'm astounded they took it as far as they did.  I know gaming hardware isn't cheap, but in the long run, it's way easier and more cost-effective to buy a Wii/PS3/360/iPad/whatever and slap it under the TV.

[Metal Ghost]

Just saw this on Kotaku:

Update 2:

Kotaku has heard from a source inside OnLive who has offered more details on the status of the company. The source says that everyone at the company knew things were tight. This morning, an all-hands meeting was called at 10 a.m. this morning where Steve Perlman said that OnLive would be filing for ABC bankruptcy in the state of California—a status that affords them a level of protection from creditors. Perlman also said that the company as it stands now would cease to exist and that no one would be employed by OnLive. A subset of employee would be brought on to the company created from the remains of OnLive.

[onlysublime]

I totally see Apple, Google, or Microsoft buying OnLive simply for the patents.

[Protoplasym]

I hope it fails miserably.  Physical Media is the only Media I'm willing to support in the long run for the long haul.  Digital only Media should be a fad and nothing more.

The very notion that a company can turn my personal at home Gaming Experience into a nonstop Arcade sized profit engine is tantamount to telling me I don't have the right to bear arms.  I will not be dictated to as to how I will enjoy my Gaming.... and I wish others would stand by that.  Cloud Computing has failure written all over it... failure for the Hardware companies that produce Gaming Hardware, failure for Gamers who enjoy being able to play their games as they see fit, failure for every single Gaming store that sells new/used games, and failure in general for Companies who want to make video games.


As the French would say, "Bien fait".

[Hyper_Eye]

This is not a surprise to me. I'm sure it is not a surprise to most people. The truth is OnLive just isn't very good. I won't go into great detail because I already did a somewhat detailed review of OnLive here: http://www.atariage....t/#entry2434432

There are people who have paid a considerable amount to add games to their OnLive account. I feel bad for them but they knew the risk they were taking. Overall I think this service will be quickly forgotten. Now I'm going to go watch some videos of Sega Channel and cry.

[Protoplasym]

Hyper_Eye, on Fri Aug 17, 2012 3:12 PM, said:

This is not a surprise to me. I'm sure it is not a surprise to most people. The truth is OnLive just isn't very good. I won't go into great detail because I already did a somewhat detailed review of OnLive here: http://www.atariage....t/#entry2434432

There are people who have paid a considerable amount to add games to their OnLive account. I feel bad for them but they knew the risk they were taking. Overall I think this service will be quickly forgotten. Now I'm going to go watch some videos of Sega Channel and cry.

That looks like a badass, and very comprehensive review there!!  I am going to read that when I get a chance... thanks for the link!

[madmax2069]

I only hope this serves as a reminder as to why cloud based anything is garbage and should go away as quickly as it came.

[onlysublime]

Joystiq has a new, very detailed post regarding the situation:
http://www.joystiq.c...uncing-layoffs/

the amazing part is there were only 1800 concurrent users on average.  this is amazingly small.  I don't know if this reflects a casual gaming population who tend to play for far less hours.  Or if there really are that small of numbers.

looks like they'll be using their patents to sue as many people as possible, especially Gaikai.  wonder if they live long enough to be able to sue people.  All the tech companies are waiting for Kodak to die and pay rock bottom prices rather than buy their big library of patents for a tidy sum.

[HammR25]

They only averaged 1800 concurrent users at a time?  How did they stay around this long?

[GodzillaIsMyCopilot]

Protoplasym, on Fri Aug 17, 2012 2:29 PM, said:

Digital only Media should be a fad and nothing more.

The times are changing.  Physical media will be gone in 50 years, unless you count hard drives.  By then, all those will be reliable solidstate drives, or something better.

I'm not saying that I wouldn't love to be able to buy a Blu Ray in 50 years, but, I am saying that it's unlikely.  THink of population issues, and the sheer lack of space on the planet.

[Reaperman]

Quote

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.

Looks like it's in a bad spot, but not shuttered. Hopefully OnLive will improve from this, because their performance lately has been driving me away.  I'm a physical media fan, but I've been a fan of OnLive's low prices, and honesty about the temporary nature of their product (even if it's frequently misunderstood on their own fan forums).  I treat OnLive as a low-cost arcade, and it delivers on that.  

HammR25, on Sat Aug 18, 2012 4:49 AM, said:

They only averaged 1800 concurrent users at a time?  How did they stay around this long?

High user count but low concurrent users is the ideal model for this kind of setup.

There are people like me who pay money for the dirt cheap games when they go into deep sale and then *never* bother to play even half them, and also because of the playpack subscribers paying monthly for a service that they probably hardly ever use except for the additional discount on other games.

OnLive tries to get as many games/services into their users hands as they can, knowing that there's only so many hours of gaming that we're actually going to use, so it benefits them to flood us with 'priced to move' titles to generate extra income.  I've spent about $40 total for access to games or their playpack and got ~100hrs of gameplay from them. $2.50/hr should be more than enough to maintain and even slowly grow their service assuming tens or hundreds of thousands of users (active or not so active) are in the $2.50/hr boat.

Also, let's not forget OnLive's other half, MOVA (link), which claims to use the unused OnLive cloud horsepower for 3d face-mapping for movies/games.  I've only seen a couple examples of it in action, though.

Edited by Reaperman, Sat Aug 18, 2012 10:52 AM.

[onlysublime]

I don't see how the company can really go forward.  who wants to join a sinking ship?  the people who are most interested in OnLive are people who know about it and people who know about it know what's happening now.

it looks like the CEO always had his eye on selling the company from the very beginning.  so he's just trying to keep the company afloat, hoping some big spender will snap it up so he can retire a rich man.

[Atariboy]

That guy that kept making new OnLive threads and was advocating for it to get its own forum here must be going nuts.

[godslabrat]

Atariboy, on Sat Aug 18, 2012 5:47 PM, said:

That guy that kept making new OnLive threads and was advocating for it to get its own forum here must be going nuts.

Not to mention the people who thought it would put the Big Three out of business.

[S1500]

Why would Ouya even bother partnering with OnLive? They are 2 different things.

[godslabrat]

S1500, on Sun Aug 19, 2012 5:34 PM, said:

Why would Ouya even bother partnering with OnLive? They are 2 different things.

They are, but I could see their target audiences having a lot of crossover.   Low-cost hardware, no physical media, no interest in spending a lot of money on games, etc.  It made some sense.

[onlysublime]

it made total sense.  the strength of Tegra3, as a computing platform, is hardware decoding of h.264 video.  playing OnLive is basically streaming video.  Tegra3 is not a powerful CPU/GPU chipset.  it's powerful for a mobile device but compared to laptops, desktops, and consoles, it's weak.  Heck, it's weak compared to what's in the iPad.

[Austin]

So is OnLive officially kaput, or are they going to stick it out for a bit? They got that deal with LCD set provider, and then are due to be an available app for the Ouya. It didn't sound to me like things were that bad, but I guess I was wrong.

It's too bad really. I thought it was a cool service. I did have connectivity issues, but when it worked, it worked. They also had a lot of free game deals. I got Borderlands, Duke Nukem Forever (when it was new), Zeno Clash, and a few others for free over the last year and a half it's been available.

[onlysublime]

they're releasing everything saying that nothing is changed and everything is all hunky dory and will be better going forward.

and yet I still feel they're still waiting for some company to come to its rescue and buy up all the IP.  you can't indefinitely have a negative ledger.  always hunting for venture capital is never a self-sustaining business model.

[godslabrat]

onlysublime, on Mon Aug 20, 2012 3:42 AM, said:

they're releasing everything saying that nothing is changed and everything is all hunky dory and will be better going forward.

[Video]

I'd say the internet speed thing is due to the size of the country, it takes physical time to transmit data, no matter how fast you can hook up (fiber optics are fast, but then you choke on the translation on both ends of it, wire is just slower, wireless has a bit of a middle ground)  And in the US, many of our STATES are bigger than most other entire countries so yeah, it's no doubt our speed lags a bit.

As for onlive going out, yeah, who didn't see that coming.  Yeah, it sucks, but I said it when it came out.  And unlike Xbox live, you don't have anythign to show for it when the service is pulled (at least, till the console dies)

Edited by Video, Wed Aug 22, 2012 3:17 PM.

[Mord]

Video, on Wed Aug 22, 2012 3:15 PM, said:

As for onlive going out, yeah, who didn't see that coming.  Yeah, it sucks, but I said it when it came out.  And unlike Xbox live, you don't have anythign to show for it when the service is pulled (at least, till the console dies)

Well, regardless of what's said, they aren't going out of business just yet. They basically had themselves bought out by themselves. (One of the original investors)

As far as I can see it was just a way to lay off everyone to seriously trim down their work force. Basically fire everyone then extend an offer of employment to those they wanted to retain. Shitty thing to do imho, but oh well. Doesn't change my stance on the company - I'm going to continue to ignore it.

[Keatah]

madmax2069, on Fri Aug 17, 2012 9:18 PM, said:

I only hope this serves as a reminder as to why cloud based anything is garbage and should go away as quickly as it came.

Totally agree. And so does Mr. Wozniak.
Cloud Computing is just a corporate buzzword. And if you're so inclined, cloud computing can be considered cloud computing with a 300 baud modem!