Two years after launch, OnLive is bankrupt and under new ownership: employees have been fired, their shares in the fledgling cloud outfit are worthless, and the original start-up has ceased to exist. What remains in terms of infrastructure, technology and IP is has been bought out by venture capitalist Gary Lauder, with OnLive 2.0 carrying on where its predecessor left off, re-hiring less than half of the original staff in the process.
DS:
Sometimes life just isn't fair. Vincent Van Gogh went completely unappreciated during his lifetime despite his obvious genius; Jesus - a man who could turn water into wine, don't forget - was nailed to a cross and left for dead; while Steve Brookstein has only ever had one number one single, despite winning the very first series of The X Factor. Now what's that about?
the dreamcast was not amazing:
-It's graphics were in between ps1 and ps2
-the controller felt so narrow and skinny
-no dvd drive
I don't know why people act like it was anything more than another overrated undersold flop of a console. My friend had one because "next gen" and I told him I'm just waiting for PS2.
He always talked about graphics, non stop. Of course when I played it did look better than anything I've seen before, but that was it. The games were ok at best. I didn't like NFL 2K's control scheme compared to Madden's.
Even as a kid I predicted this console would die off in 2 years, well what happened...
Failure is always relative. How many sales makes something successful? "If your not first, your last", or in this case, you failed. I'll admit, I've never heard of a couple of these.
GameCube made the most profit in its generation. I don't consider that console a flop.
I consider a flop to be a product that has a negative impact financially for a company.
OnLive announced that they would be shutting down their streaming service for good at the end of this month, which has unsurprisingly upset some of the streaming service’s supporters. While some took to griping on forums, OnLive user Larry Gadea decided to take action.
OnLive has been acquired by Sony and will shut down all services on April 30th, 2015. Vault of the Gameverse says Goodbye & Thank You.
Personally I felt the venture was going to be difficult, the technology and market penetration of fast internet connections just isn't quite ready yet.
It feels like a service before its time, much like Dreamcast's online console gaming. The idea was grand, but too early. Less than a decade later and online console gaming exploded.
I truly can see something like this working, but not for at least another 5 years. It has its drawbacks but eventually it will start to look more and more attractive, the faster the average connection get and the better quality they can put out there reliably. Ten years ago you were lucky if you had 512k 'broadband'. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/...
Another 10 years and most developed countries will surely be living on 4G and have at least 20mb/s averages.
Its just a matter of time, like many things.
A friend of mine PMed me this and I think he's on to something:
The Windows 7 hosted desktop - Doing it right successfully requires licensing expertise and a commitment to the customer.
Published by:
Mitch G.
Mar 9, 2012
Most of us in the know have been wondering how ONLive was delivering a Windows 7 hosted desktop for $4.99/mo. Now (finally), Microsoft is wondering too. We knew it was non-compliant—price-point and instant provisioning were the giveaway.
Due to Windows 7 complex licensing restrictions, a coordinated customer engagement is required for licensing and cloud infrastructure compliance. Yes, you read that right - the Windows 7 license determines the cloud provider’s architecture. Complex to say the least. And not all cloud providers have the expertise in licensing to address these complexities, which could help explain how some cloud providers are offering Windows 7 hosted desktop for free (or next to free) and near instant provisioning. You know what they say: “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” Don’t be fooled; in this case, free (or next to free) definitely has a cost.
As you look deeper into your company’s cloud strategy, one topic is increasingly dominating your discussion. A topic that is probably the main reason that your cloud strategy has a time frame as long as it does. Dreaded licensing! Ask ten people the same question, and you’re bound to receive ten answers. We’ve all gone through that, right? Your head explodes, you suffer a meltdown, you try to read up on it yourself, and you come to the conclusion: this is ANNOYING!
And that’s just understanding the labyrinth that is Microsoft licensing. Now you’re told that Windows 7 isn’t even available on the Microsoft Service License Provider Agreement price list.
The price point for ONLive’s virtual hosted Windows 7 desktop offerings wouldn’t even cover the necessary Microsoft licensing requirements, much less the cloud infrastructure needed to support a Windows 7 hosted virtual desktop, unless you’re not following licensing and infrastructure requirements to be compliant. If you avoid licensing compliancy and infrastructure requirements, you’ve got yourself a cheap solution. There’s just one problem: it’s illegal.
The question you need to ask yourself is if you were responsible for your company’s datacenter, would you take these risks? My guess is the answer is no.
they needed more games to convince....
They had two major problems.
1. Lack of studio support. EA, Valve, Blizzard,Epic games and Bethesda hardly gave support, if any. Flag ship titles like Crysis, Mass Effect, Skyrim for example would of been huge for Onlive. But alas those titles never came. That was the whole pitch for Onlive in the first place. Imagine playing all the biggest titles, at ultra max graphics. A wet dream for gamers. But alas a dream only.
2. Graphics. As I said previously, the whole story behind Onlive was max pc graphics streamed through your tv. Never upgrading a pc part or buying a new console. Onlive is all you ever needing as it provided the highest possible settings. however that was far from it. I have a Onlive system and the streaming quality was terrible. Im even using FIOS from version and I swear if i didnt know any better it was 480p.
Its actually sad to see what happened for Onlive. I was a big fan and would of love to seen what it could of been.