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Onlive Not Closing, Acquired Into A New Company

Update: Onlive has provided the following statement to Game Informer:

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 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.

We apologize that we were unable to comment on this transaction until  it completed, and were limited to reporting on news related to OnLive's businesses. Now that the transaction is complete, we are able to make this statement.

Original Story: Cloud-gaming service Onlive is denying reports the company is closing its doors today. The reports suggested the entire company had been laid off. That doesn't appear to be the case.

Mashable first reported the company called an all-hands meeting this morning where the entire staff was fired. When asked for comment, a company representative told Game Informer the company does not comment on rumor or speculation, but added that Onlive is not shutting down.

Onlive did not address the possibility of layoffs, however. We'll update this story if there is anymore official details from the company.

Onlive announced late last month it signed a deal with Ouya.

Comments
  • Didn't they just sign a deal to join up with Ouya?
  • No doubt a lot of trouble going on within the company. Anyone know how successful the service has been?
  • I doubt they closed. I mean, they just made a deal with the Ouya. That would be a pretty odd business decision to make after making a deal like that.

  • Glad sony didnt make a deal with them.

  • I can't imagine them doing well, I've never known anyone with Onlive.
  • If it's true, I feel badly for those who lost their jobs. As for the OnLive service, I tried the free trial and I wasn't a fan of it.
  • Hmm... Wouldn't cause any extremely big ripples in the game community either way...

  • Why would they close doors? I thought they were doing good.

    EDIT: I'm thinking of that cloud gaming company that made a deal with Sony.
  • Smart move for them to partner with Ouya. They will both need each other.

  • Does anyone know somebody who uses this? This seems interesting but I don't know of anyone who has OnLive.
  • I've been hoping MS would buy them up so they could offer their own on demand rental service with Xbox.
  • Aside from the OUYA announcement, the last I heard of them Microsoft wasn't happy with how they were licensing their OS (on my iPad I can log into Windows 7 for Tablets environment [of course a lot of things are locked down, like web browsing] that includes Office 2010), or rather lack of licensing. I mean it's been around for a couple years, and besides porting itself around, I haven't heard much. Then again I hadn't even used or heard of Gaikai until Sony bought them, so who knows. I still am waiting to play games on my iPad; something I have been able to do on my Android phone for a while now.
  • While I admit it is overpriced, it is a shame they might close. Too bad they are too early. Next thing you know, Apple releases their own cloud gaming platform and says they were the first to do it.

  • In the paragraph it says they are "backed by substantial funding" which leaves me to believe they might be merging somehow with Ouya.
  • It's just too soon. We don't have the internet infrastructure and data carriers in this country that make cloud gaming a smooth experience. Comcast actually has data caps for their broadband customers and Time Warner is moving that way. How does cloud gaming get past that? I'm in NY and my internet is too slow to use could gaming. I can get about 1.2 MB /sec and I ran a Gaikai demo and it was simply unplayable. Onlive was similar but not as bad for me. I have friends in TX who max out about about 350 KB/sec. That is just sad. Maybe in 5-10 years we might see a smooth AAA experience on the cloud and in every house but I think it will be closer to 10 than 5 years.
  • So, essentially everything said was about spot on- save that trivial lay-offs fact of course... ;-)

  • Sounds good to me, I wish Onlive nothing but the best. I think it is a great service that treats the customer right...as long as greedy publishers play along, which they really haven't at this point. They've been ignoring Onlive since GASP Onlive actually offers us great deals, like the ability to digitally rent our games instead of buying them outright.

    And of course the big Publishers just can't stand when their customers get some kind of deal on new games. They are more than happy to offer us Steam sales on older games, but God Forbid we get to digitally rent a new game. Not when they can help it.

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