OnLive Releases Official Statement Regarding Layoffs

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That is one of the main issues with any service or drm that relies on external servers that you do not own. Your use of the content you paid for is entirely dependant on that company staying in business and still finding it profitable to run those servers.

They also claim that purchased games are often playable for around 1 year (or less if the game is not being played by enough people)

On live allows you to outright buy games (though their fine print states that they reserve the right to remove any game for any reason at any time without having to refund your money) (with claims like that, how could they not highly successful with their business model?)
 
it is one thing to pay $8 a month for movie streaming where you can get through bulk content very quickly (and without commercials on most sites), or music streaming services which get you CD or better quality where you can listen to much more music than you could possibly purchase. Even online media purchases (not rentals) like Amazon.com are great because you get your content DRM free for a decent price, so even if (God forbid) Amazon were to fold up and go home, I would still have access to my music purchased, though the online cloud player and other perks would disappear.

I keep away from services like OnLive for 3 reasons:
1) if the company were to fold, I would have no recourse (thankfully this folding is being well done, but there is no guarentee that the next one will), and I would have to purchase and start over on the games I was playing
2) while the lag is bareable where I live, it is still lag and does not compair to a local expierence. Amazing tech... but seariously not ready for prime time yet, and they need to better distribute their servers.
3) while the price is not bad, I dobut I would get through enough games in order to make such a service worth it to me. I tend to get a game, sit down and play it for 2-3 days, then life happens and I can't sit and enjoy the game again for another 2-3 weeks, typically taking 3-4 months to beat a normal game, and a year+ to beat something like skyrim. Perhaps I would feel differently if I had a POS computer, but as I already have my hardware costs sorted, it is much cheaper for me to wait till a game is 6mo to a year old, and then pick up a GOTY edition on sale, or wait for Steam to have a good sale.

Besides... once you buy minecraft you really don't need any other games 😉
 
Hardly surprising, the internet is not ready for this by a long-shot and few gamers like to have their experience rendered in lowest quality.

This time it seems to be ending well for the customers but it should also be seen as a warning what will happen if a cloud company that streams your content go down completely - You loose it ALL.
 
Considering the bandwidth requirements for customers, the on live idea is ahead of its time... Currently ISP throttling and bandwidth caps just don't allow for a service like this to become really popular.

Netflix works because you don't watch movies 4-8 hours a day, every day so the bandwidth usage isnt as high, with video games people play every day, for hours, thats a lot of bandwidth to eat up since you're streaming constantly as you play.
 
Their problem is twofold:
1) they started this in the US where there are silly things like download caps and people not having an Internet connection 100% of the time. This kind of thing would work better in Seoul, Tokyo and places like that.
2) they started this in a world where games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Cityville pass for interactive entertainment.

I'm not really obsessed with "owning" games, it's just a game and if one company goes down, you can move to another, no big deal (hopefully you can transfer your saves). Imagine a game coming out that requires a $600 GPU, a $150 PSU and a $200 CPU to play well, but you can instead play it on a Celeron through a service like OnLive for like $0.5 a day. That would be a good deal, right?
 
Perhaps now some will understand why Steam's Gabe Newell statements considering Windows 8 "a catastrophe", in comparison to Valve's Steam the company OnLive is nothing.

DRM is here to stay so the only problem is identifying the companies that have a solid balance sheet and are profitable.

In further reading I noted the following update to Richard Lawler's story:

"The source expects OnLive to go after recent Sony acquisition Gaikai for infringement of a game streaming patent, so stay tuned."
 
[citation][nom]caedenv[/nom]...or music streaming services which get you CD or better quality...[/citation]

Where the pants have you found that?
 
[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]Their problem is twofold:1) they started this in the US where there are silly things like download caps and people not having an Internet connection 100% of the time. This kind of thing would work better in Seoul, Tokyo and places like that.2) they started this in a world where games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Cityville pass for interactive entertainment.I'm not really obsessed with "owning" games, it's just a game and if one company goes down, you can move to another, no big deal (hopefully you can transfer your saves). Imagine a game coming out that requires a $600 GPU, a $150 PSU and a $200 CPU to play well, but you can instead play it on a Celeron through a service like OnLive for like $0.5 a day. That would be a good deal, right?[/citation]

you can gaming decently with $300 GPU , $70 PSU, $200 CPU. with cloud gaming you need super high quality internet connection with no caps data plan.. in my country it costs $90/month (2mbps/DSL/no caps).. in 7 months cloud gaming,, you already spent 1 decent upgrade cost gaming machine.
 
[citation][nom]john_4[/nom]" popular streaming games company " going bankrupt, isn't this an oxymoronic statement. If they were so popular why are they going bankrupt?[/citation]

Poor business model? Bad management? I should imagine a company selling their product for unsustainably low prices would be very popular with customers.
 
[citation][nom]razor512[/nom]That is one of the main issues with any service or drm that relies on external servers that you do not own. Your use of the content you paid for is entirely dependant on that company staying in business and still finding it profitable to run those servers.They also claim that purchased games are often playable for around 1 year (or less if the game is not being played by enough people)On live allows you to outright buy games (though their fine print states that they reserve the right to remove any game for any reason at any time without having to refund your money) (with claims like that, how could they not highly successful with their business model?)[/citation]
Combine all of this with the expensive overhead for all of the equipment they need to run to deliver the service, I'm just surprised it lasted as long as it did before it came to this. Steam and Origin have a huge advantage here, they require a fast networking/storage center and basically not much else. Onlive is this, plus some pretty hefty amount of processing and graphic-rendering hardware as well. Trying to entice a much larger console market to try their service as well, and the level of difficulty becomes clear. Hard to find sustainable net profit after all that is factored in to the bottom line while charging a competitive enough price with said competition.
 
damn it ... cloud gamming needs to die, period, i want my own pc, i don't want lag, and if i chose to play something in single player i don't want it to be internet dependent ...
 
[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]Imagine a game coming out that requires a $600 GPU, a $150 PSU and a $200 CPU to play well, but you can instead play it on a Celeron through a service like OnLive for like $0.5 a day. That would be a good deal, right?[/citation]

It is an argument that makes an internet connection the back bone of your home entertainment system.

If you don't mind connecting to a service that isn't quite on the level of consoles.. or if it exceeds the quality of a home computer (allowing you to run games your PC or laptop can't).. then it is worth it and will eventually spell the demise of dedicated disk reader based consoles.

There's another argument that streaming the game to a console/set-top-box or PC that runs a client so that you can have a power CPU and GPU, gobs of ram and the OS of your choice, so that the online service is mainly for DRM, content distribution and customer service, community contact.. then lag, resolution.. mods etc are less of an issue for the average gamer. It is sad that OnLive didn't go that route and ensure that the game could gracefully deal with disconnections, and still function while offline for long periods... but what can you do (if you're EA you could keep upgrading Origin to work that way...)
 
PC's can be upgraded, but Internet connections are totally dependent on where you live.
OnLive would be a good idea in an alternate universe where Netbooks became mainstream.
Instead of being purely streaming, it should by default download the entire game as other DDS stores do, but offer streaming mode extra for those who have lower-spec PC's that can't run the game well, or don't have the required hardware/OS for it.
Interested to see who bought it, would be nice if it were Valve and they use it as described above.
 
[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]Imagine a game coming out that requires a $600 GPU, a $150 PSU and a $200 CPU to play well, but you can instead play it on a Celeron through a service like OnLive for like $0.5 a day. That would be a good deal, right?[/citation]

Accept that the allotted GPU power your video stream receive is down to less than a 100$ gpu equivalent, most games on the onlive were rendered at absolute bare minimum quality. It was then compressed making the quality even worse than the lowest possible. But yeah, lower than low quality is better than not being able to play it at all...
 
Having been in a similar, but different situation with a company that I have worked for, the big 'screw you' in here is the fact that the stock that the employees had options in no longer exists. Employees at a start-up often (always) take a significant discount on their wages is exchange for stock options. While there is never a guarantee that those options will be worth anything, there is a big difference between 'company failed', and 'company engaged in a paper transaction to effectively rid itself of those options.' It sounds like this is the latter scenario. Everything about Onlive will continue under a new corporate entity, but the employee stock options have been purged. If I was one of their employees I would be steaming about now. (Pun intended).
 
Legally, I don't think they can shut the service down. They guaranteed to their customers that games purchased on the service would remain available until 2014. Although, after that time, I imagine the service will cease to exist.

Sucks for the people who spent hundreds of dollars buying games on there thinking OnLive would be the future of gaming.
 
[citation][nom]draconian[/nom]Legally, I don't think they can shut the service down. They guaranteed to their customers that games purchased on the service would remain available until 2014. Although, after that time, I imagine the service will cease to exist.Sucks for the people who spent hundreds of dollars buying games on there thinking OnLive would be the future of gaming.[/citation]
Legally, I don't think you're in your element.
 
[citation][nom]caedenv[/nom]it is one thing to pay $8 a month for movie streaming where you can get through bulk content very quickly (and without commercials on most sites), or music streaming services which get you CD or better quality where you can listen to much more music than you could possibly purchase. Even online media purchases (not rentals) like Amazon.com are great because you get your content DRM free for a decent price, so even if (God forbid) Amazon were to fold up and go home, I would still have access to my music purchased, though the online cloud player and other perks would disappear.I keep away from services like OnLive for 3 reasons:1) if the company were to fold, I would have no recourse (thankfully this folding is being well done, but there is no guarentee that the next one will), and I would have to purchase and start over on the games I was playing2) while the lag is bareable where I live, it is still lag and does not compair to a local expierence. Amazing tech... but seariously not ready for prime time yet, and they need to better distribute their servers.3) while the price is not bad, I dobut I would get through enough games in order to make such a service worth it to me. I tend to get a game, sit down and play it for 2-3 days, then life happens and I can't sit and enjoy the game again for another 2-3 weeks, typically taking 3-4 months to beat a normal game, and a year+ to beat something like skyrim. Perhaps I would feel differently if I had a POS computer, but as I already have my hardware costs sorted, it is much cheaper for me to wait till a game is 6mo to a year old, and then pick up a GOTY edition on sale, or wait for Steam to have a good sale.Besides... once you buy minecraft you really don't need any other games[/citation]

onlive would have worked better as a part retail part service, if they partnered with steam, and any game sold on onlive could be played locally, or god forbid, you cant play it locally so you need to play through onlive.

or at least in the event of closure, any game you own you get a redeamable key for steam, just so you dont lose out.

[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]Their problem is twofold:1) they started this in the US where there are silly things like download caps and people not having an Internet connection 100% of the time. This kind of thing would work better in Seoul, Tokyo and places like that.2) they started this in a world where games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Cityville pass for interactive entertainment.I'm not really obsessed with "owning" games, it's just a game and if one company goes down, you can move to another, no big deal (hopefully you can transfer your saves). Imagine a game coming out that requires a $600 GPU, a $150 PSU and a $200 CPU to play well, but you can instead play it on a Celeron through a service like OnLive for like $0.5 a day. That would be a good deal, right?[/citation]

problem is that in Asian countries, most pc games they care about can be ran off of a intergrated intel. and the ones that cant, they would never accept the lag because of it, compound that with computer cafes where they have higher end rigs to play those games on being a normal thing.

but lets also take your argument.
say
$150 PSU and a $200 CPU
but lets go at this from this angle. i have a 100$ psu that is a 700 watt 80+silver from crousar (sp) that will power damn near anything even most dual gpu setups. and a decent psu is the bare minimum you should have in your computer. now on the cpu side, currently there are no games that require a i7 to play well if decently programmed, and by that i mean cant pull at least 30fps on a decent gpu.
for the cpu, you have the phenom II line, which even the higher end ones are around 100$ i like having 4 cores apposed to 2 cores and 2 theads, a p4 with threads kind of made me never want to rely on threads ever again. and a mother board would be around 100$ for it too. than come in with a 5770 quality gpu, and wow, you got something that can play almost every game you throw at it with close to maxed settings, minus maxed shadows, and dx11 features. in every game i played though, the difference between max and what i set it to isnt noticeable during game play, i have to go out of my way to look for the seams. so i basicly just built a whole gaming computer on your gpu budget alone. lets also not forget that if you are willing to spend the money, a 7970 can be found for 350$ often enough, only reason i didnt pick that up was i really want to hold off till the next gen consoles specs are set in stone.

[citation][nom]atikkur[/nom]you can gaming decently with $300 GPU , $70 PSU, $200 CPU. with cloud gaming you need super high quality internet connection with no caps data plan.. in my country it costs $90/month (2mbps/DSL/no caps).. in 7 months cloud gaming,, you already spent 1 decent upgrade cost gaming machine.[/citation]

drop that gpu to about 150$, very few games push a mid range card, and even when they do, reduced detail to get them over 30fps (in to 60 if you really want) wont be noticeable most of the time in gameplay.

[citation][nom]olaf[/nom]damn it ... cloud gamming needs to die, period, i want my own pc, i don't want lag, and if i chose to play something in single player i don't want it to be internet dependent ...[/citation]

it has its place, its just the place isnt replacing the computer, but offering rentals or full game demos (not a slice of the game, but 1 hour to screw around in a game as much as you want from the begining).

[citation][nom]alxianthelast[/nom]It is an argument that makes an internet connection the back bone of your home entertainment system. If you don't mind connecting to a service that isn't quite on the level of consoles.. or if it exceeds the quality of a home computer (allowing you to run games your PC or laptop can't).. then it is worth it and will eventually spell the demise of dedicated disk reader based consoles. There's another argument that streaming the game to a console/set-top-box or PC that runs a client so that you can have a power CPU and GPU, gobs of ram and the OS of your choice, so that the online service is mainly for DRM, content distribution and customer service, community contact.. then lag, resolution.. mods etc are less of an issue for the average gamer. It is sad that OnLive didn't go that route and ensure that the game could gracefully deal with disconnections, and still function while offline for long periods... but what can you do (if you're EA you could keep upgrading Origin to work that way...)[/citation]

it was higher quality than consoles, but there are artifacts in gameplay... its kind of a wash really.
 
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