Cloud gaming claims its first casualty

September 10th, 2012

Last month, we discussed the future of cloud gaming. While half of you viewed it as an alternative to local PC gaming, a fourth of you thought it would flop, and recent news suggest they may be right. 

In an in-depth report of how Onlive recently crumbled, The Verge reports: "Two Fridays ago, Steve Perlman told the 200 employees of cloud gaming company OnLive that its failure was all his fault. He thanked them for their hard work, and then he had HR show them the door with no severance pay. Then, through a legal insolvency tool, Perlman transferred all of OnLive’s assets to a brand new company and took over as CEO, hiring back only a skeleton crew to keep the ship afloat."

Basically, Onlive failed because "many users never paid a dime," the story notes. In crippled form, they're fighting to see another day. But the writing is on the wall, as it was for WebTV years before, another failed product made by Onlive's founder. 

"As with Quicktime and WebTV, it seems that Steve Perlman had an idea ahead of its time yet again, and under his management, much of its potential may have been squandered."

What do you think of the news? And what effect might this have on traditional PCs and the real future of gaming?

Read more: PC gaming headlines

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Seems like that guy is full of failure lol.

Through all the differences it is still perfection.

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Posted Monday, September 10th, 2012    Quote This Post
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I think the only one who can make cloud gaming successful is kim dotcom owner of Megaupload the worlds largest storage/streaming service and if it wasn't for greedy people and all the wrong actions of the united states gaming could of been added :(

my time has come.

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Posted Monday, September 10th, 2012    Quote This Post
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dsp on youtube once talked about this on live thing and he felt that it would not work out
looks like he was rite

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Posted Monday, September 10th, 2012    Quote This Post
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I really hope Onlive can turn this around.

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I'd hate to see it go under. Cloud gaming may not be for everyone, but I know a lot of people who can't afford a powerful rig but were able to play a lot of the newer games because of this.

AWA Game Night admin and derailer of Steam chat room conversations.

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Posted Monday, September 10th, 2012    Quote This Post
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SithHunter said: I'd hate to see it go under. Cloud gaming may not be for everyone, but I know a lot of people who can't afford a powerful rig but were able to play a lot of the newer games because of this.


This is so true. I was able to play Just Cause 2 on my little 10.1 inch eMachines m250 netbook, because of Onlive. I really, really hope there is a chance that Onlive will pull through.

God did not plant the seeds of this Arcadia... I did.

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Posted Monday, September 10th, 2012    Quote This Post
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Sounds like a sad sob story... I feel for the guy but I never even thought of trying "Onlive".

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Thought it would fail before it began and bandwidth caps will make sure no cloud computing will also fail in some areas in the world.

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Posted Monday, September 10th, 2012    Quote This Post
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I'm conflicted with Cloud gaming i really am, because i know what its like to not have a powerful rig (i do now, but ive had my m14x for only about a year, before that i was on a cheap 5 year old laptop my uncle was going to throw away). So im all for people who cant afford hardcore gaming rigs to be able to play hardcore games, however, the confliction comes in with people not wanting to stop there, but wanting cloud gaming to completly take over. I like my rig, i like being able to brag to my friends about my alienware laptop, and i like not having to be online 24/7 in order to play video games. So i dont know what to think about this, because from what i've seen, just about anyone who thinks that cloud gaming is the future, mean for it to be the ONLY future, which im not for, but then again, its not entirly fair for only certain people to get to play games because they make more money to spend on certain computers, then again, almost all high end computers will be completly absolete (including alienware) if anybody with a $300 computer can play any game at any graphical detail.

GET OVER HERE (>')>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~=>

9
Posted Monday, September 10th, 2012    Quote This Post
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I'm not surprised this happened.

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Seems to me this Steve Perlman is just another nasty piece of work failing to run a company properly. He would have known that the company was going under yet rather than pay his employees a months final pay he dumped them all in it. Leaving them all to scrabble for pennies to pay the bills while he transferred the assets to another company that he just happened to have set up and made himself the boss again. Just a big ploy so that he doesn't pay the people working for him.....scum!

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I feel bad for the guy D;

EarthQuake99

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Posted Monday, September 10th, 2012    Quote This Post
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This does not really come as a surprise to me....

Why can't I just live in 2.0 forever....?

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Posted Monday, September 10th, 2012    Quote This Post
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Cloud gaming is still young. The new management might be able to turn it around.

New forums... Soon™

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I can't say I'm surprised but I hope they manage to pull through. It's a good idea, it's just a young one, mistakes need to be made in order to improve, lets just hope mistakes aren't fatal.

Kicking ass and forgetting names.

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Steam is the market. Sooner or later we'll end up embracing the idea of allowing monopolies for this reason. Regardless of product or services offered, wasted efforts and resources are put into companies that can't compete in the long term. You either have to bring something truly new to the table or bring something old with amazing repackaging...

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Posted Monday, September 10th, 2012    Quote This Post
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to be honest I never even heard of Onlive until now..

I started a Xbox 360 group, so if anyone wants to join, just look it up or PM me.

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Posted Tuesday, September 11th, 2012    Quote This Post
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I feel like we shouldnt totally shun it because of one bump in the road its a brand new way of gaming drastically different from what were used to

Lifes A Garden.. Dig It (joe dirt)

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Posted Tuesday, September 11th, 2012    Quote This Post
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Not something that i used so does not really bother me, sad to hear about the peeps losing their jobs though.

xXNoobtubedXx

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Posted Tuesday, September 11th, 2012    Quote This Post
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In a few years maybe but I still don't see this ever becoming the norm.

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Posted Tuesday, September 11th, 2012    Quote This Post
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Cloud gaming would be not useful for me at all. I use a laptop and travel all the time. Sometimes go weeks without internet but Steam in offline mode always works.

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Not going to become the norm - hardware producers will see to it.

I can't imagine a bunch of teslars etc. that are supposed to run a game on a server (ever imagined a game like bf3 running on one machine for a few thousand people at once?) generate the same income as all the hardcore gamers buying state-of-the-art equipment do

And seriously - where is the advantage?
Imagine you share an internet connection and while you play someone decides to download a 50mb file... small enough but still your lag goes up - in a normal game you'd pretty much not notice that - but with this technology not only the network-code-lag would spike but your visual lag aswell - good luck aming with a sudden 150ms input-to-screen lag

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Posted Tuesday, September 11th, 2012    Quote This Post
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Mattubius said: Seems to me this Steve Perlman is just another nasty piece of work failing to run a company properly. He would have known that the company was going under yet rather than pay his employees a months final pay he dumped them all in it. Leaving them all to scrabble for pennies to pay the bills while he transferred the assets to another company that he just happened to have set up and made himself the boss again. Just a big ploy so that he doesn't pay the people working for him.....scum!


Sounds about right.

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Posted Tuesday, September 11th, 2012    Quote This Post
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steam seems to be working

Goodbye

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Was cloud gaming even worth it though? onLive sounds like it was a head of it's time but the question is why didn't they set the service up so if they didn't pay on time they couldn't play their games? I also think it was wrong he pretty much fired his staff and gave them nothing for there hard work to keep them going till they found another job.

The Sky isn't the limit.

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