It s the end of the road for OnLive, the Mountain View-based cloud gaming service, which announced Thursday it will sell its patents to Sony and close at the end of the month.
It is with mixed emotions that we acknowledge the sale of much of OnLive s assets to Sony, OnLive said in a blog post. The company s data servers and service will be shut down April 30. Terms of the deal were not announced.
Launched in 2010, OnLive streamed console-style video games to users over the Internet, much as Netflix streams video. The company was a onetime rising star in Silicon Valley, founded by former Apple and Microsoft exec Steve Perlman, and the recipient of at least four rounds of venture funding.
But persistent problems in delivering high-quality video — due largely to slow Internet connections — and consumers reluctance to subscribe to the service led to massive layoffs and a new owner in 2012. Around that same time, Sony bought OnLive s streaming rival, GaiKai, and used its technology to launch the PlayStation Now cloud-gaming service in 2014. While OnLine relaunched, it was never able to fully recover.
OnLive took a defiant stand in its farewell blog post, bemoaning that after the 2012 restructuring it was unable to overcome the perception of being dead, and casting blame toward negative media coverage. We did not anticipate the hype cycle running its course and the resultant disillusionment and skepticism of cloud gaming that ensued, it read.
If anything, OnLive may have been ahead of its time, as higher-bandwidth Internet connections become more widespread and subscription-based companies hone their business models.
Cloud gaming is a matter of when, not if, OnLive said in its farewell address. First it happened for music, then video, with gaming the logical next step. Ultimately, Sony is the beneficiary due to their correctly appreciating the eventual importance of cloud gaming and sticking to their beliefs prior to robust commercialization, it said in a separate post. We are happy that Sony is validating the innovations . . . (and) we look forward to a bright future for cloud gaming at Sony.
At top: The OnLive MicroConsole, which connects to the Internet and allows you play computer games on your TV. (AP Photo/Onlive)
