OnLive Closing Doors
Well this is a shame. Online game streaming service OnLive is shutting down. Polygon was originally reporting that Brian Fargo had inside information that OnLive’s entire staff had been fired:
According to an email forwarded to Polygon from an anonymous, supposedly former OnLive staffer, the company will “no longer exist” as of today.
“I wanted to send a note that by the end of the day today, OnLive as an entity will no longer exist,” reads an email forwarded to Polygon and later tweeted by Fargo. “Unfortunately, my job and everyone else’s was included. A new company will be formed and the management of the company will be in contact with you about the current initiatives in place, including the titles that will remain on the service.”
An OnLive spokesperson then denied the claims, but shortly after Kokatu broke the story, and OnLive issued an official statement:
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 additional 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.
OnLive launched for the Mac in June 2010 and had some unique features (notably the ability to play Windows games at high quality on Macs) and was praised for its quality and features, but ran into licensing issues with Microsoft when trying to offer some of their applications, such as its Office suite under the service.