Tony Wolverton for MercuryNews.com:
The company owed $30 million to $40 million to various creditors and had little money to pay them. It had failed to find a buyer despite shopping itself around and was facing a complete shutdown of its services, said Joel Weinberg, CEO of Insolvency Services Group.
OnLive is the video game service that enables you to stream popular PC games to your Mac or PC over the Internet, or to your TV using a small settop box.
OnLive made headlines last week when its assets were abruptly sold to a newly formed company (also called OnLive) and many employees were terminated. The service continues for customers, however.
The CEO of a firm tasked with paying some of OnLive’s old debts explained that OnLive “had only days to live” because of cashflow and credit issues.
OnLive emerged as one of the highest profile “cloud gaming” services, which enable people to play games without actually buying them and downloading them – paying a monthly subscription fee instead.
“OnLive emerged as one of the highest profile “cloud gaming” services, which enable people to play games without actually buying them and downloading them – paying a monthly subscription fee instead.”
Clearly that model worked really well!
What I find deceitful is that the employees had no idea that their company was about to go belly up, right until the moment they got laid off.
For most games on OnLive you buy access either permanently or temporary for 3/5 days on a per game basis (they call it a play pass). No subscription is needed. They do have a monthly subscription bundle that gives you access to about 200 older games. OnLive is not Netflix for games.