OnLive Only Had Days to Live in Cash Flow
Insolvency group says OnLive was in 'dire straits.'
When news broke on Friday that OnLive was going through some financial trouble, the company's future seemed uncertain. Between rumors of bankruptcy filings, talk that the company had laid off its entire staff, and reports that it would shut down and come back as a brand new company, nobody knew exactly what to think. On Sunday, OnLive confirmed restructuring, and provided some information as to what went down last week.
OnLive said Sunday that the company's assets were acquired by a newly formed company on August 17th. This company will continue to operate under the OnLive name and the OnLive Game and Desktop Services, all OnLive Devices and Apps, as well as all OnLive partnerships, are expected to continue without interruption. While "Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors" meant OnLive couldn't transfer staff to the new company, half of the laid-off OnLive staff were given new employment offers by the new company and the other half offered consulting opportunities.
Beyond that, OnLive didn't go into too much detail regarding what led the company to file for "Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors." However, new details have shed some light on just how bad things had gotten at OnLive. Joel Weinberg, CEO of Insolvency Services Group, the company named as Assignee on OnLive's "Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors," said the company was in millions of dollars of debt and couldn't find a buyer.
"It was a company that was in dire straits," he told San Jose Mercury News. "It only had days to live in terms of cash flow and the like. Something had to be done immediately or there would have been a hard shutdown, which would have been a disaster."
Mercury News reports that OnLive owed $30 million to $40 million to various creditors. Weinberg says that between the assets sold and the deposits and other nonoperating assets retained by ISG, they expect to be able to pay credits 5 or 10 cents on each dollar owed.

So let's say a business pulls the "phoenix" maneuver because they're horribly in debt, and it's a legal way of wiping out stocks you granted to creditors so you are no longer indebted to them. What about the other direction--pulling the "phoenix" maneuver when you've just started, just gotten your millions in funding from backers--you walk away with millions of dollars in the bank and zero obligation to your investors.
I still don't see how this should be legal. I understand why this is accepted (because without a comfort blanket like this, there wouldn't be the few people who try risky business moves because the consequence of failure might be too large).
3Mbps is slow by todays standards. Can't believe parts of the country don't have 10-15 Mbit standardized yet...
Try 150Kbps and downloading a game off of steam. Terrible, but it's the fastest I can get :|
Lots of people don't even have 3Mbps. My last house I only had 1.5Mbps because that was all I could get.
This is the reason why OnLive and other cloud-based services are just not a viable solution for most people yet.
Unfortunately in the Southwest where I leave 10 mbit is a pipe dream right now. With the distances involved and the population density in the area the best anywhere near me is 7 mbit, and that's on a good day. OnLive's service requires speeds that just aren't readily available for the vast majority of the country right now. I figure that the new company will fail just like the first.
Not to make you feel bad but I just did a speed test on someones 4G phone at my work and he was getting 12 Mb/s download speed.
The speed and reliability of the internet in America is just not there yet. And even if it does get to that point, I still don't see the cloud being the best solution.
My phone will report speeds like that as well. Yet it's still slow as shit sometimes. Moral of the story, speed tests don't always translate to real-world results.
I have 15Mbps and there was still often delay in the gameplay.
I tried it. I played NBA 2K12 on my laptop. It especially stinks for multiplayer gaming because of the delay/lag. It's neat that we're getting close to being able to run near-dumb terminals for gaming, but we're not quite there yet.
Hardware companies probably do not like the prospect of this becoming a way to game or compute in general. If I didn't have to, I wouldn't keep upgrading my PC every year to get the best performance.
I wish OnLive good luck for the sake of my pocketbook, but I can't support the idea right now. It's not there.
If there was no point in doing so, I'd have to look for another hobby.
Anyway, it's a bandwidth hog.
I remember a Google Engineer once gave an example of how to remedy this problem by having third party own the infrastructure and be responsible to maintain and upgrade not based on profit but need. Then all providers are able to come in and provide their services on this network. This would not only increase roll time to new areas but it would also increase competition between providers. Right now, providers can hide behind the crap of “It cost so much to build out infrastructure” and also with them owning the network cause a lot of lock and key scenarios that end up being very bad for competition and the customer.
I believe this is what Google’s end game maybe in the testing out in Kansas City with them building their own Fiber network.
That's what I'm thinking. Consoles should go to hell as well! PC FTW!
I mean if you wanted sub-par graphics and crappy controls today you could just play on console.