OnLive

Cloud gaming, a decade too early

Shut down
19902026

OnLive launched cloud gaming in June 2010: full PC titles streamed to a thin console, browser or tablet with no downloads. Perpetually ahead of the infrastructure it needed, it collapsed into a 2012 asset sale, limped on, and shut down on 30 April 2015 after Sony bought its patents.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2009
  2. 24 March 2009 Feature
    The GDC reveal

    Cloud-streamed Crysis stuns the industry.

  3. 2010
  4. 17 June 2010 Launch
    OnLive launches

    Full games streamed with no downloads, plus a $99 microconsole.

  5. 2012
  6. 17 August 2012 Incident
    One-day collapse

    Mass layoffs and an insolvency asset transfer gut the company.

  7. 2014
  8. 5 March 2014 Feature
    CloudLift pivot

    Streaming players' own Steam libraries becomes the product.

  9. 2015
  10. 2 April 2015 Shutdown announced
    Sony buys the patents

    The service will close at month's end.

  11. 30 April 2015 Shutdown
    OnLive shuts down

    The cloud-gaming pioneer goes dark; its ideas power successors.

The site through time

Browse onlive.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

OnLive Inc. 2010–2012 Founded Founded by Steve Perlman out of Rearden
OL2 Inc. (Lauder-backed) 2012–2015 Bankruptcy sale, assets via insolvency process Sony bought the patents in 2015

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: OnLive announced on 2 April 2015 that the service would close on 30 April; Sony acquired its cloud-gaming patent portfolio.

Our analysis: OnLive proved streaming games could work, then paid the pioneer tax: broadband was not ready, the game library was thin, and burn outpaced subscribers until a 2012 insolvency gutted the company. Sony bought the patents and the idea lived on in PlayStation Now, GeForce Now and Stadia, which repeated several of the same mistakes.

History [edit]

The impossible demo

When Steve Perlman demonstrated OnLive at GDC 2009, the reaction was disbelief: Crysis running on a laptop, the frames rendered in a data centre and streamed like video. The service launched on 17 June 2010 with a $99 "microconsole", browser spectating, and party-trick features years ahead of their time. Brag Clips recorded your last ten seconds of play; the Arena let you watch strangers' live sessions, Twitch before Twitch mattered.

The physics were harder than the demo. Streaming needed bandwidth most homes did not have, licensed games arrived slowly, and every concurrent player occupied an expensive GPU in a data centre. Reports later suggested concurrent usage was sometimes measured in hundreds while costs assumed millions.

Collapse, half-life, patents

In August 2012 OnLive imploded in a single day: staff dismissed, assets transferred through an insolvency process to a vehicle backed by investor Gary Lauder, the company itself effectively wiped out. The service kept running in reduced form, pivoting to streaming players' own Steam libraries. On 2 April 2015 came the end: Sony bought the patent portfolio and OnLive shut on 30 April 2015. PlayStation Now launched on those foundations, and every cloud-gaming service since has walked the road OnLive paved and died on.

Similar projects

Club Penguin A generation's first social network, with penguins 2005–2017 Xfire The gamer's buddy list 2004–2015 FarmVille The game that colonised Facebook 2009–2020 GameSpy The middleware that ran multiplayer, then took it away 1996–2014 PlayStation Home Sony's empty metaverse, fifteen years early 2008–2015 Google Stadia The future of gaming, cancelled 2019–2023

Sources [edit]

  1. Sony buys what's left of OnLive, service shuts down April 30th Engadget 2 April 2015 [archived]
  2. OnLive is Shutting Down April 30, Sony Is Buying Its Patents The Next Web 3 April 2015 [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).