OnLive CEO Steve Perlman Leaves Company

The tumultuous path to stability for pioneering streaming service OnLive continues, with the company announcing that founder and former CEO and president Steve Perlman is leaving.

Former head of OnLive operations Charlie Jablonski will take over Perlman’s responsibilities. Gary Lauder, the new (and lead) investor in OnLive from Lauder Partners LLC, is OnLive’s new chairman.

The investment form Lauder Partners appears to have saved the company from a much worse fate.

"I spent my first week with OnLive listening, to gather people’s thoughts and suggestions,” said Lauder in today’s press release. “It’s an impressive group, and I am even more convinced that this company is poised for greatness.”

It’s been an incredibly rough few weeks for OnLive, especially so for its employees. More than half of OnLive’s employees, which may have been anywhere between 150 to 200 individuals, were laid off as part of the transition to a new company formed through the investment from Lauder Partners. The other half were on board kept to keep OnLive running, though this month’s desperate moves suggest a tough path ahead for everyone involved.

Gaikai, one of OnLive’s chief competitors, was sold to Sony last month for $380 million.

gg

Hope the fired employees land on their feet.

Small mistake:

The other half were on board kept to keep

Probably to go work for Microsoft, seeing that the publicly offered to hire anyone from OnLive.

I know this is about OnLive but I'm kinda more curious to know what gaikai is going to be doing with Sony.

I'm hope things work out for OnLive, as am still a believer in their objectives.

He's Going To The Microsoft Mixer TODAY

If you guys want the actual low-down on what happened with OnLive, listen to last week's Weekend Confirmed podcast. Some terrible and absolutely heartbreaking things were said in relation to the nature of the "transition," that makes everything so much worse. They basically were able to do what they did through a legal loophole that shouldn't even exist. The news section is typically in the back-half of the podcast.

Another CEO can't hack it, but don't worry more to come from Corporate America...

Captain abandoning the sinking ship!

More like OnDEAD, am I right? Hahahah murder me end my life

:(

It's sad to see the founder leave but I hope this company continues on.

OnXboxLive

@buckybit said:

@TheCreamFilling said:

Captain abandoning the sinking ship!

Much more likely the investors demanded from him to go. It's part of those deals.

Agreed - I imagine he was forced out what with him steering the company into bankruptcy and all.

I think everyone at OnLive should count themselves lucky they were able to survive for this long. I expected this to happen much much sooner.

I sat weird when I went to read this article and squished one of my nutties. Doh!

To get new users to try out the service OnLive has been giving away indie games each weekend this month with a total of 7 so far. I'm sure there are now a lot of users with 7 games in their library, but even if they like the service how likely is anyone to actually buy something if the company's future is so shaky?

This was always the problem for a lot of people. Regardless of whether or not the streaming worked, many people seemed to hate the idea of not having games in their physical possession, even if it's just data on a hard drive. With the stories in the news lately, is anyone buying anything from them? Best Buy has reported some terrible financial numbers lately, but everything you buy there short of an extended warranty will work just fine if they close shop tomorrow. If Steam closed shop they could still have an exit strategy of unlocking games (pending dev/pub cooperation of course).

The other half were on board kept to keep OnLive running,

@ajamafalous said:

The other half were on board kept to keep OnLive running,

What

typo in the article

2 years from now... the GaiKai vs. ex-Onlive grudge match of the decade, on PSN and XBL. I'm sure by that time both companies will be able to develop a game so hot and fresh that they can claim it would only be possible to run from a remote server.

what i would like to see onlive do is be like on demand tv. Where you pay a monthly fee and get to play all the games you want. Paying for games you don't own just feels wrong to me. I love owning real copies of games but an on demand service would be best for digital gaming. Right now it uses to much bandwith and the picture just looks awful. they also need to make more data centres to cut down lag. Gaikai runs great on my pc feels like its running on my house.

@Kosayn said:

2 years from now... the GaiKai vs. ex-Onlive grudge match of the decade, on PSN and XBL. I'm sure by that time both companies will be able to develop a game so hot and fresh that the can say it would only be possible to run from a remote server.

O_o;; Let me rephrase what you just said... assuming of course you meant Sony & Microsoft, as Gaikai and Onlive don't develop games.

"Our console can't run this game. It has to be run on a PC you couldn't possible afford, 15,000 miles away."

That's not exactly back-of-the-box marketing. And according to some PC enthusiasts, it's true today. ;)

@buckybit said:

@TheCreamFilling said:

Captain abandoning the sinking ship!

Much more likely the investors demanded from him to go. It's part of those deals.

Not to mention I doubt keeping him around would have been great for company morale. The man basically admitted he brought the company to it's current situation, it's hard to get behind a dude like that.

I knew this was no good.

The good news here being that if he does goto MS and develop a similar system that actually works. XBL may have a feature actually worth paying for finally.

Investment firm, rather than form?

Trying to be helpful, not whiny.

@Kosayn said:

2 years from now... the GaiKai vs. ex-Onlive grudge match of the decade, on PSN and XBL. I'm sure by that time both companies will be able to develop a game so hot and fresh that the can say it would only be possible to run from a remote server.

Onlive does what GaiCan't! Now with Blast Streaming!

Sounds like he just bailed.

Yep, saw the writing on the wall and bailed. That company is doomed.

Coming soon, PSN streaming gaming on their new platform.

You'd need to have your head up your ass to invest in such a service, there will always be lag, it's physics, and ISP wouldn't like it either if it were to become popular, there may be many people using netflix but it is nowhere near the load Call of Duty would put on the network over long hours.

There's a Ron Perlman joke in here somewhere, I just can't find it.

The other half were on board kept to keep OnLive running

The investment form Lauder Partners

Journalism

they need to keep this service alive. it should come as a standard app for tv's just like youtube and hulu are these days

But the guys at Ouya were pushing the fact OnLive was on their platform as a HUGE thing? I guess the Ouya couldn't save OnLive?

(yes... said very tongue in cheek :P)