Steve Perlman, founder of OnLive, at GamesBeat conference in 2010.
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OnLive will shut down its cloud gaming services and sell assets to Sony

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

OnLive said today it will wind down its operations and sell select cloud gaming assets to Sony’s game division. This brings to a close one of the boldest attempts to disrupt the traditional video game business and deliver high-end games to just about any computing device.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Sony Computer Entertainment will now hold a considerable amount of intellectual property in cloud gaming. It purchased the Gaikai game streaming service in 2012 for $380 million, and it used that to launch its PlayStation Now cloud gaming service, which streams games from data centers to PlayStation consoles. It enables players to play older games such as God of War: Ascension, a PlayStation 3 game, on newer consoles such as the PlayStation 4.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.