OnLive Lays Off All Staff, Denies Going Out of Business

OnLive carries the torch of a gamer’s dream, and that dream is a cloud-based library of popular game titles that can be played on any device at any time. Today that dream took an unplanned and shocking detour as reports surfaced that the company has laid off its entire staff. 

Mashable first reported something amiss at the popular start-up’s Palo Alto, CA offices. According to a source close to the events, OnLive called a staff-wide meeting this morning around 10 a.m. PDT  and then fired all its employees. According to the source, the company advised its team that there was a chance some employees could be hired back in the future. 

In further developments, Forbes reached out to OnLive Director of Corporate Communications Brian Jaquet who initially replied “No comment,” then followed up with “We are not going out of business.” Current web speculation reveals theories that the company may stop offering services and start selling its  intellectual property instead.

The en masse pink-slipping comes in stark contrast to the small company’s timely successes. OnLive recently partnered with Vizio to offer its service within a connected device for televisions called the Co-Star. That goes ditto for a partnership with OUYA, an Android-based gaming console that obtained popularity–and $8.6 million in  funding–on KickStarter just weeks ago.

Via Mashable, Forbes 

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OnLive Desktop: Virtual Office Apps on Your iPad

OnLive Desktop uses technology developed for its parent OnLive gaming service, which lets you stream high-end video games (that you rent or purchase) to your PC in much the way you'd get an on-demand movie from Netflix. Instead of games, OnLive Desktop streams a virtual Windows desktop outfitted with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Reader, Internet Explorer, Windows Paint and Calculator, and Microsoft Surface Collage.

Like CloudOn, OnLive Desktop runs the applications on its servers, sending to its mobile apps only the data that Windows sends to a PC's graphics subsystem. That display data is tweaked to fit on the iPad or on an Android tablet screen. You simply install the OnLive mobile app and log in, and a Windows desktop appears.

In my tests on a new iPad, OnLive's expertise with streaming media showed to particular advantage in its version of Internet Explorer, which can capably display a lot of video that you either need a special app for--or can't get at all--on the iPad. ABC's show Missing looked great in OnLive Desktop (you have to get the ABC iPad app to see it otherwise), as did NBC's Saturday Night Live (NBC doesn't support the iPad at all). You can also create bookmarks that will reappear whenever you log in.

But the OnLive version of IE isn't perfect. It couldn't log me in to a Flash-based game (the connection dropped when I tried). I didn't run into that problem with the version of IE on the competing Nivio service. (OnLive says its version of IE can't run JavaScript, which may have been the issue.)

OnLive Desktop made no apparent effort to resolve problems involved in squeezing the Microsoft Office Ribbon onto the iPad's touchscreen display. Because some Ribbon icons are quite small, it's easy to tap the wrong one--an issue that CloudOn addresses by tweaking the Ribbon to enlarge icons (and, in at least one case, by creating a new tab to accommodate the overflow).

More annoyingly, OnLive Desktop's included 2GB of free file storage can be a hassle to use. The problem isn't on the iPad end of things--all documents you create or edit in OnLive Desktop automatically save to your OnLive Files folder, accessible in any browser when you log in to desktop.onlive.com. But if you want to work with a document on a PC, you must download it to the PC, and then upload it when you're done to make the new version available on the tablet. There's no equivalent to the Dropbox service that CloudOn uses, which automatically synchronizes documents saved to a folder on your hard drive. (In fact, you might be better off forgoing OnLive's storage and using Dropbox via IE.)

Also, OnLive's uncertain licensing situation for Microsoft Office is troubling, especially for business users. Microsoft has said that OnLive Desktop doesn't have the license it needs to offer Office apps to consumers. OnLive recently switched from using the Windows 7 desktop to using Windows Server. Microsoft applauded the move, saying, "We will work with OnLive to take a closer look at its service and ensure it is operating according to its license." An OnLive spokesperson said that the company isn't commenting on the issue.

OnLive Desktop's free version comes with 2GB of file storage and access to the Office apps and Windows utilities, but to use IE--one of the service's best features--you have to upgrade to the $5-a-month Plus service. That isn't too expensive, but I wish OnLive had put a little more thought into usability; as is, the Office apps aren't as easy to use on a tablet as they need to be.

A final caveat: OnLive's website says that people with the free account will have only "as-available" access to the desktop. This means you might encounter significant lag if a lot of paid users are hitting the servers at any given moment.

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First Look: OnLive Desktop Plus

OnLive, the streaming game service, made a move for mainstream appeal last month by announcing OnLive Desktop, a free iPad app and Web service that gives you limited access to a Windows 7 desktop, including a basic version of Microsoft Office, from the tablet. But that initial version of OnLive Desktop had its share of problems.

Now OnLive has released a new option for its OnLive Desktop service, OnLive Desktop Plus. This Plus version isn’t free: You’ll need to pony up $5 per month for the service (the app itself is still free). But the Plus version does add Internet Explorer 9 to the software suite, along with access to third-party storage sites including Box.net and Dropbox. You also get “priority access”, which means you’re served first if the OnLive servers ever get overloaded.

On the down side, the new version seems to do little to address the critics. Interaction is still through Windows 7’s somewhat wonky touch interface. Access to Dropbox or Box.net is a nice addition to the 2GB of storage you get with your OnLive account, but the implementation is somewhat clunky. For example, you don’t get the Dropbox app on the Windows desktop, which would have let you create an easy-to-use shared folder. Instead, you need to access your account on the Dropbox website via the browser.

While access to Internet Explorer seems like a minor addition, it does mean enhanced bandwidth: When you browse the Web through Onlive Desktop, the browser is really running on an OnLive edge server. That means you actually get much higher throughput than you would with plain old Safari on the iPad—webpages load almost instantly—because your iPad isn’t doing all the processing required to render the page.

Access to cloud-based apps such as Google Docs or Office Live is equally speedy, even if you’re working with large documents. But then you run into the limitations of the Windows touch interface, including the sluggish onscreen keyboard.

See the Internet Explorer icon on the left? That app is one of the main things you get for your $5 a month.

You can attach a Bluetooth keyboard to the iPad for use within OnLive Desktop, but some features still don’t work as expected. For example, you can’t tab between form fields—even simple ones like login screens. And you still need to use the Windows touch interface for pointing. OnLive is working to allow the iPad’s own virtual keyboard to work with OnLive Desktop Plus, but that won’t be available at launch.

The OnLive browser also provides full Flash video and animation compatibility. Combined with the high bandwidth, that means you can get multiple video streams without noticeable slowdown; again, Flash and the browser are running on the OnLive server, not locally on the iPad. Interactive Flash apps seem to work well, too. For example, Intel’s Museum of Me demo, which gathers data from your Facebook account to create a virtual museum of your Facebook posts, ran perfectly fine. I also headed over to Armor Games' repository of Flash games, and was able to waste time on several titles there.

Thanks to the Flash-support, OnLive Desktop is good for online gaming.

Is all this worth $5 a month? Road warriors carrying a Bluetooth keyboard along with an iPad might find the service useful if they use cloud-based apps to edit big documents that had previously choked the tablet. Video and flash gaming enthusiasts might also be able to use the iPad as a one-stop entertainment device; sixty bucks a year is about the price of a console game, so Onlive Desktop Plus will clearly appeal to some subset of users. If the $5 price tag still seems steep compared to some other iPad apps, consider what would happen if it were cheaper: the OnLive servers could well be overwhelmed. Still, if all you need is access to Office apps, you might just stick to the free version, warts and all.

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OnLive Desktop Plus Brings Blazing IE Browser, Flash to iPad for $5 Per Month

Priced at just $4.99 a month, OnLive Desktop Plus includes all the (already commendable) features of OnLive Desktop–quick refresher, that’s MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint, 2GB of cloud storage space, a few other touch game apps and Windows Media Player for HD videos–and now, they’re tossing Adobe Reader and Internet Explorer into the mix. Since the lack of a browser was one of our previous quibbles with the original app, it’s nice to know that the company listened to feedback.

The Browsing Experience

It gets even better: OnLive Desktop Plus offers the browsing experience at stunningly fast gigabit speeds, since the actual processing is done on the company’s powerful remote servers hosted thousands of miles away. And this is no dinky mobile browser, either. Internet Explorer behaves exactly as you would expect the browser on your desktop back home to behave, so you can load full Flash websites in all their glory–and have these sites completely remade to respond to your touch. That’s a first for any app on iOS, as far as we know. You can also download Web mail attachments from Gmail, Yahoo, and cloud storage files like Dropbox directly onto your cloud desktop.

We loaded the animation-heavy Mercedes Benz website, and were thoroughly impressed by how quickly it loaded. The picture of the desktop blurred periodically before coming into focus, but that was an issue with streaming the desktop to our tablet (rather, an issue with our sluggish Wi-Fi network at the office), and not a connection problem that has to do with OnLive’s servers.

Browser Speeds

In order to test browser speeds objectively, we visited speedtest.net and check what sort of upload and download speeds we got. The results didn’t disappoint. We found that we notched a download speed of 92.77 Mbps and an upload speed of 72.32 Mbps.

Bottom Line

OnLive has managed to make an already-impressive app even better with this latest iteration. “Experiencing a full Flash-enabled Web experience at gigabit speeds on iPad is nothing short of breathtaking, and OnLive Desktop Plus is your ticket to ride,” said Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder and CEO. “Combine that with OnLive Desktop’s full-featured Microsoft Office and Adobe Reader PC applications and not only do you have the world’s fastest mobile browser, but the world’s most powerful productivity tools literally at your fingertips.”

The app is available for the iPad now in the US. Android users can look forward to their own dedicated version coming soon, and native variants for the PC and Mac are slated to follow as well. If you need the added functionality of OnLive Desktop Plus, you can sign up for an account at www.desktop.onlive.com.

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