OnLive
Years before cloud gaming became routine, OnLive streamed full games to thin clients—and sold its remains to Sony.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A commercial cloud-gaming service that rendered games in remote data centers and streamed them to computers, TVs and mobile devices.
OnLive launched publicly with subscriptions, individual game purchases and dedicated MicroConsole hardware. It proved that interactive games could be delivered as video streams at consumer scale, but high infrastructure costs and an unstable business model undermined the service.
Existence timeline
OnLive demonstrates remote rendering at the Game Developers Conference.
The public can subscribe and purchase streamed games.
Assets transfer to a new entity after layoffs and financial crisis.
Sony acquires patents and the service closes.
Dedicated consumer hardware brings the commercial streaming service to televisions.
Why it ended
OnLive announced that services would end on April 30, 2015 after Sony acquired important patents and technology assets. User data was deleted and purchased access did not transfer to another platform.
Last confirmed trace
MicroConsoles, controllers, client software, patents, demonstrations and recordings survive, but the remote games and licenses no longer operate.
What it left behind
Its technical and patent legacy fed into the cloud-gaming strategies of larger companies, even as OnLive customers experienced the impermanence of streamed ownership early.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer available in its original public form.
The archive unit reached normal public availability, so Arrival Score V1 assigns 100.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.