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OnLive launched CloudLift last month, a service that lets users stream its selection of games from capable machines to devices that wouldn't normally be able to play them - think tablets and underpowered computers. CloudLift used to cost $14.99 a month, but that subscription fee has been slashed to $7.95, presumably because price drops are awesome.

Saints Row 4, Batman: Arkham Origins and The LEGO Movie Videogame serve as highlights among Cloudlift's offerings, all of which can be streamed from Steam if you own copies of the games there. Given that your interest in Cloudlift likely depends on whether the service stands up to your expectations, you can try a free 7-day trial by finding CloudLift in the OnLive application's Market. [Image: OnLive]

Remember OnLive? The service aimed to provide streaming videogames to the world, but fell foul of confusing pricing, slow internet connections and the apparent mismanagement. The company never really shut down, avoiding bankruptcy by being bought and re-created under a new company with new management and the same name. That means it’s continued to quietly work away, providing the same service to its remaining subscribers while working on something new.

I went and saw that something new last Friday, and I’ve been messing around with its beta this week. I’ll have proper impressions later in the week, but the news: OnLive is still a subscription based streaming service for games, but it’s now pitching itself in part as a partner service to Steam. You can link your OnLive and Steam accounts, and if you own a game on Steam and that game is available through OnLive, you’ll have instant access to it within OnLive. That means you can play your Steam games while travelling without an install process or a powerful computer in your travel bag. … [visit site to read more]

OnLive is looking into the tablet and Smart TV gaming market with its latest hire, Don Gordon, founder of Smart TV tech company Bulldog United. Gordon is OnLive's new senior VP of engineering, and his goal is to drive integration of OnLive onto tablets and Smart TVs, Develop reports.

OnLive saw a public, rocky buyout and restructuring in August, when Lauder Partners picked up the company for $4.8 million. At the time, OnLive was $18.7 million in debt and had no available cash. Gaikai, a competing cloud gaming service, was picked up by sony for $380 million in July. OnLive is still, well, alive, and LG Smart TVs now come standard with the streaming service.

Oh crikey. You may remember in August that online game streaming service, OnLive, was in a spot of bother. Stories of impending bankruptcy came on the heels of a company that had previously been valued at an extraordinary $1.8bn. The next day news came that despite lay-offs, a buyer had been found, and “substantial investment” was being put into the company to keep it going. But what’s been revealed today, reported by the BBC, is that it was sold for only $4.8m. That would be 1/375 of its previous estimated value. Or 0.27%.

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During a private demo of the near-final Wikipad this week, Joystiq was able to grill Wikipad president of sales Fraser Townley about next month's launch. Specifically, we wanted to learn whether OnLive and Gaikai functionality - the former with its recent change in ownership and the latter having recently been picked up by Sony - were still planned for the device.

"Yes," Townsley assured Joystiq, to both applications appearing on the device. Speaking on the situation at OnLive, Townsley said he didn't have much knowledge what was happening at the company, but promised that "if [the service is] still running when we launch Wikipad, it'll be there."

While Wikipad will have physical units for purchase in-store through official partner GameStop, all other major retailers will be taking orders online. When asked what would be a successful launch for the $499 tablet - which comes with the controller dock and 16GB of memory - Townley couldn't provide exact numbers, but said that "a point or two" of total tablet market share would be desirable.

#onlive That would be the CEO, Steve Perlman. More than 200 other employees were summarily dismissed when the cloud-gaming service caved in last week, though a corporate statement said half would be hired back, and others offered consulting gigs. That doesn't exactly shut down speculation that this "rebooting" of the company was meant to vaporize employees' equity in it, in order to make the whole thing cheaper to sell to a bigger corporation. That was, notably, a point not addressed by the FAQ OnLive put out after the collapse. More »

British Telecom has reported that it is "highly likely" to simply write off the 2.6 percent stake it invested in the recently rebooted cloud computing service, OnLive. The issue isn't yet settled, but a BT spokesperson told TechRadar that "the 2.6 percent shareholding in OnLive does not represent a significant investment for BT as a whole. We consider it highly likely that we'll have to write off our investment."

HTC also made a $40 million investment in OnLive, and it has already reported to the Taiwanese Stock Exchange that it considers the money written off. With all of OnLive's assets being transferred to form a new company, getting compensated for their investments may be more trouble than it's worth for both HTC and BT.

But the book isn't closed just yet - BT says it will "keep a close eye on developments" with OnLive, and that current customers who are able to access the service can continue to do so for the time being.

#onlive I remember the first time I saw OnLive demoed for me. Three years ago, I was ushered into a conference room on Manhattan's Midtown East neighborhood and saw Crysis running of the cloud gaming service's network. It looked impressive, sure, but there could have been all sorts of tomfoolery going on to make the streaming look that good. But when I demoed it at my own desk some months later, I had to admit that the experience was better than expected. Damn if the thing didn't work pretty well. Damn if they didn't invent something that really didn't exist before. More »

#onlive Ever since Friday—when reports started surfacing that cloud gaming pioneer OnLive was shutting down and ceasing to exist—speculation has mounted over who, if anyone, had purchased the remains of the company. More »

#onlive In the aftermath of OnLive's not-really-bankruptcy, not-really-restructuring comes this rumor from TechCrunch, which may explain why the cloud-gaming service would want to, effectively, terminate itself as a company, but not its services, nor offer up any of its assets for liquidation to settle its mounting debts. OnLive, suggests TechCrunch, opted for its technical "form of bankruptcy" to zero out employees' equity in the company—and thus reduce the potential price of an acquisition. More »

#onlive All of OnLive's 200 employees worked daily with the cloud gaming service's traffic numbers, and knew that something big had to happen for the company around this time of the year. That's not to say everyone expected to lose their jobs together on the same day, no severance, no benefits, no nothing. More »

OnLive let go "at least 50 percent" of its staff today, Engadget learned, and the company was purchased by an unknown third party. A former employee confirmed layoff reports that popped up earlier this afternoon and recounted the events that led to today's firings.

A meeting held this morning by CEO Steve Perlman informed employees that "at least 50 percent of the staff" were to be cut, effective as of 4PM PST today. Employees affected in the layoffs are said to have not been offered severance.

Moreover, OnLive was bought out by an unknown third party, and an unknown amount of employees will be offered jobs at the newly formed company. It's unclear why OnLive is suddenly shedding so many employees, but the former employee pointed out monthly operating costs of approximately $5 million as at least part of the reason.

For its part, OnLive isn't confirming any layoffs. "We don't respond to rumors, but of course not," a company rep told Joystiq earlier today regarding reports that the company's entire staff was laid off. Reps wouldn't confirm whether other layoffs have occurred.

Vizio's Co-Star player is the latest product featuring OnLive - it's unclear how, if at all, it will be affected by today's layoffs, not to mention the purchase of OnLive by a third party.

"I've been a non-stop fundraising machine," OnLive CEO Steve Perlman told his entire staff yesterday morning. "And I finally got to the point where I just could not bring in enough funding to carry this thing forward." The hundreds of employees that make up OnLive were - en masse - relieved of their positions in yesterday's meeting, including Perlman himself. "All of us, technically, as of today, our jobs have ended - our current jobs with this company," another administrator informed the crowd after Perlman finished speaking.

OnLive is enterting what is known in California state as an "Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors," or an "ABC," (a form of bankruptcy) wherein an "assignee" (a person, persons, or entity) takes over the assets of the current company - in OnLive's case, this means "the software, hardware, network architecture, our logo, all that stuff," according to Perlman - in an effort to lighten the previous company's debts and get its creditors paid off. Thus the "Benefit of Creditors" part of that acronym.

Perlman didn't say who that assignee was during the company's meeting, only referring to him as "an extraordinary guy" (not an entity), and a "very accomplished and well known venture capitalist" who is "very wealthy." The unknown assignee apparently believes that OnLive "is the entire future of everything," Perlman told employees. Unfortunately, he isn't wealthy enough to bring on the 150-200 people that OnLive employed.

"Here's the tough part, and this is the thing I'm very sorry to say: it's just not possible for one individual in a startup - whether it's that old startup or this new startup - to bring in this many people into a company," Perlman said. Without giving numbers, Perlman said that, in the new company, "the people that come on board are the essential people, as needed, to go and accomplish that goal of getting this thing to cash-flow positive."

He prefaced that news with a stinging reality: "The people that are gonna be coming on board here, that will come out of the group ... I'm gonna tell you, most of the people will not be coming on board."

Things were looking pretty grim for OnLive earlier, but now they’re just looking… confusing. The service found itself looking at a seriously stormy forecast (with a strong chance of bankruptcy – something not generally followed by a rainbow – figurative or otherwise), with reports of lay-offs flying out of the woodwork at an alarming rate. OnLive, meanwhile, coped by adamantly refusing to comment – only making the whole situation look even more dire. Apparently, though, things aren’t quite as bad as they originally seemed. OnLive’s taken a big hit, but it’s not down for the count. The cloud gaming pioneer’s been purchased, and it plans to hire and re-hire “a large percentage” of former staff members.

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#onlive Bad news always slides under the door at the end of Friday, and today's was a rumor of some kind of quasi -bankruptcy for the cloud gaming service OnLive and, more importantly, mass layoffs of its employees. After a series of officious no-comments to reporters, OnLive has issued a statement confirmomg that its sale to a third party, as originally rumored, has gone through and that "there is no expected interruption of any OnLive services." More »

OnLive let go "at least 50 percent" of its staff today, Engadget learned, and the company was purchased by an unknown third-party. A former employee confirmed layoff reports that popped up earlier this afternoon and recounted the events that led to today's firings.

A meeting held this morning by CEO Steve Perlman informed employees that "at least 50 percent of the staff" were to be cut, effective as of 4PM PST today. Employees affected in the layoffs are said to have not been offered severance.

Moreover, OnLive was bought out by an unknown third-party, and an unknown amount of employees will be offered jobs at the newly formed company. It's unclear why OnLive is suddenly shedding so many employees, but the former employee pointed out monthly operating costs of approximately $5 million as at least part of the reason.

For its part, OnLive isn't confirming any layoffs. "We don't respond to rumors, but of course not," a company rep told Joystiq earlier today regarding reports that the company's entire staff was laid off. Reps wouldn't confirm whether other layoffs have occurred.

Vizio's Co-Star player is the latest product featuring OnLive - it's unclear how, if at all, it will be affected by today's layoffs, not to mention the purchase of OnLive by a third-party.

OnLive let go "at least 50 percent" of its staff today, Engadget learned, and the company was purchased by an unknown third-party. A former employee confirmed layoff reports that popped up earlier this afternoon and recounted the events that led to today's firings.

A meeting held this morning by CEO Steve Perlman informed employees that "at least 50 percent of the staff" were to be cut, effective as of 4PM PST today. Employees affected in the layoffs are said to have not been offered severance.

Moreover, OnLive was purchased by an unknown third-party, and an unknown amount of employees will be offered jobs at the newly formed company. It's unclear why OnLive is suddenly shedding so many employees, but the former employee pointed out monthly operating costs of approximately $5 million as at least part of the reason.

For its part, OnLive isn't confirming any layoffs. "We don't respond to rumors, but of course not," a company rep told Joystiq earlier today regarding reports that the company's entire staff was laid off. Reps wouldn't confirm whether other layoffs have occurred.

Vizio's Co-Star player is the latest product featuring OnLive - it's unclear how, if at all, it will be affected by today's layoffs, not to mention the purchase of OnLive by a third-party.

OnLive let go "at least 50 percent" of its staff today, Engadget learned, and the company was purchased by an unknown third-party. A former employee confirmed layoff reports that popped up earlier this afternoon and recounted the events that lead to today's firings.

A meeting held this morning by CEO Steve Perlman informed employees that "at least 50 percent of the staff" were to be cut, effective as of 4PM PST today. Employees affected in the layoffs are said to have not been offered severance.

Moreover, OnLive was purchased by an unknown third-party, and an unknown amount of employees will be offered jobs at the newly formed company. It's unclear why OnLive is suddenly shedding so many employees, but the former employee pointed out monthly operating costs of approximately $5 million as at least part of the reason.

For its part, OnLive isn't confirming any layoffs. "We don't respond to rumors, but of course not," a company rep told Joystiq earlier today regarding reports that the company's entire staff was laid off. Reps wouldn't confirm whether other layoffs have occurred.

OnLive's Co-Star player is the latest product from OnLive - it's unclear how, if at all, it will be affected by today's layoffs, not to mention the purchase of OnLive by a third-party.

Gosh, this is a little out of the blue. Kotaku are reporting tonight that cloud gaming pioneers OnLive are about to declare bankruptcy. This comes from someone they say is a source inside the company, despite OnLive’s PR denying the rumour. OnLive is of course a service that allows you to stream games directly onto most web-enabled devices, letting you play tech-needy games on the most basic laptop or smart phone. It’s hard to imagine how this won’t be the future of at least console gaming. But maybe the world isn’t ready just yet.

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InXile Entertainment's Brian Fargo tweeted this morning that he heard from someone inside Onlive that it was closing down, and has now posted that everyone on staff has lost their jobs, and that "a new company will be formed" soon after. A Mashable report from an anonymous source alleges the same.

Joystiq reached out to OnLive directly to ask about the rumors, and Director of Corporate Communications Brian Jaquet replied to us with a blunt denial: "We don't respond to rumors, but of course not."

"The exciting news is that the first VIZIO Co-Stars (Google TV stream players) with the OnLive app built-in have just arrived in customer homes," he continued, "and our second of three 'Indie Giveaway Weekends' is going on now. OnLive users can get a free copy of the award-winning games Space Pirates and Zombies and SpaceChem." So it sounds like OnLive is still open for business.

Joystiq followed up to ask if there were any layoffs at the company this morning at all, and Jaquet could only confirm that "the OnLive service is not shutting down." We'll update this post with any more details if we can get them.

Belgium is the first country in Europe after the UK to receive OnLive streaming, so let us be the first to say congratulations in your native language of Dutch: gefeliciteerd. If you're from the southern, French-speaking part of the country, then félicitations; and glückwünsche, to the small contingent of German-speaking gamers in Belgium.

OnLive is available in Belgium starting today through an exclusive partnership with Belgacom telecommunications - to get started, head on over to onlive.be. And if you're a Belgacom customer, you get the first month of OnLive free.

What's that? You say that Google finally shipped you that sweet Nexus 7, but you can't play your precious OnLive games on the Android app? Take heart, because OnLive is working to add support for its Bluetooth controller to Google's new 7-inch tablet, according to GottaBeMobile. In a rather brief statement, OnLive said quite simply "We don't have support out for it yet, but we hope to shortly."

So there you have it - sit tight, early adopters. In the meantime, we suppose you could always play LA Noire.

Our dumb old HDTVs don't have the fancy bells and whistles of today's models, what with their Google Chrome internet browsing and OnLive game streaming integration. Vizio apparently understands this frustration, and is launching the Vizio "Co-Star Stream Player" to modernize our barbarian ways. The Co-Star offers the various features of Google TV, game streaming through OnLive, and access to a variety of apps (think Netflix, Amazon Instant - the usual).

Don't let the Vizio name fool you - Co-Star works with "any HDTV," according to Vizio. Pre-orders for the device open next month via Vizio's website, and the device costs $100. Think of it as an OnLive Microconsole with extra stuff, for roughly the same price. Not too shabby!

OnLive has announced that its popular game streaming service is headed out to even more platforms, including LG Smart TVs with Google TV, and a Internet browser near you thanks to a new In-Browser Gaming feature. Starting today, players will be able to go to OnLive's website, and load up the streaming service without a standalone app. OnLive says the browser service is also very customizable by any publishers or content providers, allowing for free streaming trials of any games on the service, with options to send customers off to buy or preorder the games once they're done playing. The service is very similar to competitor Gaikai, and should lower the barrier of entry for customers unwilling to download a separate app: OnLive says it will even work in popular mobile browsers, on smartphones and tablets.

OnLive has also introduced a new feature called MultiView, which allows players to watch multiple views of other players' gameplay while playing their own games, as seen above. Because OnLive's streaming technology just sends video and audio, players can watch up to three other screens while their own game is running, without any more speed hits on the local CPU. MultiView is currently in beta, and should see a full release later on this summer.

#playstation Sony might be in talks to acquire either OnLive or Gaikai—the two biggest cloud gaming providers—according to a report on Edge that follows up on previous articles on MCV and VG 24/7. More »

#lanoire Think about it: L.A. Noire should work on a tablet. Rockstar's 2011 crime drama essentially updates the old-school adventure game formula that has players going places and clicking on items. A natural for conversion to a tablet, right? Well, yes… and no. More »

Getting a technically complex game like LA Noire running on a tablet is an impressive feat, and one that OnLive has every right to crow about. That Rockstar took the time to implement touch controls so that LA Noire could be played natively is equally laudable. That said, the touch support isn't nearly as well-implemented as it might have been and is, in fact, downright clunky.

In short, it's LA Noire on a tablet with virtual controls, which plays out exactly how you think it does.

Way back in December, when OnLive first announced it would release a set of tablet apps for its cloud gaming service, we heard that Rockstar Games was also working on touch controls for LA Noire, making the console and PC game behave more like a native touchscreen app. And tonight, OnLive says those controls are finally available. If you load up LA Noire in an OnLive mobile app, you can play it by directly swiping across the screen rather than using virtual buttons or OnLive's wireless controller.

You'll need a free OnLive account to sign on to the service, and you'll need to buy LA Noire on the service if you want to play the whole thing (though just like all of the other games on OnLive, there is a free trial available to play with as well, no installation required).

And for now, you'll still need an Android tablet. OnLive has said it's working on an iOS version, but even though the company has released an iOS app for its Windows PC cloud service, the game client is "still in approval process with Apple," the company told Joystiq. It's been in that situation ever since it was announced, which suggests perhaps Apple isn't so happy with the app, though OnLive couldn't confirm anything along those lines. At any rate, if you have the app on Android and want to try touching LA Noire a little more directly, give it a shot.