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The new chairman of streaming games firm OnLive has criticised the press for what he says was misrepresentation of OnLive’s restructuring” last year.
Things appeared to have gone very wrong for OnLive back in August 2012, with significant job losses and a change of ownership as well as the loss of former boss and founder Steve Perlman.
Tales of woe swiftly followed, with claims that OnLive had just 1,600 concurrent users.
The events of August were later described by then new CEO Charles Jablonski as a transition”, stating: I’d never minimise both the emotions and the pain when you go through a transition like that.”
However, in a new blog post by chairman and majority owner Gary Lauder – his first since taking the job – plays down the events of last year.
When the restructuring of OnLive happened in August, many misunderstood it to mean that the service and company were shutting down,” he wrote. Neither occurred, nor did we go bankrupt. We should have communicated better.
As Mark Twain wrote, ‘The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated’. Same with us. Our service continued without interruption both in the USA and overseas, and we have about 90 employees.”
Lauder is also optimistic about the year ahead, adding:
It has been seven months since I jumped in to save OnLive from a financing mishap, and I have had the opposite of buyer’s remorse: buyer’s elation! 2013 is shaping up to be a great year at OnLive, and I want to share some of our good news.
We have already delivered some significant milestones for the OnLive Game Service, in particular, being incorporated into our first third party device, the VIZIO Co-Star, and into Google TVs, starting with the impressive LG G3 Series – with more to come.
We continue to bring new game publishers and games into the mix, and released Witcher 2:Assassins of Kings Enhanced release from CD Projekt RED on Thursday, February 28th with a special promotion, which includes a free a digital download copy of the game for PCs with purchase of a Full PlayPass. We are busy exploring other new ways to serve our users’ and publishers’ interests capitalizing on our unique abilities.
We’re expecting great things in 2013, and with Don’s vision and expertise to fuel us, you can trust that it’s only the start.”
