OnLive Sold To Sony! 'SL Go' Goes Bye Bye!

I covered the birth of SL Go here on the Blog, and now the death of it! On the face of it it was a great idea, a really workable SL option on your tablet, or phone, and the 'OnLive' service took the brunt of the work meaning older laptops and computers could take advantage of this too. Running SL on much higher quality settings on a machine which could barely run a viewer above low graphics otherwise.

All that is about to come to an end on April 30th though. Because Sony have acquired 'OnLive' for its Playstation services, and SL is not in its plans at all. No new subscriptions will be sold. It is free though through to April 30th! So if you're curious you have time to take a look on your device.

I know several photographers relied on SLGo to up their graphics, and shadows etc, so i hope they can find another work around.

I'm posting a statement from the Phoenix Firestorm team which reports on this some more after the jump. It also high lights another issue which may be a pain for some Pornstars members using SL on an older machine or Operating system. "XP operating systems will no longer be supported on the Second Life viewer and not long after Firestorm as well."

Yesterday the Photography community was surprised to hear that Sony had sold 50% of its stock shares in Olympus; a popular camera and optics company. It was reported that “Sony needed the money to make new investments in their profitable sensor and Playstation business.” Now we know I at least know where some of that money is going.

OnLive has issued a press release revealing that their company has just been acquired by Sony and that Sony will not be continuing the SL Go service. In fact it appears Sony has purchased OnLive for its patent portfolio in cloud gaming for their PlayStation product only. OnLive has stated that they will continue the SL Go Service until April 30th and that any new subscriptions will be free until their last day. The press release sent out to us shows the following http://i.imgur.com/lshejw1.jpg
Their FAQ page reads: 

“It is with great sadness that we must bring the SL Go service to a close. Sony is acquiring important parts of OnLive, and their plans don’t include a continuation of SL Go. Your service should continue uninterrupted until April 30, 2015. No further subscription fees will be charged, and you can continue to use the service until that date.

After April 30, 2015, our data centers will shut down and the service will be offline. All accounts will be closed, and all credit card data will be deleted. No refunds will be available for any subscriptions.
We will have extremely limited coverage for customer service over the next 30 days. We hope the FAQs below will answer all of your questions. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being an SL Go customer, and we wish you all the best.“

I can tell you that all of us here at Firestorm, AND the folks at OnLive are greatly disappointed by this news. Things were really just getting started and what they were offering really plugged a hole for users on older computer systems that nothing else provides as of right now. This hole will only get wider in the near future as well since XP operating systems will no longer be supported on the Second Life viewer and not long after Firestorm as well. 

We, as users of Second Life and OpenSim are now without this option and the good folks at OnLive are out of work. So while I anticipate some of you may feel some anger over this news please understand there is no one to blame but Business.

None of us could have predicted this sudden end to something which had really just begun. If any good could come of this for us it may be that at the very least OnLive has demonstrated quite clearly that there is a strong demand for software that can run Second Life on older computer systems. Perhaps someone out there may pick up the ball.

Regretfully,

Jessica Lyon
Project Manager
The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc.