Sony acquires assets from and shuts down streaming service OnLive

It has been announced that Sony has acquired patents and assets from OnLive, a cloud-computing service, and will be shutting down the service later this month.

News of this comes from a post on OnLive’s support center, which states that Sony’s plans for the service’s assets and patents “don’t include a continuation of the game service in its current form.” On April 30th, Sony will be shutting down OnLive’s servers, and deleting game save data, achievements, and credit card data associated with the service. Steam games purchased through OnLive will still be available natively through Steam, but there will be no refunds for subscription fees, or game and hardware purchases.

OnLive was a streaming service not unlike Sony’s PlayStation Now platform. Sony has not made public any of its plans for OnLive’s assets, but it’s likely that it will result in improvements and additions to PlayStation Now. Sony has been rolling games on its streaming service since its beta launch last year. Recent additions include games like Infamous 2 and the Twisted Metal reboot, as well as other Sony first-party titles like Uncharted 2: Among Theives and God of War II HD.

PlayStation Now currently streams PlayStation 3 games to PS4, Vita, PS3, and even some TVs. Users can either rent games for allotted periods of time, or gain access to the entire catalog through Sony’s subscription service.

For more on PlayStation Now, check out our thoughts on how the service could improve.

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