Not that the news is exactly surprising, but what really took me off guard was some of the things that the article's writer said regarding OnLive:
VentureBeat Article said:
It was a revolutionary idea, and we certainly thought OnLive would turn the game world upside down when it came out of stealth in 2009.
Uh... really? "Upside down"? Are tech-aficionados really that willing to believe that new ideas are going to out-wit established methods?
VentureBeat Article said:
At one point, OnLive was valued at $1.8 billion. If it had executed better on its plans to recruit gamers across the world to pay for its instant-play subscription service, that valuation wouldn’t have been considered crazy.
Again, a company which kinda came out of the woodwork and seemed to hope for the best, then being rated at nearly two billion dollars is... placing too much faith in electronics, it seems. There's video game companies which have been operating for decades, steadily proving their ability to consistently produce new ideas and adapt to changing times, and they aren't always rated so high.
It just creates the question as to how much clout this "technophile" mentality carries in the world of economics, given that people (who may or may not know anything whatsoever about the electronics industries) may be quick to believe that their opinions are rooted in more than idealistic optimism. Okay, so OnLive was a cool idea in a way, but did it offer what it needed to offer in order to beat-out online software download websites and continued brick-and-mortar stores?--
Did such a premise even matter to some people?