Today the depths of OnLive’s perilous financial situation – the impetus for last Friday’s studio-wide layoffs and Lauder Partners acquisition – were measured out at around $30-40 million worth of debt. The game streaming service was facing imminent shutdown, according to Insolvency Services Group CEO Joel Weinberg (via San Jose Mercury News), and creditors should only be expecting a 5-10 cent return on the owed dollar.
“It was a company that was in dire straits. It only had days to live in terms of cash flow and the like,” explained Weinberg, “Something had to be done immediately or there would have been a hard shutdown, which would have been a disaster.”
The Insolvency Services Group had been brought into the ailing studio days before its Friday transition to another company, still named OnLive. Reports out of Tech Radar (via Engadget) claims that investors like the UK’s BT telecoms firm and Taiwan’s HTC mobile corporation have written off their OnLive investments, which totaled around $40 million for the latter.
A statement released to OnLive Fans confirms that Steve Perlman will remain CEO, with the chief focus being the company’s continuing transition.
“Once this is complete, he’ll be very focused on our next product releases and the vision…There will be changes to the organization both with old and new OnLive staff that will be bringing new features and games to the service. There will be more announcements — both large and small, such as the arrival of the Vizio CoStar and the Ouya Kickstarter project, and stay tuned for major announcements coming soon.”
(via VG247)