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Timeline: A chronology of the life of OnLive

GamesBeat traces the history of OnLive, from founder Steve Perlman first filing his cloud-gaming patent in 2002, to its recent wave of financial troubles and restructuring.

March 10, 2010: During the GamesBeat@GDC conference, Perlman reveals OnLive’s launch date  (June 17), subscription price ($14.95 a month), and supporting game publishers (including Electronic Arts and Ubisoft).

February 18, 2010: During the 2010 Dice Summit in Las Vegas, Perlman shows a live demo of OnLive running Unreal Tournament and Burnout: Paradise. It works flawlessly.

January 21, 2010: A PC blogger who receives access to OnLive’s closed beta test gives it a bad review, but Perlman responds saying that the blogger is too far (at 2,100 miles away from the company’s server in California) to reflect a fair test. The user is meant to be within a 1,000 miles of an OnLive server.

January 15, 2010: GamesBeat announces that Steve Perlman will be the keynote speaker at the GamesBeat@GDC conference in March of that year.


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November 13, 2009: In New York at a Wedbush financial conference, Steve Perlman demonstrates that OnLive could work simultaneously cell phones, TVs, and computers.

September 29, 2009: The company receives its third round of funding from AT&T Media Holdings, Lauder Partners, and others to prep for the service’s launch.

September 2, 2009: OnLive launches its first beta test for its video games on-demand service.

March 30, 2009: Game industry executives from the Game Developers Conference 2009  react to OnLive’s announcement.

March 25, 2009: OnLive’s announcement two days prior forces the hand of David Perry, who’s company, Gaikai, is also working on developing a cloud-based gaming platform.

March 23, 2009: OnLive reveals itself to the world, after working on its technology for seven years.

2007: Perlman secretly forms OnLive. He shows a working cloud-gaming technology to a small circle of people.

December 10, 2002: Founder Steve Perlman files for a fundamental patent covering the invention of cloud-based video games.