OnLive’s recent struggles has taught everyone at the company an awful lot. CEO Charlie Jablonski and UK boss Bruce Grove have spoken in length to Eurogamer, outlining many of the troubles the group has faced over the past year. They also look to the future, indicating things can only get brighter with a better strategy.
Jablonski recalled the magnitude of launching the product.
“OnLive was a very big idea. A year ago when we were at this show and it launched it was continuing to prove to people that this is doable and it works. In order to do that, that requires a large amount of capital and a burn rate and a staff that was hard to maintain through various funding routes.”
When asked if OnLive is popular enough to succeed, Jablonski remained adamant.
“Look, any new great idea, you go to the market, you think you know what’s going to succeed and you have to adjust accordingly. Obviously we now realise we need the support of distribution partners. We had some great assistance in the past, but we need to capitalise on that more to help with things like customer acquisition and marketing.”
“I’ve been involved on a lot of start-ups on several sides of the table. It’s not a unique problem where you think you’re going to go out and do snow tire deodorant. You introduce it and realise maybe product needs to be fine tuned to get an adjacent market of have a different means to get it in front of customers.”
Grove proceeded to outline the demand for OnLive’s success.
“One of the things that was interesting when events happened, the service has been up and running. Everything has been operational. Last night we launched Sleeping Dogs. We’re still very much focused on getting content out there. There has been some great pick up on that.”
“But we saw this bad event happen to the company, and everyone was expecting the worst, but that didn’t happen. In fact, one of the things I noticed as we followed the press particularly from the fans and the people engaged in the service, was we hope they pull through. We hope they succeed. We want this to happen.”
The pair obviously believe OnLive has a rosy future. Improvements must come quickly, or else the service will never make an impact, a sentiment Jablonski agrees with.
“Oh yes. We have to. If we don’t we will die.”
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