VentureBeat

In the wake of OnLive’s collapse, recruiters are circling in on the 200 employees whose jobs were terminated. Microsoft in particular is going so far as to host an OnLive networking mixer at its Mountain View, Calif., campus, which is not far from OnLive’s Palo Alto, Calif.-based headquarters.

OnLive is attempting to hire a number of employees back after a recapitalization following its filing for a bankruptcy alternative on Aug. 17. But many of the employees will be out of jobs. Microsoft is among many companies that are aggressively recruiting OnLive employees. Interestingly, Microsoft has been named as a prime suitor for OnLive, especially Sony bought rival cloud gaming service Gaikai for $380 million.

Adding cloud gaming technology to a future Microsoft game platform, or to its Xbox Live service, could add a lot of interesting features for gamers. You could, for instance, log into an Xbox Live account from just about any device, regardless of whether it’s a game console or not. Older games could be made compatible with a new game console, without the usual costly hardware tweaks. But for some reason, Microsoft didn’t purchase OnLive, which is run by Steve Perlman, who sold WebTV Networks — the early web-browsing appliance — to Microsoft for $425 million in 1997.

If Microsoft simply hires a lot of OnLive employees, it could build its own cloud gaming technology. Of course, it wouldn’t have the advantage of having OnLive’s patents, but it would cost a lot less to simply hire people.

Microsoft said, “We are eager to speak to individuals and teams affected by the OnLive transition.  With the stunning success of Xbox/Kinect and the accelerated growth of this business, we are looking to add key players who want to make a real impact in creating groundbreaking new products and services. We have positions in both Redmond, WA, and in Mountain View. There are big projects in the pipeline for the rest of 2012 and beyond, and the team is growing rapidly to support the work ahead! We’d love to have YOU be part of our team!”

http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/24/microsoft-to-onlive-employees-we-wont-buy-ya-but-well-hire-ya/

I will wait and see if MS actually decides to make there own cloud service.

Scooping up people with specialized knowledge, considering Microsoft is already going with a lean toward cloud work, seems like a reasonable investment. Good that they're keeping people employed too. Win win situation all around.

i would think the patents are far more valuable to MS than the people.  ..unless of course you think MS lack the expertise to make this sort of service.

"Adding cloud gaming technology to a future Microsoft game platform, or to its Xbox Live service, could add a lot of interesting features for gamers. You could, for instance, log into an Xbox Live account from just about any device, regardless of whether it’s a game console or not. Older games could be made compatible with a new game console, without the usual costly hardware tweaks."

This is exactly what I think will happen. We don't need consoles anymore but services to play our games anywhere on any devices that can play games. This would free devs from having to code for different platforms for their games to be available to as many people as possible and end this stupid console exclusive bullcrap!

not exactly your original position. 

Well that's pretty cool. Hopefully a lot of them could get on at MS. A LOT more stable work environment for sure than any other option that's come up.

I find this strange. Looking at sony and MS, one would think that sony would be the one to hire employees and keep costs down, while MS who are still very profitable right now would pay out the few hundred Ms to get the staff and all assets. Especially when you could argue that cloud access is more relevant to MS (with the whole Windows thing) than sony. Maybe they are already far along in developing their own cloud-based system.