Ever since the rise and fall of OnLive, there has been an increasing amount of interest in ‘cloud gaming' amongst major publishers. Sony has PSNow, Nvidia has GeForceNow, Microsoft recently acquired its own cloud gaming service, and in May, EA acquired a cloud gaming service of its own. The acquisition involved rental service, GameFly, which will now be shutting down its cloud gaming service for good.

Back in May, we learned that EA has acquired GameFly's cloud gaming subsidiary. GameFly is first and foremost, an online videogame rental store. The company had a lesser-known cloud gaming subsidiary, located in Israel. EA's acquisition of GameFly's cloud gaming business included personnel and all of the technology behind it. With that in mind, it was inevitable that GameFly's game streaming service would shut down as EA takes control of the assets behind it.

Subscribers to GameFly's cloud gaming service began receiving notices last week. From the 1st of September onwards, GameFly will no longer offer digital game streaming, but customers will still be able to rent physical copies of games.

EA has been expressing strong interest in cloud gaming and streaming all year long. We don't expect EA to make use of GameFly's former streaming tech in the immediate future, but we'll likely see an EA-led revival within the next couple of years.

KitGuru Says: While cloud gaming services nowadays work a lot better than they did in the past, it's not at a point where I'd be willing to give up a local install of a game. Still, I expect that this is the sort of future that publishers are going to be aiming for over the next five to ten years. How do you guys feel about ‘cloud gaming'? Is it something that you'll consider as an option down the line, or are you completely uninterested?

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