Sony has announced the acquisition of OnLive cloud gaming network for an undisclosed amount. It's the second cloud based acquisition for Sony following the acquisition of Gaikai three years ago, which was used to build PlayStation Now.

OnLive tried to make the cloud business work, becoming the first real cloud gaming network to have subscribers. The issue was the product made no profit and in 2012 OnLive went bankrupt and removed most employees.

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It returned later in the year but has failed to win over anyone in the past three years. The move to add the Steam catalogue and offer stream software for enterprise hasn't made OnLive profitable either, showing the unique challenges for streaming gameplay.

Sony will shut down OnLive on April 30 and it's unlikely it will relaunch any time soon. The technology used to power OnLive on different platforms might return to be used by Sony to broaden PlayStation Now's user-base.

PlayStation Now is in a bit of a bad state following a beta lasting for most of 2014. The prices for the games are quite poor and using a rental business model hasn't attracted many fans.

Unlike OnLive where everything was available in one package, Sony forces customers to pay more for PS1, PS2 and PS3 games that should not be priced so aggressively.

Hopefully, as we move into a full launch of PlayStation Now, Sony will start to offer better business models for customers. Having a subscription service for all of the titles similar to EA's All Access program would be nice.

Cloud gaming is still in its infancy with most choosing to buy a game instead of waiting for it to appear on a streaming service. Sony could be the Netflix of the streaming world but it needs to make PlayStation Now more cost effective and available.

Rumors of Valve and Microsoft working on streaming services might mean we have more competition in 2015, but whether cloud gaming can really be profitable is another matter.

Tagssony, OnLive, Cloud gaming, Gaikai, playstation now