Great people, but technology ahead of its time.
Pros
The people are great, the technical infrastructure is really awesome, the streaming technology is the best out there.
Cons
Direction has always been problematic, formulating the right service offerings and getting the right business strategy. Eventually streaming games will be commonplace, taking their part in the overall landscape of computer gaming, and quite probably a large chunk. Cracking that nut at this time has been really, really hard. Having the company die briefly on the operating table once didn't help marketing -- as much as zombies are the hot thing these days, folks don't care for resurrected companies, especially in a market that hasn't been proven and has the public mistrust. And the megalomaniacal former CEO, also responsible for the egregiously poor and scattered direction early on, burned too many bridges to allow for OL2 to exit well. Instead it turned into cheap damaged goods sale to Sony. It's as if someone invented and built a Portal gun, demoed it in a China shop with much crashing of goods; gnashing of teeth; and loss of limb, ran out its power, someone else bought it for cheap, powered it up again, and the public, understandably, kept their distance. The technology has very wide application, and the focus on gaming was, I believe, thought to be a good, possibly profitable, proof-of-concept. Well, the tech works, but failing to coherently explore other applications was a huge mistake. Another con: tech too magical to be taken seriously by the public. I guess you would call that "incredible technology". It's damned good for sure, but it ain't magic.
