Sony Likely Won't Save SL Go Despite User Petition - But Linden Lab Should Listen

SL Go fans have created this online petition begging Sony to save the Second Life streaming service from OnLive, which just sold its key assets and patents to the Japanese technology giant. However, it's highly unlikely Sony will revive SL Go, even if it wanted to -- especially after pulling the plug on the SL-lite Playstation Home. There's not a massive overlap between Playstation 3/4 owners and Second Life's core userbase, for one thing; for another, SL Go would have to have a market of hundreds of thousands of users, for a company as large as Sony to be interested. (And if SL Go had anything like that large a paying userbase already, Sony probably would have kept it running -- or offered to sell it to Linden Lab.)

That said, if you're a fan of SL Go, I'd say consider signing anyway. Because even if Sony doesn't care, Linden Lab should be following this petition closely, to see if it at least gets over, say, 10,000 signatures:

With a large enough proven market for streaming Second Life, Linden Lab might want to work on offering that as a service of its own. OnLive isn't the only company on the market streaming 3D content. Far as I know, LA-based OTOY, which started a streaming program with Blue Mars a few years ago, is still around. With its massive server capacity, I could even see Linden Lab itself building out some kind of streaming capability, not just for Second Life, but for its follow-up. Or as I mentioned, if enough users are interested, Linden Lab might want to request a meeting with Sony, and open its checkbook.

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Comments

[old avatars]

They better do something the inworld social fabric is near dead with too many leaving while not enough coming in! how do i know?
Animations do not lie! that's right people almost always try animations out before spending money on them.
something that cannot be done thru the marketplace as of now.
4 years ago half of the 40 places i recorded had traffic between 12k to 40k with real people
broken down its around 500 to 1500 visitors a day inside trying new animations with over half the regions near full. was very hard to get in those places.they were crowded with real people many with communities and those who were regulars
not anymore! dead!

now only 20 left on list with traffic between 400 to 3740 that means some are getting maybe one visitor a day while others the very most popular are getting 60 at most.
This was all done exactly 4 years later my survey
with me not being a doomsday naysayer but with linden lab after 12 years would not make game changing situations every six months that in time have slowly drove folks out.always some crazy policy change or new rule or closing something and new with this new grid no one wants to spend money knowing regardless of what the spinsters say there is no proof second life stay around any longer then to get as many over before before closing... the homestead fiasco proved they cannot be trusted to do the right thing putting residents first.

Ebbe is just a face. with the same destructive policy makers in the background ready to create the next big situation that tiers the community apart again. what will it be next? sudden closure of the mainland? closing linden homes? no one knows for sure but in less then 6 months like clockwork they are going to due something that pisses most people off across the grid costing us friends and shrinking the economy.

[UCMO]

The Next Generation Platform (SL2) is being built from the ground up as a run anywhere virtual world. Phone, tablet, desktop - won't matter - will be able to run anywhere... well, except Blackberry ;-)

As a result of that effort, I don't see LL devoting any internal resources to make the current SL run on mobile devices. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see SL Go like functionality with the current platform, but I doubt it will happen from LL or Sony for that matter.

[Ajax Manatiso]

Since Sony has no plans for SL GO, LL should be able to pick it up very cheap and make a profit by offering it on their main website for those with low bandwidth or as a suggested resolution in their forum for lag problems.

[AndyW Blackburn]

Linden Lab could use the Nvidia Grid game-streaming server clusters directly with a few simple interface mods to their existing windows client Basically make it the same experience as SlGo, running on the same Nvidia hardware. No patent infringements needed, and the revenue flows partly to the Lab, partly to Nvidia. Plenty of other game companies have already done it.

[Troy McConaghy]

I did some digging around, looking for a cloud-rendering service that could replace SL GO, once it's gone. I found two that look promising:

1. LiquidSky

2. Leap Computing