New cloud gaming firm takes a different approach from OnLive

One of the industry's biggest cloud gaming companies may be in turmoil, but CiiNow has launched its own service anyway, and is taking a different approach that could help it avoid the financial problems OnLive faced. CiiNow's technology delivers streaming games through PCs, set-top boxes, tablets, and mobile devices. Its platform can be installed on existing hardware in its partners' data centers, and doesn't require the company to build new and expensive data centers. Expensive infrastructure costs contributed to the recent shake-up at major cloud gaming service OnLive last month, which saw the company laying off all of its employees and selling all of its assets to investor Lauder Partners. Like Gaikai, another notable cloud gaming platform that was acquired by Sony earlier this year, CiiNow offers a white label service that its partners (retailers, publishers, and service providers) can rebrand and offer to their customers. CiiNow announced on Tuesday morning that it secured an undisclosed amount of funding from AMD Ventures, the investment arm of chipmaker AMD. Its platform is built around AMD's Radeon technology.