Dave Perry shows off Gaikai
First footage of service running in normal browser offered
Veteran gaming man Dave Perry has shown off his OnLive-rivalling cloud gaming service Gaikai in a new video that is drawing a lot of attention.
As you can see, Perry shows off World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Mario Kart 64, Spore and more - all running on a bog-standard computer through the Gaikai website, itself running in a normal version of Firefox.
All the gaming you see is being played directly from a remote computer, and as you can see, despite nothing being stored locally, the games play rather smoothly. One thing worth noting is that the game window is rather smaller than the browser - a lower resolution stream potentially reducing bandwidth needs.
Interestingly, Gaikai will be all about the publishers-powering their games through Perry's technology. He puts it thusly: "People do not come to us to play games, they play the games right on the publisher's site. The publisher uses our technology to make it all possible. So from wherever you click, you end up on the publisher's site with the latest version of the game running instantly."
Rival cloud service OnLive, meanwhile, claims to be capable of streaming full high-definition video - although the feasibility of this has been questioned.
Perry says that Gaikai usually works with anything more than a 1Mb internet connection (sometimes less), and the service certainly seems to be in fine fetter.
Perry concludes stating that "our goals are really simple, to remove all the friction between hearing about a game and trying it out, to help reduce the cost of gaming, to grow video game audiences, to raise the revenue that publishers and developers can earn, and (most importantly) to make games accessible everywhere. If the iPhone App store has taught us anything, when you make it easy to check things out, you get a billion downloads."
How well these cloud services will run on 'normal', everyday internet connections is open to debate - but this Gaikai teaser has more than whetted our appetites, especially given that Perry is adamant that game servers are fairly standard, virtual affairs, while no fancy fibre optic link was employed for the demo, only a standard broadband connection.
A California-wide beta test is being planned.
Comments
This is very impressive. I suspect they have released this teaser now because the new Firefox supports HTML5's new video goodies.
Photoshop demo is awesome.
This is what will make Linux viable on the desktop.
Yes, the Photoshop thing blew my mind. The game window is fairly small though - comparisons with the supposedly HD OnLive are going to be interesting.
A good point Kurt. I've been thinking about all this cloud stuff running (or streaming?) on my Macbook. No more dual-booting time-wasting.
wow. that's amazing.
if this catches on, it could kill the traditional computer market... who needs a powerful box when they can do this? it's a great equalizer for mac and linux. if I could run my programs, and open files locally in photoshop and office, i'd be using linux right now. there would be no excuse for not running ubuntu. bundle this with a distro, and it becomes a windows killer. I can't wait.
Expect Nintendo to sue him for using Mario Kart 64 thru emulation other than Virtual Console
Are you accessing your own files when you're own photoshop, or are those on a remote computer somewhere?
What about mods for world of warcraft?
Nice idea but i'll never be sold on it.
1. You never own the game.
2. Service dies your games go with it.
3. No internet connection no way to play.
4. Monthly subscriptions to play the game you have just payed for.
Still better off with ye oldie PC/Console.
What about latency?? Games like World of Warcraft may tolerate delays of up to 5 seconds, but fast paced action games would suffer because not everyone's connection quality is as good as whatever they're using in the video.
According to the video, he said you'd be able to use photoshop without paying the retail price. I'm assuming that means it will be taken care of by some kind of monthly fee. Whether it's successful will depend on how reasonable that fee is, and if you have to buy the software you're playing on the cloud. From the looks of it, the latter isn't a concern.
yah i dont know if i would prefer a non-hd service over OnLive's HD gaming, since crysis is going to be beautiful on it, and gaikai just wouldnt do it justice. It's like comparing black and white tv to color, But i think Gaikai has the photoshop setup pretty good. They say on http://onlivedream.com/2009/06/onlive-gakai/ that they might not have the right patents needed if OnLive already has them?
This will take a major cut out of microsoft's pocket if it works. If i am reading this right all i need is a junker pc that can run linux and firefox and i got a gaming machine. -_-
So Is this a remote server running the games? Slower computers would still have to lag, Its a fact of life, I am sure that my 1.5 laging on opening pogo word whomp, is still going to lag especially when I open something like what he has in the video.. I would assume that the games he opened loaded fast, because of whats going on behind the curtins? Preloaded games for the demo, perhaps. And NO this is not going to allow Linux to be the killer of Windows, keep dreaming Linux fans.. Perhaps it will allow you to run Linux on Windows pc's though.. It would all depend on if they have a linux program for you to load into.. it does appear interesting though.. I wonder what happens if you attempt to load more then one game?
They do have a program so you could run it on Linux.... it's called Firefox.
Seriously though, it's a great idea if ISP's don't end up blocking it. Like most things, if there is money to be made and it involves their resources, it'll either be blocked or very expensive.
This kicks ass! Gives a new meaning to the term 'stroke of genious'. This is the do-all and end-all of the future of gaming. Say goodbye to your costly system upgrades and incompatibilities. I can't wait to play my games on the cloud. The only questions I have are when and how much - oh, and when will you be custom coding your own VPN-based ultra-browser specifically for gaming?