onLive « Arcade Berg

1Jul/090

GaiKai – Streaming High End Media

Posted by Arcade

A while back a service called OnLive was introduced. Immediately afterwards several other companies came and said:

- Hey, we got something similar!

One of them was Dave Perry with GaiKai. The idea is that you can play games by streaming only the video and audio, having a super computer somewhere do the actual computing. Hence, you can play demanding games like Call of Duty on a low end netbook if you have the bandwith.

If this works well, it could pretty damn well revolutionize the entire gaming industry.

Perry has just posted a video of him demoing the GaiKai service. If it's the real deal and no Wizard of Oz-thing it's friggin' amazing!

http://www.dperry.com/archives/news/dp_blog/gaikai_-_video/

Gaikai Technology Demo (JULY 1, 2009) from David Perry on Vimeo.

This is just a simple demo of our Gaikai video game streaming technology working in a Firefox browser with no installs, no plug-ins. These retail games (selected because we think they are cool) are all being played on a remote server with a 800 mile round trip to my PC.

The games are unmodified and are completely virtualized so we can run multiple different games on the same server at the same time. One of the reasons the iPhone has over a billion downloads now, is because they made access really easy (click to download, click to play), we have managed to get our technology down to just the single "click to play" so you can play anywhere on the web (home, work, school, on the road), and the games can come to you (on a Facebook canvas page, Myspace, Flash sites etc.)

We will start buying bulk servers soon and after that, we will begin closed beta in California, so make sure to sign up at: www.gaikai.com if you want to help us out. My blog is at: www.dperry.com

(Links and embedd, 1/7/09)

Tagged as: industry, onLive, streaming, video No Comments

1Apr/090

OnLive – Thoughts

Posted by Arcade

Okay, so, OnLive is supposed to a service that lets you play high end games on low end machines by sending input and streaming video/audio.

There's like a gazillion articles about it out there (there meaning the Internet) so I won't go further into details.

Just thought I'd give a quickie about what I think.

I think it's a great step, a great ambition, I hope it'll work amazingly well and that it will then affect the retailing industry. Unfortunately; I don't think that's gonna happen.

I'm in no way a networking expert. Heck, I hate trying to set up a fully functional network in Windows. Is it even possible? I mean, to actually get everything to work? Anyhow, I find it hard to believe what they say when they claim to have solved the latency issues.

From what I've gathered, there are actually people having tried it and they say it works like a charm.

If they were actually to get this thing working, I think it'd be a great compliment for already existing distribution channels. They wouldn't actually compete with Steam and definately not actual stores; but it'd be a nice addition. I'm pretty sure I'd use it.

Okay then, let's assume they can't fix the latency issue, will it all be crap? Most, if not all people say; yes. I say; nu-uh!

It would still be a great channel for games of particular genres, like adventure games and turn based anythings. Maybe I can't play Crysis like they say I can but then perhaps I can play Grim Fandango, Sam & Max or Jagged Alliance?

I hope they'll deliver an amazing service.