streaming « Arcade Berg

1Dec/090

We need a Spotify of games

Posted by Arcade

If you haven't heard about Spotify already, it's a client in which you stream music from a huuuuuuuuuge library and it's available for a bunch of platforms, including Windows and iPhone. The biggest change for me after starting to use Spotify way back when, isn't that I seldom downl...erm... buy music nowadays. It is that I'm listening to stuff I never would have if it wasn't for the easy access to share playlists and link to songs.

http://www.spotify.com/en/ (1/12/2009)

With simple drag 'n drop actions from the Spotify Client to the Instant Messaging Client of your choice, you can send links to songs, albums, artists and playlists.

When I find something good I often send it to some friends, after which they click the link and starts listening within seconds. People around me do this all the time as well, They post it via IM, Twitter and Facebook.

Nowadays I'm a fan of over 30 bands I'd never heard about before. The reason I listened to them the first time around was because it was so incredibly accessible!

We need something like this for games!

A way to share gaming experiences within seconds with friends and other people! No download required and it'll "just work". It doesn't have to be complete games. Let's say I have the complete Modern Warfare 2 and want to make a friend test it, then I'd just send him the link and if he doesn't already own it, a demo will start.

Please, give me Google Games.

It's somewhat possible with flash games at Flash portals like Newgrounds and Kongregate and that's great. But that's only for Flash games, I'm talking about "real" games (I hate myself for using that term right now).

Maybe GaiKai and OnLive is getting there. At least a bit. I hope so.

There are so many games I just want to try, but even more so, I want to play the games I don't know about or just won't go through the hassle to try them out.

Tagged as: industry, streaming, web No Comments

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.