Tag Archives: gaikai

Big Dave Perry’s Gaikai game service has raised $5 million in venture capital funding, according to a US SEC filing uncovered by Gamasutra.

According to the doc, Mitch Lasky, a former Activision exec and current partner at tech-investment firm Benchmark Capital, is a contributor.

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European Xbox Live boss Jerry Johnson has seen what streaming videogame services like OnLive and Gaikai have to offer, but – despite their potential ability to send his main moneymaker packing – he’s not too worried.

“Streaming technology is something that the industry is betting on longer term… right now I don’t believe that technology can scale out against the experience we can offer on a local machine,” he said during the London Games Conference.

“The technology will continue to improve. As an industry we’ll have to accept that and move with it – but I don’t think it’s on an accelerated timeline for the foreseeable future,” he added.

Thanks, TechRadar.

More through the link.

IGN’s just posted a video of Keza MacDonald playing WoW and Mario Kart through Gaikai. Watch it after the break.

It works. No doubt. There it is: working. As MacDonald says in the WoW bit, the lag is “hardly noticeable”. The footage was filmed in Germany; the server’s in Holland.

It was confirmed this morning that the Cloud gaming service is to get a closed European beta this month.

Watch it. It’s the future.

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Dave Perry’s Cloud-based Gaikai system is to get a closed beta in Europe this month.

“Over 30,000 people have already signed up to help test and many came from Europe, they were really bummed that they would be left out of our launch plans,” said Perry, speaking in a statement you can find after the break.

“Gaikai is all about reaching a massive audience, so we are embracing Europe right away.”

Europe first, America next.

“After we choose the hardware configuration in Europe, our next phase will be our USA Nationwide Network Test, that will be using 8 Tier-1 Data Centers, getting hammered by Closed Beta testers,” Perry added.

“During that process, will be identifying the other data centers we need to include to blanket the USA in a low latency array. Phase 2 of that is Europe, in exactly the same test.”

Gaikai is a service product that allows clients to let users play or test games remotely. The concept’s similar to OnLive, but it’s not a subs-based thing. Publishers will hire Gaikai to let you play a demo without installing it, for example.

Want to try it? Sign up.

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David Perry has said that should servers for Gaikai reach maximum capacity, more will be waiting in the wings just in case.

This would help keep costs down, bypass the need to create more servers in a rush, and forgo being swamped with backlog.

“We only buy them based on demand. Why does that work? Because it keeps the cost down for everybody. We have no servers running, and I didn’t spend $150 million, with the interest on $150 million burning away as I hope people are going to show up.

“That’s basically the model – every time we hit maximum capacity, we order more servers.

“I’ve already been in discussions with companies that can build our hardware for us and scale almost immediately,” he told GI.biz. “They’ll have servers ready to go. We have two choices – either they build everything, or we build everything, and I kinda like that they build everything

“We’re just trying to work out what that cost will be, but because it’s a service to me I can then say I need another thousand servers and they can take care of that problem.

“But put it this way – it’s like a wet dream for investors. To come to them with a problem like that – we can’t scale fast enough – trust me, I can line them up. If I go to an investor with that problem, they’ll help me solve it.”

More through the link.

Playcast Media System is launching a large-scale pilot of its streaming game service today, which pulls audio and visual data from offsite computers in a way similar to OnLive and Gaikai. So, have the two big names been one-upped? Well, not exactly. See, Playcast’s service is only launching in Israel — for now.

The service promises “Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 quality games” using only a cable provider or Telco set-top box.

Fret not, however, if you’re itching to (potentially) stream some games this year. As of now, Playcast’s offering is set to launch in “major markets in the US, Europe and Asia” in 2009 and 2010. Exactly when and where, though, still remains a mystery.

Full release after the break.

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Dave Perry has said that cloud gaming service GaiKai isn’t not aimed at the hardcore market at all but he’s hoping to bring the wow-factor to the non-gamer.

“GaiKai is not built for hardcore gamers – those are the guys that want HD, 60 frames per second, who are happy to sit for an hour and a half, download and install it… that’s just not our audience at all – it’s trying to reach out to new players, the hundreds of millions of people who never touched Mario Kart but would like to,” he told GI.

“They don’t know it yet, but when they click – they’re clicking on games on Facebook, on their iPhone, on MySpace, on Flash games sites – and they haven’t experienced games like EVE Online, or Spore, or LEGO Star Wars. They haven’t bought a console yet, they’re not there yet.

“So that’s the audience we’re going after initially – and it’s a very different approach,” he went on. ”

“To them it will be shocking: ‘Good God, what the Hell is this?’ And that’s the experience we want people to have.”

Dave Perry told us at Develop last week in a video interview that he hopes GaiKai will launch in early 2010.

Full interview through the GI link.

Cloud gaming service Gaikai is aiming for launch in early 2010 after a closed beta, creator David Perry told VG247 at Develop in Brighton today.

“If it all goes to plan we’re looking at the first quarter of 2010, and there’ll be a closed beta before that,” he said.

“As of last night we have 20,000 people signed up for our closed beta, with not a single dollar spent on marketing.”

Perry added: “I already have enough players for closed beta. What we’re actually going to do is set up the servers in California and we’re going to keep delivering players until we cripple the servers.

“Then we’re going to make some configuration changeswhen we see the data, then we’re going to invite more players.”

When he gets the “final server configuration” he’ll “launch across the US”.

Perry keynoted Develop this morning on the subject of Gaikai, MMOs and Acclaim.

Hit the break for 17 minutes of video of Perry talking solely about Gaikai. For ease, we’ve paraphrased our questions below so you can jump to the bits you fancy.

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David Perry says that gaming should be more convenient for players and the limitless power of cloud computing could help consumers get games easier and eventually lead to less clutter on shelves at home.

“Facebook is a really good example of how data ownership is changing,” Perry told attendees at Develop. “People don’t really care if they own a version of Texas Hold’em or Yoville as long as they can access it easily.

“YouTube didn’t try and drive everyone to their portal. Instead, they allowed videos to be distributed across the web. How many videos would you watch if you had to register with every video maker? How many videos would you watch if you had to download the entire video first? And yet that’s something we ask our consumers to do.”

To demonstrate this, he used World of Warcraft as an example. While commending Blizzard for the realively small download, he took the audience through the thirty-one clicks it takes to start playing the game.

“I get twenty clicks in before I see a play button; but then I still get another legal agreement.” he said.

Perry then stated that Gaikai would allow users to start playing with just one click which he says is absolutely critical and gaming companies need to get behind it.

“If Eidos wanted to do this, they couldn’t cover the world in game servers,” he said. “But if all our companies worked together, we could.”

We have a video interview with Big Dave which will be posted later.

Meanwhile, get more regarding his streaming games philosophy via Gamasutra.

Here we go! Dave Perry’s released a long video of his Cloud gaming app Gaikai in action, showing World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Mario Kart 64, Spore and others playing in a normal Firefox browser with apparently no plug-ins or downloads necessary.

Watch it after the break, and stay with it right to the end. Perry opens up Photoshop saying he didn’t have to spend “$700″.

The developer’s going to be speaking about Gaikai at Develop in Brighton next month. We’ll be there!

Hit this for a ton more information.

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David Perry’s abandoned plans to showcase Cloud gaming service Gaikai at E3, according to BigDownload.

The OnLive competitor has been yanked from the event thanks to patent issues.

“Unfortunately David is going to have to postpone all E3 interviews relating to Gaikai – until various patent filings are complete,” said a PR rep in statement.

“He had hoped that they would be finalised prior to E3 however, it’s now apparent this is not going to be possible.”

David Perry’s confirmed a name for his Cloud gaming service, which is to be called Gaikai.

The Acclaim boss has told GI he believes his take on console-less gaming will win out over OnLive thanks to the fact there’s no need for a browser plug-in the play its games.

OnLive requires a 1Mb download to work on PC and Mac.

“Our solution is arguably better than anything OnLive has – they’re never going to be able to beat us on this,” said Perry in an exclusive interview published today.

“They have to download 1Mb and install it on your computer. What does that mean? It means that everyone in schools, or any kind of uptight or professional business location is not going to be able to download some random game via the internet and install it.”

There’s an interview here.