Gaikai months away from full-game streaming

Gaikai founder David Perry has revealed that the cloud gaming service is ready to go live with full games, not just the demos it currently hosts, within months.

Facebook remains the company's initial focus, with the service's launch on the social network imminent, but games will subsequently spread to other websites such as YouTube, Best Buy and those belonging to publishers such as Electronic Arts and Ubisoft.

In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, Perry said that full-game streaming will be live "about three months from when Facebook launches, about 90 days from that."

Adding: "If you give me your game today I can put your game in front of more than 100 million people, easily. Quite honestly if we put you on the homepage of YouTube right now on it's own, you're already hitting that number."

Perry also commented on cloud gaming competitor OnLive, which already offers full games through its online service, MicroConsole and Android app.

"There's a very big difference between the way we're doing it and the way OnLive is doing it. They have to modify the game, they have to get the source code to the game. Gaikai doesn't require modification of the game.

"To give you an example The Witcher II was given to us and them at the same time. We went live with Witcher II immediately and now four or five months later they still don't have that live, and that's because they have to touch the code. The whole structure of Gaikai is about not touching the code. When we show World Of Warcraft it's the real thing, it's not like we had to go and tweak it to get it to work. That means that every game in history remains compatible with our solution."

Earlier in the month, Gaikai's chief product officer suggested that one of the current console makers would bow out of the hardware race at this year's E3, leading to speculation that Gaikai may be set to partner with a company in order to offer a cloud solution. Perry warns against underestimating the importance of cloud to gaming's future.

"You do not want to be the console that can't do this. You do not want to be the retail website that doesn't have playable games on it. You don't want to be the gaming website that you can't buy a game from," he said.

"[Console manufacturers] have got to take it seriously because it's better for consumers. I would play a lot more games if I fired up my Xbox, clicked on a game and it started playing straight away. I don't want to take your console from your cold dead hands, that's not the case at all.

"You're going to continue to play the way you play, but just imagine that you could have an opinion on all games because you've been able to try all of them. Each evening, flick through four or five games that just came out."

Source: Gamesindustry.biz