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Gaikai


jimmuhpage
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Anyone else tried this?

 

Just finished playing a bit of the Mass Effect 2 demo. Plays pretty well. I haven't played OnLive in a few months, so they may have improved, but I feel like the lag is less noticeable in Gaikai. The only times it interfered with the gameplay was during shooting and decrypting, but not enough to detract from the overall experience.

 

The graphics show very little anti-aliasing. I assume it's just run on the lowest settings that the game supports because it looked noticeably worse than even the 360 version.

 

The audio quality was pretty bad. It's better than small-scale livestreams but considerably worse than, say, an ESPN3 narration. Gets the point across though, so I guess it's good enough.

 

All in all, I'd say it does its job very well. You get a taste of the game and the saves carry through to your purchased copy, if applicable. If enough companies adopt this method of letting players demo their games, then maybe pirating numbers will better approximate "lost sales."

 

So yeah, anyone else tried this?

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I've ran Dead Space 2 via the survey the other day then Mass Effect 2 this afternoon. Didn't play much of either, seeing as one is scary and I've played the other.

It ran pretty smooth, though at first, like menus, it's a bit sluggish. I think it tries to calibrate or whatever.

 

It's certainly different to what I expected. I mean the home page doesn't give a shit about anyone actually playing. It's all aimed at developers,advertisers n content hosts. It's an amazing concept and I'm pretty interested, especially as someone running a gaming site, to see where it will go.

 

Onlive has a dinky console and wants you to plug it in to your TV and play PC games like you watch Netflix. Gaikia wants you to consume advertising the same way you'd watch a game trailer.

Why stream a video of someone showing gameplay when you can stream the actual game?

 

It's the video game version of wonkavision

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UivqdpliyA0

 

 

It's weird because when they were first shown Gaikia and OnLive looked almost the same, but after Gaikia was shown off yesterday it became apparent their business models were very different, and I think both will be very successful in their own way.

 

This screenshot pretty much guarantees it:

Mass%20Effect%202%20-%20Gaikai%20-%20Small.jpg

 

@pirandello: as far as I'm aware they're not that much set up in the US, at least like how OnLive is (which is the reverse with OnLive where you're lucky to get a connection from EU)

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I think it auto-checks your connection when you go to their website.

 

If it's good enough, there should be a pop-up that asks if you want to play Mass Effect 2.

 

I don't know what the requirement is, but the net at my uni seems to be good enough. :P

 

EDIT:@dean:

 

Hadn't seen the facebook integration, that definitely will help them. I wonder if it could spawn a surge in interest in non-casual pc gaming from the masses that use facebook...

 

Priceless comparison btw. Haven't seen that movie in ages.

Edited by jimmuhpage
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  • 3 months later...
  • 1 year later...

Could mean that the PS4 is a very different beast to the PS3, if Sony bring a whole streaming cloud game service it's going to make the WiiU look even more like a last Gen console than it (imho) already does. I'm hoping that the Vita will get some streaming capability too.

 

I was only kidding about relocating the thread. It was just a nice segue into posting about the takeover. I'm curious as to how MS will react to this. Lots of talk about OnLive and MS pairing up to counter it, but it's all just fevered speculation.

 

Also, 380 million is CHEAP given that you are buying an entire platform and all the infrastructure at the cutting edge of the industry. Makes Facebook's purchase of Instagram and Zynga's of Draw Something seem even more silly by comparison.

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Meh I can't see MS picking up OnLive, doesn't seem thier kind of thing and streaming and MP aren't that well together and MP is where MS have their big sell.

 

It is certainly cheap in comparison to things like a photofilter app. Though still pricey given Sony don't have much pennies at the moment but it does seem like something Sony could really make something out of. Do we have any idea how much OnLive is making with their service? I know a fair few people scoff at the idea of streaming games but there does seem to be a few that have stuff like their monthly sub thing going on. A decent price for all you can eat gaming.

 

I can't see them having this as the PS4, though I wouldn't be surprised if it features on the PS4 as maybe either a method of getting demos (it'd be a bit of a coup if you could demo every game on PS3 without ever having to download anything), or maybe another tier (or addition to current services) of PS+. At the very least they'll definitely be testing the waters with it, PSPgo style n all that.

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Exactly what I was thinking. A service layered on top of PS4. It'll also be a chance for PlayStation to be ahead of Xbox having previously been behind with regards to online services.

 

Streaming demos is a good idea, I also like the idea of being able to stream a game immediately after buying it and downloading a version for offline play. You'll have all the benefits of digital plus the instant access of dropping a disc in your console.

 

From a DRM /Piracy perspective, streaming would make the console pretty much bulletproof, except for account hacking / sharing, not that the PS3 was particularly prone to hacking itself.

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