GaiKai Technology Demo

When, at last year's E3, OnLive surprised the world with what seemed to be working cloud-based gaming on a thin client (meaning, all the processing is done server-side and all you need is the 'power' to display a video). But there was one man's voice that basically said "dammit, they beat us to it as we wanted to show the same thing at E3".

That one man is David Perry and that same thing is Gaikai.

Gaikai, from what I understand, differs from OnLive in that it doesn't require a micro-console on top your TV or an application download for your computer, it simply uses a Flash player in your browser. So, basically, Gaikai turns every single game (that they have on their service) into a Flash game (concept wise as the games retain full graphic detail and everything).

But perhaps it's better to show you instead as David Perry today released a technology demo video on vimeo. Be sure to watch until the end where he demonstrates that it can be useful for more than just games:


Of course, as with OnLive, the proof is in the pudding and I'd want to see myself how good this really is, whether it truly feels like playing a game locally. I suspect that, at the very least, the resolution will be much lower and there will probably also be some noticeable latency between your input and when you see the effect on screen. But it should at least be good enough to play those games you otherwise might've not given much chance. Looks interesting at least.

And with his demonstration of World of Warcraft and EvE one can't help but wonder how it would be to play Star Wars: The Old Republic through this. So much for the benefit of "stylized realism" allowing it to run on everyone's computer.

On a side-note, I'm also changing the "OnLive" tags in the previous posts on that service into "Cloud Gaming" tags to group OnLive and Gaikai together. Not that I expect to have much news on either.

Thanks to VG247 for the original news.