Gaikai promises to stream PC games like WoW straight to your browser
by Mike Schramm 
Jul 3rd 2009 at 11:00AM
His latest idea is a system called Gaikai, a "game streaming service" that allows players to jump right into any PC games they'd like, no installation or hard drive space necessary, online. There are a number of services like this springing up lately, including the much-discussed OnLive, where instead of depending on your local hardware to render and produce the game you're playing, you just send and recieve information with a remote server. As you can see above, Gaikai is focusing on PC games, and anyone who's planning on running a PC gaming service has to include World of Warcraft. Starting at about 6:00 into the video above, he shows off a version of WoW that requires no installation or loading at all; just sign in and play.
Tempting, though the service isn't quite there yet. On the technical side, Perry does say that the server he's playing with in the video above is about 800 miles away, but with all of this net connection stuff (just ask my Xbox when it attempts to stream HD Netflix video), theory is always much different than practice. Not to mention that one user running a service like this is fine, but what if 12 million people all tried running this at the same time? And then there are licensing issues -- Blizzard obviously makes money off of selling their expansions and software in stores, and it's not yet clear exactly how that money (or how much of that money) will be made here.
I have no doubt that given how much both computing power and network speed has increased lately, a service like this will almost definitely become the de facto at some point -- instead of worrying about having your hardware at home, it'll likely just be easier to stream the gameplay in from elsewhere. But Gaikai is still in the development stages, and no one knows how long it'll be until a service like this is ready for primetime. Your current WoW installation isn't going anywhere fast, but within a few years from now, you may not need it at all.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Hardware
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Rakah Jul 3rd 2009 11:05AM
video seems choppy
Aykwa Jul 3rd 2009 12:08PM
This is NOT the future, at least not the NEAR future. And by near I mean anytime in the next 10 years or more. The basic problem is that you'll never be able to push enough information through the bandwidth pipe to compensate for everything that your hard, drive, ram, processor, and video card can do for you. Consider someone who has their WoW settings up to a good level, but not maxxed out, which is most of the people I know. In order to recreate that same level of graphical beauty, you'd have to have a HUUUUGE bandwidth pipe. And all the internet servers in between you and the game servers would have to have far BIGGER capacities than that. What if 10 people on your block are playing WoW through a server like this at the same time through, say, DSL. Does anyone really think the phone company is going to install tons of very high end equipment just so 10 people can play a game?
No, there are FAR too many arguments against streaming gaming content. Steaming applications like microsoft Word is one thing, high quality games is very much another.
Ne0nguy Jul 3rd 2009 1:17PM
From what I understand, The game is being rendered on a virtual machine on a server with more ram and processing power than the average home computer has.
With that the only information what would have to be transfered is a live video stream and the users input.
So theoretically you could turn the games settings all the way up and it wouldn't affect the games performance. All you would have to worry about is adjusting the quality of the stream.
The user input looked like it needs some work though. I noticed that when he tried to move the camera while playing WoW, the web app was not able to lock his cursor in place. Meaning if you tried to move it too far your cursor would fall out of the app and you would briefly loose control of the game. Also note that when he tried to interact with the npc nothing happened so he quickly closed out of the game to cover it up.
Even though it looks like it has some issues, it IS only in beta. So there is a good chance the bugs will be ironed out before the service is released.
It will probably be best suited for users with low end computers or people who want to try games before they buy them.
bscarlavai Jul 3rd 2009 3:15PM
@ Ne0nguy
Actually, if he left-clicked the NPC, that's the behavior you would see/hear - not saying that he did, but don't know for sure.
nih Jul 3rd 2009 6:56PM
The guy says at the start of the video that the game is running on his home machine. He's basically invented VNC.
The potential of games designed to support streaming output are intruiging, but there aren't any games out today that feature these abilities.
Radiophonic Jul 3rd 2009 11:10AM
Can you imagine the latency you'd get from this playing WoW? It seems inconceivable.
(In before Princess Bride jokes)
dAnixx Jul 3rd 2009 11:12AM
where i come from gaikai means gay youngster... i don't think it will have musch success here
Mailia Jul 3rd 2009 11:42AM
I think you're forgetting the gay yongster audience who play WoW.
uly Jul 3rd 2009 1:32PM
@Mailia
Leave the Belfs out of this.
Agony Jul 3rd 2009 1:53PM
I don't know where you come from, but "gaikai" (外界) is Japanese and roughly translated means "the outside (or external) world" and has to do with their astrology. But it may translate differently for where you live. You know, sort of like "Budweiser" translating into "the urine of a particularly ill horse".
Sarakin Jul 3rd 2009 11:12AM
they can easily still make their money.
you can play the game straight from the browser without installing or downloading right?
You still have to sign into your account. This service would be for saving disk space and stuff. If you didn't have an account upgraded to WotLK it would be the same as playing normally like that wouldn't it?
Lynn Jul 3rd 2009 11:15AM
I saw this video earlier in the week and the one question, the one BIG question, that doesn't get answered with this service is how will my raid performance be? Sure, running around Brill with your fresh zombie will be fairly clean and frame-drop-less, but when I'm running Naxx-25 with AoE affects from 1/2 my raid, is this remote service going to lag me into oblivion?
And, as the article points out, with 12 million players subscribing, a remote server farm will have to grow pretty rapidly to keep up.
Thijz Jul 3rd 2009 11:20AM
Erhm... OnLive anyone? (http://www.onlive.com/)
I know you guys are focusing on WoW, but seriously... This idea has been around for months, no one talks about it here, then this dude does the exact same thing but with WoW and it's big news? :s
Sean Jul 3rd 2009 2:39PM
Well to be fair to Perry, he announced Gaikai immediately after OnLive went public with their service at GDC. Both services have been in development for a while, though there business models and underlying technology are different.
Mike Schramm, you ought to take a look at Perry's blog post concerning the demo video (http://www.dperry.com/archives/news/dp_blog/gaikai_-_video/). He goes over some of the technical details of the video like the round trip distance to the server used in the demo (800miles), virtualization technology, bandwidth (about 1mbit for most of the demo), and more. That there are now multiple companies vieing to be the first to deliver a service like this, and the two most prominent are planning roll outs for this fall, I don't doubt we will see streaming WoW in the very near future.
Mailia Jul 3rd 2009 11:21AM
If the game streaming was done on your own computer, wouldn't you have to have a good upload speed? That might come as a problem for people. Also, I think you can't just run this on a slow connection and the response times will propably not be small.
And then if it's done with the streaming site's servers, wouldn't you need to worry if those servers were infected and that they were getting your password and possibly forward to goldsellers?
EZ Jul 3rd 2009 11:24AM
Typical...Mike Schramm lining his pockets by writing another commercial, and disguising it as a blog entry.
Anyway, the last thing I want is for my WoW login information to be sent across the internet to some random server 800 miles away (unless it's blizzards server). The idea of "trying" games for free, especially games that dont require sign-in information, is very interesting though. Especially where games can run 60$ a pop nowadays, sometimes the reviews aren't enough and I would really like to try it. The site name is weird though. I pronounced it as "gay kai", sounds like gay guy a little bit, unless its gay-kay or guy-kuy, but either way it doesn't sound too good.
Keyra Jul 3rd 2009 5:20PM
Oh, look! Vidi has a new account!
Wes Jul 3rd 2009 11:27AM
The first thing that came to mind when watching this video was the UI. It's obviously the default UI. And being a player that has no original part of the Blizzard UI, it makes one wonder how/if you have access to the wow/interface/addon folder. The answer is probably no, sadly.
Abbadon Jul 3rd 2009 11:53AM
The question of addon usage came to my mind as well... It would seem customization would be impossible.
Also, there is a ton of wasted screen space... for future advertisements? Arg! And regardless, it looks like games are running in a 4x3 mode while most ppl these days have widescreen monitors... don't they?!
The load times were definitely impressive, but I would never use the service from my home PC. However, if the streaming worked out the way the creator promises, I could see using this service when traveling on my crappy Dell laptop. Also, there's been more than one occasion when at a family member's house, I woulda killed to be able to pass the time playing WoW....
But finally, security issues are gonna be the biggest problem. As so many ppl here have already said here, there's no way in hell I'd send my ID and PW through a browser... This setup can work for most games, but I take my WoW account seriously (as do most ppl), and would never actually play WoW through this service.
As a last thought, a few ppl sounded concerned about the lag and whatnot... To be honest, I don't think that many of WoW's subscribers would use this service to play over their existing setups - maybe a couple hundred thousand.... If anything, I can see new players coming on that sign up for the service and finally decide to try wow because of it... It's hard to turn down an instant 10day trial with no installations or downloads and instant access... Also, I wouldn't be surprised if part of what he was talking about (working with companies to make account creations easier) involved getting a nice little referral fee!
pabasa130 Jul 3rd 2009 11:28AM
It works for FreeRealms. And I'm playing with a 512k speed broadband in Asia while the servers are in the US. Tweak the system a bit (or a lot, I dunno) and it can work for other games too, I'm sure.