Most all of you are already familiar with Amazon, best Buy, Gamestop, and Steam. You get your games in physical form from one of those big retailers, and if you buy digital downloads, you most likely are using Steam.
Well, now there is a new option, in the form of Gaikai. What is it? Well, Gaikai is a cloud gaming service, allowing games to be played on their servers while you see the results and control the character in real time on any device with a screen. By any device with a screen I mean anything from your powerful gaming computer to your iPod touch to your smart tv can run games by using Gaikai. Your games can be played anywhere, because they run on a server somewhere instead of on your device. That also means there is no installation, no download time, no shipping, no gas prices.
In theory, that is amazing. In practice, I found Gaikai to consist solely of demos, no full games. Which as it is a new service, seems fair enough. No sense in allowing people to play the full game for free. However, some free to play games, such as that mech game Hawken are slated to be on Gaikai, which means you will have a full FPS mech game that can be played anywhere, in theory, if it happens.
Trying to use Gaikai was, for me, an exercise in frustration. Trying to load any game required me to re-enter my date of birth for each new game, and every time I reloaded the page. Every game crashed when I tried loading it because Java was either not enabled (it was) nor was it out of date (newest verison, installed when it came out.)
Eventually, I got Tera to launch, which involved a game window popping up, some ads starting to run, and then the game going into recalibration before crashing back to their website.
Along with the crash, I received notice that my bandwidth was not sufficient to run games over the internet. By using pingtest and speedtest, I found that I have a 19ms ping, almost no jitter, no packet loss, and almost four of the Mbps connection speed that I pay for (I pay for 6, have never been able to get even four.)
That isn't exactly a bad connection, but is not suitable for their gaming service. Now, the alternative where I live to AT&T is to buy satellite, which works only slightly better than dial up.
If a connection of almost four Mbps is not enough, I shudder to think of how much is required, and of the cost. For those that barely have enough to play games on Gaikai, you would likely need to turn off every internet device in your house apart from what you want to play games on, because it does seem to be a resource hog.
The thing is, you keep seeing those people saying cloud gaming will be the future of gaming, where you no longer need a gaming pc to play games, and games will play on everything.
Given my experiences with the future, I call BS on that. By buying games on Steam or in physical form, I can play single player games without requiring an ultra-powerful internet connection to always be on and always be perfect. With physical media, I can usually play a single-player game without requiring a connection to the internet at all. Yes, I need a laptop more powerful than a touch screen tablet or phone, but with that method, I can bring a game to places that don't have internet, which is still fairly common in more rural areas. I live in a town that was considered for the Google high-speed internet test (so I assume we have a bunch of dark fibers sitting somewhere) and we also have a bunch of high-tech companies that have created some revolutionary products.
And yet, most people here don't have internet, or if they do, they only have dial-up.
Now, with the amount of internet Gaikai requires, that will mean that taking a game somewhere will require a perfect connection at that place, with enough bandwidth to cover your game. Needless to say, most places do not have that, be they internet cafes or large colleges with complete wireless coverage. In essence, Gaikai allows you to buy a very expensive internet connection so you can play a game on your tv without buying a console.
A cool idea indeed, unless you like offline singleplayer, or perhaps you want to host a LAN party, or have some friends over to play games.
With the game as a disc, you can have several people playing a LAN game or connecting to a multiplayer game online from the same house. With Gaikai, being able to do that would be horrendously expensive.
IN the end, while Gaikai is a cool idea, it is rather let down by the cost of being able to use it.
Verdict: Don't bother with it just yet. Internet is very cheap in some countries, and if the price per Mb starts going down more in English-speaking countries, services like Gaikai will start to be more of an option. At this point in time, it isn't really an alternative to Steam, XBLA, Amazon, Gamestop, and other such places.
Well, now there is a new option, in the form of Gaikai. What is it? Well, Gaikai is a cloud gaming service, allowing games to be played on their servers while you see the results and control the character in real time on any device with a screen. By any device with a screen I mean anything from your powerful gaming computer to your iPod touch to your smart tv can run games by using Gaikai. Your games can be played anywhere, because they run on a server somewhere instead of on your device. That also means there is no installation, no download time, no shipping, no gas prices.
In theory, that is amazing. In practice, I found Gaikai to consist solely of demos, no full games. Which as it is a new service, seems fair enough. No sense in allowing people to play the full game for free. However, some free to play games, such as that mech game Hawken are slated to be on Gaikai, which means you will have a full FPS mech game that can be played anywhere, in theory, if it happens.
Trying to use Gaikai was, for me, an exercise in frustration. Trying to load any game required me to re-enter my date of birth for each new game, and every time I reloaded the page. Every game crashed when I tried loading it because Java was either not enabled (it was) nor was it out of date (newest verison, installed when it came out.)
Eventually, I got Tera to launch, which involved a game window popping up, some ads starting to run, and then the game going into recalibration before crashing back to their website.
Along with the crash, I received notice that my bandwidth was not sufficient to run games over the internet. By using pingtest and speedtest, I found that I have a 19ms ping, almost no jitter, no packet loss, and almost four of the Mbps connection speed that I pay for (I pay for 6, have never been able to get even four.)
That isn't exactly a bad connection, but is not suitable for their gaming service. Now, the alternative where I live to AT&T is to buy satellite, which works only slightly better than dial up.
If a connection of almost four Mbps is not enough, I shudder to think of how much is required, and of the cost. For those that barely have enough to play games on Gaikai, you would likely need to turn off every internet device in your house apart from what you want to play games on, because it does seem to be a resource hog.
The thing is, you keep seeing those people saying cloud gaming will be the future of gaming, where you no longer need a gaming pc to play games, and games will play on everything.
Given my experiences with the future, I call BS on that. By buying games on Steam or in physical form, I can play single player games without requiring an ultra-powerful internet connection to always be on and always be perfect. With physical media, I can usually play a single-player game without requiring a connection to the internet at all. Yes, I need a laptop more powerful than a touch screen tablet or phone, but with that method, I can bring a game to places that don't have internet, which is still fairly common in more rural areas. I live in a town that was considered for the Google high-speed internet test (so I assume we have a bunch of dark fibers sitting somewhere) and we also have a bunch of high-tech companies that have created some revolutionary products.
And yet, most people here don't have internet, or if they do, they only have dial-up.
Now, with the amount of internet Gaikai requires, that will mean that taking a game somewhere will require a perfect connection at that place, with enough bandwidth to cover your game. Needless to say, most places do not have that, be they internet cafes or large colleges with complete wireless coverage. In essence, Gaikai allows you to buy a very expensive internet connection so you can play a game on your tv without buying a console.
A cool idea indeed, unless you like offline singleplayer, or perhaps you want to host a LAN party, or have some friends over to play games.
With the game as a disc, you can have several people playing a LAN game or connecting to a multiplayer game online from the same house. With Gaikai, being able to do that would be horrendously expensive.
IN the end, while Gaikai is a cool idea, it is rather let down by the cost of being able to use it.
Verdict: Don't bother with it just yet. Internet is very cheap in some countries, and if the price per Mb starts going down more in English-speaking countries, services like Gaikai will start to be more of an option. At this point in time, it isn't really an alternative to Steam, XBLA, Amazon, Gamestop, and other such places.