Cloud gaming is growing at a steady pace. Not at an aggressive pace single-mindedly targeted at overtaking console gaming, or eliminating dedicated hardware at home like so many foretold when services like OnLive and Gaikai were first announced, but it is growing.
In recent months, the direction for both of these major cloud gaming providers has become less about the games themselves and more about providing streaming services and infrastructure to major hardware manufacturers, which is both a good and bad thing.
It may quickly lead to being less about console wars and more about a war to provide the dominant cloud game services. Or worse, of cloud gaming brands, or even of TV makers against console manufacturers.
The New Kings of Cloud
At E3 both OnLive and Gaikai announced that their companies had signed contracts to begin working with major TV manufacturers: LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics. Samsung is currently the largest manufacturer of HDTVs in the world, and LG is the second largest, so both announcements are major wins for the growing cloud companies.
Gaikai, the smaller of the two companies, also revealed major partnering wins, including teaming up with Best Buy, Walmart, Electronic Arts, and Ubisoft to allow for streaming games right on the company’s websites. In fact, the platform is already available on EA’s website; users can play game demos of titles like Mass Effect 3, streaming through the browser. Currently only EA.com features Gaikai game streaming.
The benefit of Gaikai’s service is that the company isn’t limited to gaming. The company is actively soliciting streaming partners to utilize Gaikai’s infrastructure, servers, and platform. Samsung will officially release their own branded streaming game service on their Smart TV line (television sets that can run applications) by summer next year. During my E3 demo of the service, Gaikai executives showed the service running from a beta application on one of Samsung’s latest TV sets. Gaikai’s partners are particularly pleased with the company because they can create their own branded application instead of relying on another company’s marketing or brand name.
Gaikai’s platform also allows for full streaming from any webpage. The company will be working not only with the aforementioned retailers and game publishers, but it also has an exclusive contract with YouTube. Gaikai also functions on Facebook, giving it a big head start over OnLive in customer reach.
Combatting Cloud Competitors
To combat the smaller company’s rapid growth, OnLive has also adapted its service to work in-browser. In the past, OnLive required a special plug-in to operate; now, users with the plug-in can stream games sans browser, but without the plug-in games will still work through OnLive’s website.
The Marathon for Mobile
Late last year OnLive released an app for Android which allows players to stream games both over Wi-Fi and cellular networks. OnLive also has an end-to-end service, in which customers can play up to 200 games from the service instantly on any computer or purchase a microconsole and controller for $100 to play on a TV. OnLive has also recently worked to woo new companies who want to use the streaming service for their own white label application.
OnLive is still mum regarding an iPad or iOS app for gaming. Last E3 OnLive announced their service was coming to the iPad, but it still hasn’t appeared in the App Store (it was likely declined for granting users the ability to purchase games from within the app). OnLive executives declined to comment on the status of the iPad application.
OnLive does, however, work on nearly all Android smartphones and tablets. Gaikai has no mobile app yet, but is working with WikiPad to create a 3D-ready Android based gaming tablet with physical controls. I briefly tested the WikiPad and it works remarkably well, notable for its ability to stream Bulletstorm over a sketchy Wi-Fi network at E3. Trade shows are notorious for terrible wireless connections and transfer rates.
Because part of OnLive’s business is to sell games as well as act as a cloud-based demo service, OnLive is putting significant effort into first-day releases for upcoming games. The company is working with developers and publishers like THQ, Sega, 2K Games, and others to match console and PC versions release dates. It will also begin offering pre-order bonuses akin to GameStop or Amazon, offering free in-game items or bonuses for the pre-order.
Both companies offer a similar service but for seemingly very different markets. OnLive provides an end-user experience for gamers, offering multiple different ways for consumers to use the service, while Gaikai is for corporations to promote their own games or services. Both cloud providers offer identical services, but their focuses are geared in opposite directions. The one benefit for game developers using Gaikai is that games don’t need to be ported for the service; all Gaikai needs is the game code and it will stream instantly.
The War of Attrition
NVidia provides the graphics processing that makes cloud gaming possible for both OnLive and Gaikai. Gaikai is preparing to completely retrofit their game servers to new GPUs based on the latest GTX 680 videocards, which is NVidia’s highest-performance and most power-conservative card on the market today. The server units are also being upgraded to handle not just one GPU per unit, but four, which will significantly save on power and units necessary. According to one NVidia spokesperson, AMD isn’t even in the cloud gaming market, so “there isn’t any competition in the cloud space.” At least not for NVidia, we might add.
Could Samsung be the winner of the console wars? It's more likely than you think.
It may be too early to say right now, but the big win might not come from creating the best streaming service for consumers, but rather who can attract the most hardware manufacturers, major retailers, and even game publishers. It may not be long now before Samsung and LG begin offering their own pre-order incentives for major game releases, or where Walmart and Best Buy begin offering full game streaming directly from their sites.
It will take time for these services to be fully realized, and by the time new consoles release, we may start seeing TV makers and smartphone manufacturers become the major push for streaming, while consoles veer into different entertainment territory. And frankly, as technology and bandwidth issues improve in the future, Smart TV’s could completely win gaming.
That may be an extreme view, but if Samsung decided it wants to seriously compete with the big three, it’ll have a userbase to match. The company is expecting 25 million Smart TV sales this year – all of which will be capable of playing console-quality games straight from the box. We all need TVs…but do we need a separate console to play games?
Source : ign[dot]com
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