Cloud-Based Gaikai Enters Closed Beta This Month

It seems that the fall of 2009 might be remembered by videogaming history as the period when cloud-based gaming went from interesting idea to working reality. OnLive, the service that promises a portal to play games without ever installing them, has already started its open beta phase and is tweaking the parameters of the service to make sure that it works as intended.

And now Gaikai, another cloud-based gaming service promoted by David Perry of Acclaim fame, has announced that it plans to launch a closed beta stage by the end of September.

The beta stage is at the moment limited to Europe and Perry is saying that about 30,000 testers have already confirmed their participation. Perry says that “Gaikai is all about reaching a massive audience, so we are embracing Europe right away.”

There are two aims for the closed beta stage: servers for Gaikai will be tested to determine the optimum load and see how they will be configured and the configurations of testers will be surveyed to see what the minimal configuration needed to run Gaikai will be.

David Perry stated that “I just want everyone to know that our team (including the contractors) have been working extremely hard to bring the service to market in the next few months. Progress has been incredible and I want to thank the major corporations that have circled around us and offered their support.”

Gaikai and OnLive are quite different, despite the fact that they are both based on cloud computing. With OnLive, players will need to install a client or get a MicroConsole and they will be paying to rent the games. With Gaikai, all the content will be running in a web browser, with nothing installed, and publishers themselves will be tasked with deciding what they are interested in offering to gamers.