14 DAY TRIAL // Gaikai, one of the cloud gaming companies which are trying to make games more accessible to potential players, has announced that its service will soon be coming to the social platform Facebook allowing players to first get access to demos of high end video game and then to full releases.
The Facebook move means that there are more than 800 million users who can use Gaikai and can quickly asses the quality that the service offers.
David Perry, who is the Chief Executive Officer at Gaikai, speaking at the Cloud Gaming Europe conference stated, “Our next big launch is on Facebook and we've been working with them for some time. Facebook already owns the category of casual gaming, we're going to help them own core games. A click and boom, you're playing World of Warcraft.”
The executive then proceeded to show how the very popular MMO from Blizzard would run via Gaikai live, with no clear decline in quality over client based version.
He added, “Bring the game to the gamer, don't move people, move games. Zynga has figured out that you put the customer first, very aggressively. You click once and you get to play for free, you share it with your friends and then you pay Zynga if you love it.”
Recently Gaikai has also announced, at the CES 2012 event, that it will work with LG Electronics in order to integrate the cloud gaming platform into the line of LG Cinema 3D television sets, again expanding its potential audience.
Cloud gaming services like Gaikai have powerful servers which host the actual video games and then only stream information like graphics and commands to and from the player.
This means that gamers can play the most recent high end titles using a dedicated application, without the need to actually install games on their computers and upgrade their hardware.