By now, you have probably heard all about OnLive, but I doubt you’ve heard of Gaikai. Gaikai was actually the first interactive-game-streaming nonsense to be announced, Onlive came later. Now I have certain choice words for both products, both good and bad, but before I elaborate watch this awesome video:

So lookie there, full real-life video games running in a web browser, albeit running flash. In the video Perry clearly states he is, “using Firefox with no plug-ins, no installs, nothing”, yet you have to install Flash to make it work. I guess if he was using the new fancy HTML 5 standard in Firefox 3.5 he could pull it off, but I really doubt it. I know I’m nit-picking here, but it’s still important to note.

When OnLive was first shown at GDC this year, lots of people were saying really good things about it. Being the dark minded sycophant that I am, my thoughts were mostly negative. But hey, that’s how I roll. In my defense, part of my hatred was the concept of a system where you never own the game. What you’re really doing is renting access from a server, and that doesn’t sit too well with me. I’d also like them to be more transparent when it comes to the backend, until then I’ll be skeptical that this thing can actually run smoothly.

While I still have reservations with the renting part, seeing Gaikai in action really got me thinking about its potential. Three things really piqued my interest: Mario kart 64, World of Warcraft, and Photoshop. I know Nintendo would never officially let Mario Kart 64 on Gaikai, but the concept is still valid. This would make re-releasing classic titles that much easier, and in turn allow more people to experience them. As far as WoW goes, it would be amazing if it actually worked in the first place. Just think, you wouldn’t have to install a 10GB game and then patch it for the next 20 hours. Any current or future patches would be done server side; just open a browser, sign in, and play.

Of course if they actually had all 12 million WoW players playing through Gaikai, who knows what it would require. Which makes me wonder, how many people could they fit on a server? I know my brother has tested his computer out and got 3 windowed instances of WoW running simultaneiously – with a solid 60fps in each window and the highest setting on each. I’m sure you could fit a bunch more instances on an actual beefy server, at which point you would only need to worry about bandwidth. Luckily, it looks minimal, which will definitely help out our ‘rural gamers’.

Now about Photoshop, this is something completely different from what OnLive has demonstrated. I would first like to say that I don’t think people will latch onto this delivery method in the professional world. Studios will always want their applications to run as fast as possible, and running programs like Photoshop or 3DS Max (if it becomes available) local is the way to go. I do think that this might useful for people who are out of town or not in their office, they could easily utilize the server to make a quick edit wherever they are. Heck, they could even use it on their Netbook. I could also see this type of service for a start-up or a smaller studio because they might not want to make the initial investment in the high end workstations along with the licenses for the software.

But let me get back to the main point in all of this, videogames. When I think about the type of videogames that I play on a regular basis, I don’t think this service would be good enough. Granted I am a minority in the market as I do have a $1500 computer and can run games on their highest settings at 1680×1050. It could be that this is the reason I only see this service really working for either MMOs or in the handheld market. The high-end visuals don’t matter as much in those markets and maybe all that those people want is to play a wider variety of games at a fraction of the cost.

I can see where this service may be viable but I am still not convinced. At GDC I think OnLive had 10-20 units playing games, for all we know they had a $4000 server running for each person that was playing, and they didn’t even show up for E3. Until these companies show more of their back-end and are able to demonstrate their technology working on a larger scale I will remain skeptical. Hopefully, we will be able to get more information soon.