Dave Perry, head of game streaming company Gaikai, has discounted the rumours that Sony had signed up with them to provide a service to PS3 owners.
Speaking to EG, he said there was no truth in the stories, which were initially kicked off by VG247 and perpetuated around the internet, including some fairly assured claims from MCV and Games Industry.
“I wasn’t even at the Sony press conference,” said Perry. “I was sitting in my hotel room, and I know everyone was like, ‘Oh my god, are they going to announce cloud gaming?’ And I was like, ‘No, they’re not going to announce cloud gaming.’ I wasn’t even there!”
Perry does think that the future of consoles will include Gaikai-like tech.
“To give you my real take on it,” he said, “I honestly can’t think of a future for the console companies that don’t include cloud gaming at some point. They can hold out as long as they want to, but at some point, you don’t want to be the console that can’t do this.”
“To some extent, I expect all three of them will have this.”
Gaikai did make one announcement though – that they were signed up with Samsung to provide game streaming to their TV sets.
BrendanCalls
He is definitely right about streaming being an important part of the future of gaming. In some shape or form its coming.
All aboard the “stream” train ;-P
Bilbo_bobbins
I cho cho choooose you !
ray_gillespie
And there’s a picture of train…
Amphlett
Are you looking to change your moniker to Ralph Wigum?
ThoughtPolice
I think its hilarious how all these sites have been exposed for the total bullshitters they are.
THIS is everything that is wrong with the internet and sloppy copy and paste churnilism. Someone invents a story, 10 sites copy and paste it, and then it’s suddenly fact.
bunimomike
Yep. Agreed. It’s really starting to frustrate when people just leap aboard the same rumour-mill and wait for the next offering to be pinched off.
Kaminari
Amen.
Kaminari
I’m a firm believer in the need for safeguarding the videogame legacy (aka. retrogaming or abandonware). I dread the day when all “cloud” games will cease to exist the moment publishers decide to pull the plug on their servers in order to make room for new titles.
Zephyre
After spending all evening downloading 3 freebys from PS+ (Infmaous 2 – 15GB!) it’s safe to say that my connection’s nowhere ready for streaming games just yet. Maybe in a few years.
cc_star
But that proves the need for streamed games, it’ll be no different to YouTube/Netflix.
Downloading games of 10GB and obviously way over is a very inefficient way of distributing/receiving games.
Zephyre
I’ve tried streaming video (netflix and sky). SD quality is OK, but HD streams are a joke. I’m sure in a year or 2 speeds will be better but right now? Nah.
hazelam
and never having a local copy is no good when you can’t connect to the service, either through downtime on your isp or at their end.
whatever the reason the end result is the same, you can’t play your games.
cc_star
I get all that & agree, but it won’t change what the corporate world think, next-gen is physical anyway & may have access to back catalogue of streamed stuff, but gen after? There probably won’t be a 9th gen it’ll just be high quality stuff on relatively dumb devices/built in.
stormy
Is it just me who is relieved by this? When I read the rumours for PS4 I groaned. I can’t think of anything worse, the loss of fidelity and having to rely on a permanant internet stream just to jump on your PlayStation. Awful. If this is what PS4 was going to be I’d give it a miss.
cc_star
The next consoles may require always on net connection anyway whether they do streaming or not.
Loss of fidelity? Think you need a 5meg connection for HD streaming, the average UK net connection is over this (sadly, I’m not & there’s no plans for me to ever be upgraded) so on average they’ll be no loss of fidelity & Digital Foundry has tested how it can have no perceived input lag over a game running locally. As time moves on this situation will only get better.
There’s an air of inevitability about it. Especially as no hardware is required so no need to fork out £250-400 every few years.
stormy
I’d rather pay the upfront cost than have to rely on a stream, plus my net connection can struggle with SD iplayer at times. It just doesn’t appeal to me. If it does to you great, but streaming games in my experience always suffer from lag and the graphics always seem to inferior compared to a locally played version in my opinion.
bunimomike
Tried Gaikai on a 40/10 connection and it was crap, Chris. Fidelity was through the bloody floor and lag was horrific at times. God help anyone playing twitch-based games like Modern Warfare or Fifa… or anything competitive. We have a long way to go.
skibadee
it will have lag no matter how fast your speed is.
cc_star
Course it will, controller lag, processing & rendering lag, display lag… All games have lag running locally or not. It’s perceived lag what matters, can a steaming company encode & transmit video of the game you’re playing in a similar enough time ad a console takes to process & draw each frame?
Yes, it’s been proved they can & that’s on current net, not future net.
Is there a way to go to make it better for some people & more consistent for others, yes! But denying what has been done/being done is either blind fanboyism or just FUD spreading.
Bilbo_bobbins
Until broadband gets better in this country, game streaming will never take off in the UK. I don’t like the sound of it personally, but would be willing to try it.
cc_star
Plug a controller into your PC and visit gaikai.com you can play 1hr trials of stuff like Crysis2, Dirt3, Witcher2 & much more.
Amphlett
I tried this a week ago and when the game I tried eventually booted up it jumped around like a crazy man due to the lag (I work from home and have a good broadband connection). It didn’t impress me at all.
Lymmusic
Also tried gaikai and onlive, on pc and brand new i mac, on a 10 mbps connection. Mixed results, inconsistent image quality, from very good to crimewatch pixelated face. Frame rate varied from 30ish to maybe just below 10fps. Its not just the speed of broadband but the general interference from other devices that plays a big role. Its like the days of dial up when you couldnt use the phone as well as the internet
humanfish
The only thing thus raises for me us question marks around the quality of journalism in games media. It is obviously still a largely hobbiest press, but there were some pretty major names reporting ‘sources’ on this, with it turning out to be bullshit. The same thing happens every year, and it is probably the same source sat in an allotment shed in Staines. Surely these news outlets and ‘journalusts’ (are they really? Most just regurgitate press releases) they are just making themselves look shoddy. The boy who cried wolf anyone?
JBoo
I am soooooo happy this E3 that i ignored all the rumors on all the gaming sites & didn’t get hyped(it was funny watching other people get hyped about all these BS rumors tho) LoL:D
TSBonyman
Wonder if all the hype around game-streaming attracted attention to Gaikai , pushing their shares up and making them hold out for a better deal from Sony.. who didn’t bite and thus had nothing to announce at E3..;)
Personally, i wasn’t too disappointed having tried Gaikai and found that it won’t even allow me to test it out on my 8Mb connection.
Kaminari
And there goes all the pointless pre-E3 hype from Rasputin-wannabe journos.
RudeAwakening
Im just not into all this cloud streaming, id rather have a physical copy of a game, something that i can hold in my hands and say i own this game.