Gaikai and OnLive both a no-show at E3 Expo 2009

by James Egan May 27th 2009 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Events, real-world, MMO industry, News items, Browser

We heard about two competing gaming services at GDC 2009 that could revolutionize the video game industry, if the technology announced can live up to its claims: OnLive and Gaikai. Both services aim to stream game content to users while the graphics crunching is handled on company servers, thereby eliminating the escalating hardware barriers to playing the latest and greatest titles -- a home user's low-end machine would be able to run high-end games. Gaikai head David Perry (of Acclaim) has said that the company's "Streaming Worlds" technology is suited to handle MMOs, and has specifically stated that World of Warcraft and EVE Online can already be streamed to browsers.

When we heard about these companies at GDC we were hoping to hear more a bit later in the year, but it seems that neither OnLive nor Gaikai will be at the E3 Expo 2009. Gaikai cites patent filings as the reason they've had to pull out from E3 while OnLive states that their service doesn't fit in with the 'retail-orientation' of E3. We'll keep an eye on both companies as time goes on, though at this point only Gaikai has announced that they plan to stream MMOs.

Tags: acclaim, browser, david-perry, e3, e3-2009, e3-expo, eve, eve-online, gaikai, gdc-2009, onlive, streaming, streaming-worlds, world-of-warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

max said on 6:18PM 5-27-2009

anyone wanna bet it was all one big joke?
i would totally laugh.

eddie said on 6:37PM 5-27-2009

I seem to recall a B2B room at E3 (it's been a decade since I've been in the industry, so I don't know what changes have been made). Seems like this would fit in well there. Although, if they're only going to one show, they should be at CGDC.

danarchy said on 7:03PM 5-27-2009

What I dont get is, sure they can process the graphics on their end and stream them to your pc. Fine I get that. But won't they have to have the equivalent of a pretty hefty gaming rig to render the games for each player? How much are they gonna freaking charge a month to cover that? No matter how you look at it, somewhere in that chain of ownership someone is going to have to process a hell of allot of pixels before it hits your monitor. If I have a hard time running AoC on its highest settings with my SLI rig, what are they gonna need to have to stream that game to even 10 people?

Jason said on 7:51PM 5-27-2009

I personally don't think it matters that these companies are not showing up at the E3. Onlive seems like it's just months away from beta testing anyhow. They already have the coverage maps created at http://onlivefans.com/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=95

Jack said on 8:02PM 5-27-2009

OnLive and Gaikai look pretty sucky to start with... I am not interested in this junk...

Skypp said on 6:13AM 5-28-2009

vapor

I'm sure all those people that fell for Phantom will love this. Its perfect CEO and investment fodder. Old men that know nothing of games think this is AMAZING!!

Myria said on 9:55AM 5-28-2009

The most amusing part of this is that neither Eve nor WoW are noted for their high-end machine requirements... To put it mildly. So basically they've shown they can quadruple the lag to feed you browser images of games that almost any computer made in the last ten years can handle just fine?

Woah, impressive!

The Phantom comparisons are indeed apt.