GameRail eyes console and European expansion

North American start-up GameRail, which claims to improve online game connection speeds for hardcore PC gamers, hopes to expand into consoles and introduce its concept to Europe.

"[Our approach is] immediately going to be able to transition to the console market," a senior spokesperson told GamesIndustry.biz at QuakeCon.

"However, unlike on PC, with consoles you have to work with Sony, with Microsoft, and put together a partnership. We're open to that, we're open to working with them. That's the next step."

And while the company is grounded in the US for now, it eventually hopes to go worldwide. "We have eyes on reaching other markets, particularly Europe," the spokesperson told us, adding that GameRail had already peered with some Asian companies.

In layman's terms, GameRail works by skipping a lot of unnecessary steps that traffic over the Internet has to hurdle on its path between end user and game server.

The firm's business development VP John Alden told us that GameRail can improve latency - the amount of time that elapses between somebody firing a gun in Counter-Strike, for example, and that action being reflected in the online game - by between 20 and 70 percent.

"We had one guy in Dallas whose traffic was being routed through Chicago. That just doesn't make any sense," Alden explained. "We sidestep that with a fibre network."

GameRail announced pricing - USD 11.99 per month - at QuakeCon in Dallas last weekend and is offering gamers a 30-day free trial.

While some consumers have taken issue with the idea of paying extra on top of their monthly Internet Service Provider cost in order to guarantee service that they feel their ISP should be offering anyway, GameRail insists that it is merely filling a void rather than taking advantage.