Head in the Cloud

I think we're almost already there, we're getting very close already, so we'll definitely make our ten million mark. But our objective is obviously to grow to having a very, very wide range. What our objective was when we first explained it to publishers is we want them to be able to reach as many people as they need to as quickly as they need to. So if they say they want a million people to play their game they can pull a lever and we can make that happen immediately.

To do that we have to have an awful lot of traffic, and the way to get the traffic is to embed into lots and lots of sites, and the retailer sites as well. So that's just been an ongoing things. Again, once you start to see the announcements, you'll see why the math all adds up.

That's probably the biggest misunderstanding of what Gaikai is. We have built a global network that allows all this stuff to happen, think of it as building a cellphone network, and we've paid to put all the transmitters up and we've paid to create this whole network. So to make your phonecalls you don't want to have to buy a whole network right? That's the kind of position with the publishers, this already exists, this capability now, you don't really want to have to go and build all this technology and build a whole global network just for your games. It already exists, you can utilise it now, and you can put demos on your website, but don't think of it as just demos, demos is what we give you now because that's the easy thing to start with, but it's just a network.

The network capability is there, so it's up to the publishers to decide their individual use of it.

Think of it as a network, not as just a demo service. If you want to have a continued relationship with that user, say they're playing on the Mac right now and you don't even have a Mac version of the game, then it's up to you to the publishers to continue that relationship with that user. You still use our network to let them play, you bill them, and you set your pricing and you have your relationship with them and you offer them special discounts, whatever you want. That whole billing and relationship is yours, but whenever they log in the stream comes from our network. The network capability is there, so it's up to the publishers to decide their individual use of it. Some publishers will just say to us I only want computers that are capable of playing this one game to play. And we have no problem with doing that which means you will not be able to play the demo on the Mac. They decide that when they first sign the deal with us, they determine for the products what they want to do.

There's nothing to stop people doing it, we've done all kinds of long term passes, there's no typical limitation for this that you can only do it for 30 minutes or something, you can do it for hours on end, and you can do it for any device. That's out relationship with the publishers, you tell us what you to achieve. I want to be very clear that we are a service for them, we are not trying to compete for their customers, and that's a very big difference.

It's funny that you've already taken that mental step forward, and that's exactly what the publishers do. They start going "OK, that would be great to put my games on my site" but then the next question is "well hold on a minute, now I've got somebody interested on the Mac and I don't have a Mac SKU to sell them, what to do we do next?" And that's the answer. I think it's a step that all publishers are going to have to make the decision, do you want to have a relationship with Mac users or not? Considering they haven't had to rebuild the game for Mac, I think it seems like a pretty good idea.

So that's what we built it for. I think it's a really cool tool that the publishers now have that they just didn't have before.

And the thing is it works on anything, so you're absolutely right, what if your laptop can't play this game but you want to? Therefore that's your answer - streaming long term for publishers is the way to go.

I know, it's incredible. We're also running it at full quality. The server that runs the games, whatever the game is, is a very high-end server. It's not like we're even having to compromise, you're getting an incredible experience. That's what I love about it, the whole idea of cloud gaming is like it's a window on another world, you're remote viewing on some machine you don't want to have to buy. I think the best analogy is the arcade machine, where you wanted to experience games you couldn't have at home. And you were willing to pay for the time that you played that game on that amazing machine. That's kind of what we're looking for long term here, so the experience you're getting is more often better than the experience than the machine you're on can play. So if you're at your office, and your company doesn't buy you the best computer in the world, then that's where cloud gaming could be actually kind of cool.

I think the best analogy is the arcade machine, where you wanted to experience games you couldn't have at home.

I have a laptop, it's totally lame quite frankly,it certainly could never run a Crysis in a million years, and yet I've run demonstrations on it of Crysis and all different other kinds of games. We have Crysis running at 60fps which is incredible.

The thing that I'm excited about is releasing our Server 2 into the wild. So Server 1 is already out there, but Server 2 is in closed beta testing and the results have been great. This is all new, so it's not like you can just define "we'll do this, that and the other" and as you're testing you always discover things, so we take what we learn, we go back and we do another test, and another test and another test until we're ready.

I think that when people see that Server 2 running on their computers, I mostly think they're going to be shocked and like "oh my god, this stuff is really real." They'll be playing Crysis 2 and games like that.

And I just ordered a lot of them for Europe, they're being built right now. All our founders are European so Europe doesn't take a back seat role with us at all. So everything that we do Europe will be right up there day and date with the US, and that's very important to us. I've made the order, so when those servers go live it'll give everyone the chance to see.