The Revolution Will Be Televised

In fact, PlayJam has been making and distributing games for televisions since 2000, when it launched an interactive service through cable operators like Sky. The company has strong existing relationships with hardware manufacturers, and systems for safely delivering and monetising games developed over the course of ten years. With a space as young as Smart TV these competencies are both rare and valuable, and the PlayJam games app is already available through all LG and Samsung televisions.

For PlayJam's COO Stuart Walsh, to focus on core games is to ignore both the size and the composition of the Smart TV audience. Any piece of hardware that new and that expensive is certain to be the principal television in the household, and consoles often don't take pride of place beneath the living room TV - the content of the service should reflect that.

"If you take a high-end console game, that's a very deep, immersive experience, with one person engaging at a time, and the percentage of people playing those games is much smaller - it's more of a niche," he says.

"If you look at the most popular games on Facebook, they're played by 95 per cent of the rest of people, who like simple, casual games. But you still play them on your PC, on your own, so it's not a very social thing at all... And then you look at Smart TV, and it's not a high end PC, it's not a console - it's a reasonably capable device that you can play those types of games on. So I think if you can put those types of games in the living room they have to have a more social aspect to them. There's a proven demand for that type of content, and it suits the device perfectly."

If you take a high-end console game... the percentage of people playing those games is much smaller - it's more of a niche

Staurt Walsh, PlayJam

From delivery method to pricing to the type of games it carries, the differences between the services offered by PlayJam and OnLive are legion. However, the most important difference is also the most fundamental: Walsh looks at PlayJam as a television experience, and not a gaming experience.

The overwhelming majority of Smart TV owners will be bringing years of learned behaviour regarding television use with them; far more than will bring learned behaviour regarding, say, online shooters.

"Is Smart TV a viable platform to consume [AAA] games on? With the right controller and things like that, yeah, absolutely. But, again, we look at it very much as a TV business, so we look at the audience profile and consider what percentage would want to pay for and consume that type of content via their TV... and it's a minority of the TV audience."

"Within that space the battle is between OnLive and console. I don't think we have too much concern with OnLive's proposition in terms of audience share, but it's a question of whether there's a demand for that from the people that play those deep, immersive games, and whether the technology can deliver the experience, and that's yet to be proven."

"TV is a different experience. It's a lean-back experience; the user wants to be presented with options. So we look at the way we deliver that as more of an EPG [Electronic Programme Guide] for games; it's editorially driven, it's changing every day, you're surfacing and promoting different content every day."

This view is clearly echoed by Vikas Gupta, CEO of TransGaming, another company intent on developing Smart TV as a gaming platform with its new service, GameTree TV. Like PlayJam, it has considered the sheer size and demographic variety of its potential audience and decided that the most promising strategy is to stay within "a television-based paradigm."

"In talking to consumers and conducting a lot of focus testing, what people are telling us is that living room entertainment is still the most relaxing form of entertainment consumption," he says. "So what we're really driving at is building an entertainment experience that caters to what the living room has always been about."

"We're building GameTree TV to offer interactive entertainment as a service that's complementary to television viewing. So the market audience we're going after isn't necessarily the gaming audience, because we believe that gamers are already highly over-served. Rather, we're going for the mainstream television audience that's looking for enhanced capabilities."

TransGaming's commitment to using television as a template for GameTree TV is total: the company's Atlanta office is almost entirely populated by former staff from Turner Broadcasting, including Blake Lewin, who launched the online game service, GameTap. Gupta believes that his team's experience at Turner Broadcasting taught them the value of programming a service to keep it fresh and inviting to the audience, which will help GameTree TV to blend seamlessly into existing viewing habits.