The upcoming closed beta for Gaikai's cloud-based service is due sometime this month in Europe according to a press release. Check inside for the release and a link to sign up.
Gaikai is a service product similar to how OnLive will work that allows clients to let users play or test games remotely. However OnLive works on a subscription basis, Gaikai will not, publishers will hire Gaikai to let consumers play a demo without downloading and installing it.
Here's a link to sign up to the closed beta, and the full press release below:
Press Release:
We've had an amazing response to the recent blog post. If you missed the video, it's here: http://www.dperry.com/archives/news/dp_blog/gaikai_-_video/
I just want everyone to know that our team (including the contractors) have been working extremely hard to bring the service to market in the next few months. Progress has been incredible and I want to thank the major corporations that have circled around us and offered their support.
We have all kinds of surprises in the pipe and look forward to sharing them.
The first one is that we've decided that as all three founders are European, we would start our closed beta in Europe later this month!
(Over 30,000 people have already signed up to help test and many came from Europe, they were really bummed that they would be left out of our launch plans. Gaikai is all about reaching a massive audience, so we are embracing Europe right away.)
Our closed beta has two goals. #1 is to bring our servers to their knees so we can choose the final configuration before we start ordering large quantities of them. (We think we have it worked out, but you can be certain our staff will be swapping cards and testing different processors as each day goes by.)
Goal #2 is to test older computers. We've had lots of emails from people describing their computers and 99% of them have ample performance. Remember you don't even need a 3D card to see a 3D game run on our service. I know this is strangely counter to what people expect, but we actually want to get plenty of basic office-grade XP machines testing so we can make sure we can reach the widest audience possible.
Just in case you're looking for your next career move, we're hiring networking experts, publisher liaison (technical producers), network administrators, business development, social virality programmers, SDK programmers etc. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it is the easy way to reach us. We also want senior marketing & sales executives at the major publishers to reach out to us, to discuss our unique business model.
After we choose the hardware configuration in Europe, our next phase will be our USA Nationwide Network Test, that will be using 8 Tier-1 Data Centers, getting hammered by Closed Beta testers. During that process, will be identifying the other data centers we need to include to blanket the USA in a low latency array. Phase 2 of that is Europe, in exactly the same test.
As we have no drivers, no hardware, no install, the testers will be able to click and start playing the game they are assigned, the moment they get our email.
So how can you help? Just sign up, and we will ping you when it's your turn! – http://www.gaikai.com/beta/
We will be contacting people one at a time, based on their location and hardware spec. At certain times of the day, we will be inviting people in streams (every few seconds), to challenge the servers. Don't worry it's all normal, and you will get some quality time to play!
Anyway, we really appreciate the help, these next few months are going to be very exciting for our company.
David Perry – Co-Founder, Gaikai.com
