Gaikai Live, Mass Effect 2 Demo Available

Dave Perry wrote a long blog post on the streaming service Gaikai having gone live across 12 countries, with 24 streaming centers. Sit through a data stream test by clicking beta signup on the website and you can play the ME2 demo immediately.

Our main focus however is our Advertising strategy, where we can put any game anywhere on the web. Our objective has been to empower publishers and retailers to give gamers what they keep asking for… “Let me try the game!”.

Our data used to show around 95% of gamers believe trying a game before buying it is “Important” or “Very Important”. A recent survey we ran had them at 100%. So I think the message to publishers and retailers is clear… They love screenshots, they love trailers, but they love trying the game a lot more!

So that’s what we do, we let people try games, and I’d love to get to the point where we make it so easy that you can try “every” game without lots of friction and pain, downloading, installing, patching etc.

So our thinking is somewhat like YouTube, as instead of just building a portal to go and watch videos, they decided to focus on putting videos everywhere on the web. We are doing the same with games, so when you read a review on a game, you can try playing it right there on the same page as the review.

The test won’t let me by, but it’s possible the Netherlands is not one of the 12 countries. Would have been convenient had he listed them.