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Gaikai Goes to Facebook

This article is over 12 years old and may contain outdated information
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Gaikai is now offering streaming demos of eight hit games on the world’s most popular social network.

Gaikai promises to bring high-quality gaming to the masses by way of a streaming service that does away with the need for game consoles and high-end PCs. But the masses are already busy on Facebook. What to do? A Gaikai Facebook app, of course!

The Gaikai Facebook app beta test began today, bringing demos of eight hot, hit games to just about anyone who can connect to Facebook: Saints Row: The Third, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, Magicka, Sniper: Ghost Warrior, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, Orcs Must Die! and Farming Simulator 2011. [Okay, I’m not sure about that last one, but hey, it’s Facebook.]

“People don’t want to leave Facebook to play games – Zynga’s phenomenal success is proof of that,” Gaikai CEO David Perry said in a statement. “Cloud gaming means that the game doesn’t need to be downloaded and run on your computer, it literally means the game runs out on the internet, in the cloud, with the experience being streamed to the players.”

“The power of Facebook is not only in the vast size of the connected audience, but also in the quality of the social ties and interactions that occur within the network,” he added. “The Facebook social graph fuels our mantra, ‘Try it for free’, ‘Share it if you like it’, ‘Buy it if you love it’.”

And how is it? Alas, I cannot say, as my effort to take the Farming Simulator for a spin was stymied by a band of insufficient broadness. The listed requirements for Gaikai on Facebook are only Java and a broadband connection, but there’s apparently a limit of some sort and I’m below it. The prospect of trying out The Witcher or Saints Row is a very cool one, but it seems that the world isn’t quite ready for a full-on digital future just yet.

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