Cloud gaming platform Gaikai will soon cloud deploy demos of Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons online, VentureBeat reports, which is a business move worth watching by fans of 3D MMOs and virtual worlds. "[LOTRO] is the first massively multiplayer online game that Gaikai has signed up for its game-streaming technology," VentureBeat notes, "which could disrupt the traditional game retailing business." It could also help disrupt the doldrums of virtual worlds like Second Life:
Gaikai, as you may recall, was the company that tested cloud-deployment of Second Life, which worked pretty well, but insiders subsequently told me the costs to deploy the service were too much to justify it as a regular offering. But now that Warner Brothers is trying to cloud-deploy its own MMOs, which may increase the market for MMOs in general, that may change. As another insider once told me last year, cloud-deployment of 3D worls will only happen when companies like Gaikai get big. Looks like that time could be now.
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Looks nice but not very interesting for people who don't care about LOTR and hate Fantasy themed stuff.
Posted by: jo yardley | Friday, March 09, 2012 at 10:57 AM
What's the bandwidth requirement like? That was what limited SL streaming as far as I was concerned.
Posted by: Graham Mills | Friday, March 09, 2012 at 01:25 PM