Having recently headed up online gaming platform InstantAction, newly hired Zynga VP Lou Castle is aware of some of the bigger challenges facing online companies. Castle had worked up a partnership with David Perry's Gaikai to facilitate some of the streaming on the InstantAction platform, but overall he's not confident in cloud gaming as the ultimate solution for everyone. Nevertheless, he does believe that streaming will one day be the future of games.
"People have misquoted me many times. I think that a piece of the future for premium quality gaming, the kind that we would associate with Xbox, PS3, high-end PC games, a piece of that puzzle will be a streamable service in the future. People have misquoted me many times in saying that I didn’t think that OnLive or Gaikai would work, and that’s not the case at all. I don’t think it can work for everybody. I think that it is a very good technology for very few people. It’s a reasonably good technology for another small group of people, but it’s never going to get to… there are some physical limitations. It will be decades before the physical limitations that currently prevent certain types of entertainment experiences from being delivered on those systems satisfactorily [can be overcome]. They’re not going to change for a while," he explained to IndustryGamers.
The two most notable players in cloud gaming at the moment are OnLive and Gaikai, and both have pretty different approaches. Castle thinks Gaikai's strategy and technology are superior; but he fully admits that he's biased too.
"I’m under an NDA with Gaikai because of our former business partnership so I can’t get into [details], but I can tell you the Gaikai tech and the Gaikai strategy, in my opinion, is a more viable mid- to long-term strategy. It’s more viable mid-term because the way they’re going about will get a satisfactory experience to more people, and I think it’s more viable in the long term because ultimately the direction they’re going, you can imagine a world where it works for most people.
"I think the problem with OnLive is in the short term. It’s a great demo. Once they get past the major urban centers and the people who are close to their game centers, I just don’t know how. Even in the same building, you can’t exactly play some of these fast paced shooters. That’s going to be really challenging. Those guys are really bright; they’ve done a great job... In fairness to them, I might feel Gaikai is more a winner just because I know more about it."
