Cloud Gaming Service Gaikai is Coming to Facebook

Speaking at Cloud Gaming Europe today, Dave Perry has announced that Gaikai have already signed a deal with Facebook to bring their cloud gaming service to the ever-popular social networking site.

This follows on from Gaikai also signing deals with the likes of Capcom, EA and Ubisoft to bring demos of their games to places like YouTube and of course, GodisaGeek.com in our “Play Now” section.

Co-founder of Gaikai, Dave Perry, had this to say:

Our next big launch is on Facebook and we’ve been working with them for some time…Facebook already owns the category of casual gaming, we’re going to help them own core games. A click and boom, you’re playing World of Warcraft.

Bring the game to the gamer, don’t move people, move games. Zynga has figured out that you put the customer first, very aggressively. You click once and you get to play for free, you share it with your friends and then you pay Zynga if you love it. It’s a pro-consumer as you can get and that why their valuation has skyrocketed.

Dave also fired a warning shot across the boughs of several other major players in the industry, saying:

Some of the traditional publishers who have ignored all of this are falling off a cliff. Look at their stock prices, it’s not good.

Consoles are in an interesting place right now. If you look at Sony it has a saying that ‘It Only Does Everything’. I think that one statement says that consoles are going to go away. This next cycle you’re going to see them turn into media devices, media boxes, I don’t even think they’re going to be called consoles. They won’t want to be associated with that word because it just means games.

Games companies make “billions” off games played on TVs, said Perry. Why should they get to have all the fun?

Steve Jobs showed that the trick is not to make money of the hardware but to monetise the devices. Everyone that pays for stuff on their iPhone makes more and more money for Apple. Why should I buy a $1000 TV and then a $500 box when all I need is a TV? By revealing what their goals are they’re basically setting the end game for consoles as we know it.”

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Source: GamesIndustry.biz