STADIA IS FAR FROM the first of its
kind. The notion of streaming-
based gaming platforms has been
around for close to two decades,
ever since YouTube exploded in
popularity in the mid-noughties. To
be able to play games without ever
having to purchase and download
them does sound attractive,
but the execution has always been
flawed. The theoreticals were first
demonstrated by G-cluster at the
2000 Electronics Entertainment
Expo, with Crytek investigating
the possibilities a few years later
before shelving the idea due to
concerns about consumer Internet
speeds. The first big hitter to take
on the challenge of a streaming-
only game platform was OnLive,
a Californian company that
specialized in cloud computing. Its
flagship product was its proprietary
cloud gaming service of the same
name, first announced at GDC 2009,
exactly one decade before Google
decided to take a shot at the crown
at the same event.
OnLive managed to gather some
real traction in 2011, capable of
operating on multiple versions of
Windows and MacOS X, as well as
Android smartphones, tablets, and
even some smart TVs. This was
followed by the announcement of
its own game system, referred
to as the OnLive MicroConsole
TV Adapter. Unlike its name, the
console was a compact affair with
a wireless controller, capable of
turning any TV into a gaming screen
with little more than an HDMI cable
and an Ethernet connection.
Sadly, all was not well. OnLive
folded in 2012, resulting in
numerous lay-offs and sale of
assets—though the story wasn’t
quite over. A new company was
formed—also called OnLive—
running a smaller team and shifting
focus by 2014 to a new service called
CloudLift, which used cloud-based
storage to allow gamers to switch
between devices while playing the
same game. A year later, though,
in came Sony, buying up all of
OnLive’s assets, and announcing
that it would be shutting down all ofits services. Why was Sony so eager
to snap it up? We’ll get to that.SONY STREAMING
Around the same time, another
Californian company named Gaikai
was doing its best to perfect the
tech. Early demos were impressive;
games could be embedded on
websites using Adobe Flash Player,
and it demonstrated triple-A games
such as Modern Warfare running
effectively on tablets and PCs with a
sufficiently fast Internet connection.
Gaikai enjoyed some success in
2011 and 2012, running a service
model called the Ad Network, which
enabled websites to stream demos
of games and receive a portion of
marketing revenue. It also ran an
Open Platform model, enabling the
streaming of full games to a variety
of devices.
Then, later in 2012, in swooped
Sony, snapping up Gaikai for a hefty
$380 million. Gaikai’s tech was
put to good use at Sony, forming
the basis for the PlayStation 4’s
Remote Play function. Remote
Play had actually been around for
a while at this point, available on
the PlayStation 3, but it had to be
inte gr ate d into gam e s o n a s of t w ar e
level by developers. Very few
releases had this function, because
developers weren’t willing to devote
resources to supporting Sony’s
ailing PSP and PS Vita sales—there
were only 14 physical releases that
supported the Remote Play service
across the PS3’s entire lifespan.
The PS4, on the other hand, had
Remote Play built into the hardware.
With Sony taking the leap and
installing the functionality on every
PS4, the option of dipping out for
game devs was gone: If you wanted
your game on Sony’s platform,
it had to be compatible. Lo and
behold, a home console that could
stream to your handheld anywhere
with a decent Internet connection.
This Gaikai-powered tech was
relatively effective—latency still
meant that high-intensity online
shooters were out of the picture, but
the principles of the software were
sound. The main stumbling block“That barrier isn’t something you can punch
through with capital” PATRICK WEEKERS, UTOMIK GROWTH DIRECTOR
Gaikai’s service didn’t survive acquisition by Sony.PS Now contains games from three console generations.Utomik still requires games to be installed on your PC.Jump is dedicated to suppor ting indie developers.cloud gaming
36 MAXIMUMPC JUN 2019 maximumpc.com