Sony and Gaikai’s ‘lethal combination’ to beat poor UK broadband speeds – David Perry

Talking to games ™  David Perry has explained why the poor quality of broadband in the UK isn’t going to be a problem for Gaikai and any cloud service it might provide PS4 gamers in the future. Despite the fact we’re still a fair distance from Gaikai’s recommended connection speed of at least 5Mbit/s across the UK, with broadband speeds currently around the 8.8Mbit/s mark in urban areas and about 3.3Mbit/s in rural ones, it’s a  problem Perry claims, Gaikai can solve. “We’ve kept a bit quiet about how we do it, but to help you understand why Cloud gaming isn’t a crazy idea try this,” he says, ”If you think about how long it takes to make a frame of a game on your computer, but consider that if I put it in the Cloud and run it on a faster server, I can actually compress the time a little, and I can use that time saved to transmit the image to you. So you’re not aware that it’s running faster because I’m over clocking the Cloud, but the net result is that it somehow got to you playing perfect when supposedly the internet makes everything slower!”

According to Perry Gaikai has also been working with digital TV manufacturers to make digital connections to the internet faster to reduce latency, and on a second technology of non- linear progressive downloads. That will see games downloading themselves onto your computer, but only selecting the code that’s needed to run the game. Using non- linear progressive downloads together with cloud streaming, Perry claims, is the solution for delivering cloud content despite poor broadband speeds. ”We’re keeping it real, we’re not crazy, “ he says, “We understand that not everyone in the world has amazing bandwith, but that’s the lethal combination to solve the problem.”

For more on the Sony/Gaikai deal and how Cloud gaming could define the PS4 and next generation of consoles pick up games™ Issue 125 , on sale 02/08/2012.

Further reading

Why Sony choose Gaikai over Onlive

E3 Sony hangover special

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