Dave Perry’s “Ocean” versus OnLive’s cloud

David Perry, founder of Shiny Entertainment and creator of Earthworm Jim, MDK, Messiah , Wild 9 and Enter the Matrix, has come out saying he has been in the development stages of creating his own streaming game service titled Gaikai.  The name may or may not be derived from the Japanese word for ocean or physical world.  Could this be a battle beween OnLive’s cloud and Perry’s ocean?

Perry has a lot to say about the prospect of OnLive and insists, although self-admittedly, that his solution is better.  It is common knowledge that to play OnLive on your computer you will need to download a 1MB file to your browser.  Perry claims his solution requires no such download and can therefore be played anywhere.  This includes work and school environments where no extra software installations are permitted.

The features of his service sound ideal, but without any real showing of his technology, it’s hard to know where this really lies between concept and fruition.  If we have seen anything, it is that this technology takes a long time to build up and it doesn’t stop there, the platform is just as important.

Xbox 360 would not be where it is today without Xbox Live and OnLive seems to have some sort of equivalent with its social-centric Arena and Brag Clips elements.  Streamlining the front-end experience has been a focus for both OnLive and Gaikai, but the back-end network features will really need to be taken care of as well if any of these companies want to make a splash with serious gamers.

[Via GamesIndustry.biz]