Perry's Gaikai Enters Closed Beta In Europe

Gaikai, the cloud-based gaming service founded by Acclaim creative director David Perry, will start its European closed beta later this month. Perry says over 30,000 testers have already signed on. "Gaikai is all about reaching a massive audience, so we are embracing Europe right away," he adds. He cited two goals for the closed beta -- firstly to test server load in order to determine final configurations, and secondly to ensure the service runs well on lower-end PCs, in order to reach the widest possible audience. Perry has previously explained that Gaikai will require no install to a user's PC, and games will run directly in a web browser. Rival cloud computing service OnLive has entered its open beta already, but Perry has in the past laid out significant differences between OnLive and Gaikai -- primarily that Gaikai will not itself be a portal, and rather will enable users to launch games from a publisher's own site with Gaikai's technology. "I just want everyone to know that our team (including the contractors) have been working extremely hard to bring the service to market in the next few months," says Perry. "Progress has been incredible and I want to thank the major corporations that have circled around us and offered their support."