The development was Tweeted out about three hours ago by David Perry, the CEO of Gaikai, the cloud gaming company that is serving the demo.
I just tested it myself (MacOS Leopard, using Google Chrome) and it worked brilliantly. I had to close some bandwidth-hogging Internet applications but in a matter of moments I was taking AC Milan against Barcelona.
Seriously. Go to the EA Sports Football YouTube page and try it for yourself. The demo recognises your input device and standard mouse and keyboard controls apply, so there’s no need to have a PC compatible gaming controller. The game is powered entirely from Gaikai’s cloud.
The demo launches in a separate window, so this isn’t like you’re playing it within the YouTube video itself. But that’s somewhat beside the point. What Gaikai is doing for publishers here is allowing them to serve a game to interested gamers right at the point where they’re marketing it. Say there’s a new hype video of some feature or gameplay; people go see it on YouTube, then click a banner and start playing the demo to experience it for themselves.
anonymouse
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 1:26 PMDoesn’t seem to work. Just loads a video on the page?
mchaza
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 1:45 PM@anonymouse, our internet is too slow in AUS, they say they have a network in AUS but that will probably be restricted to those of highest speeds. Most people will have to wait until NBN or until GaiKai increase network.
joedy
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 1:49 PMno it actually just loads EAs video page with FIFA 12 videos. wrong link it seems
Distractobot.com
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 1:55 PMWhat a rip off! I jumped on with high hopes and just found the videos… sad panda.
mchaza
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 3:00 PMgo to gaikai.com and give it a try
NotAbbott
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 3:37 PMNot even NBN was enough to get the gaikai.com website to load for me :(
Kept measuring my line speed as 1.3mbps and not let me play. Shame, I absolutely love these cloud computing ideas.
N3RD1001101
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 8:07 PMAgreed NotAbbott, my speedtest is at 99.67mbps downstream and 4.5mbps upstream and it still wont work for me. it says my line speed is .8mbit anyone got it to work? if i cant get it to run on my connection, then im thinking this is rigged… will try it on my desktop which is hardwired on a gigabit connection and report back
jt
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 8:25 PMI live in the US and it works for me, although my connection isn’t very fast. If Gaikai doesn’t have servers in AUS then it might not let you play due to high latency (distance) if the servers are only in the US, regardless of how fast your connection is.
Anonymous
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 9:19 PMGaikai’s network isn’t fully rolled out in Australia yet, unfortunately.
Anonymous
Saturday, October 22, 2011 at 5:39 AMThe link to play the demo is right above the video. It’s an image that says “Play Demo”