Gaikai
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| Type of business | Subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment |
|---|---|
| Founded | November 2008 |
| Headquarters | Aliso Viejo, California, USA |
| Owner | Sony |
| Founder(s) | David Perry, Rui Pereira, Andrew Gault |
| Key people | David Perry, Mark Anderson, Rui Pereira, Ueli Gallizzi, Ryan Breed, Colin DuPre |
| Services | Cloud gaming, game streaming technology, gaming on demand, remote play, video game and software advertising and distribution service |
| Parent | Sony Interactive Entertainment |
| Website | www.gaikai.com |
| Alexa rank |
 577,620 (August 2016[update]) |
Gaikai (外海?, lit. "open sea", i.e. an expansive outdoor space) is a company which provides technology for the streaming of high-end video games. Founded in 2008, it was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2012. Its technology has multiple applications, including in-home streaming over a local wired or wireless network (as in Remote Play between the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita), as well as cloud-based gaming where video games are rendered on remote servers and delivered to end users via internet streaming (such as the PlayStation Now game streaming service.) As a startup, before its acquisition by Sony, the company announced many partners using the technology from 2010 through 2012 including game publishers, web portals, retailers and consumer electronics manufacturers. On July 2, 2012, Sony announced that a formal agreement had been reached to acquire the company for $380 million USD with plans of establishing their own new cloud-based gaming service, as well as integrating streaming technology built by Gaikai into PlayStation products, resulting in PlayStation Now and Remote Play.
Gaikai was initially (pre-Sony acquisition) funded by Intel Capital, Limelight Networks, Rustic Canyon Partners, Benchmark Capital, TriplePoint Capital, NEA and Qualcomm. Its streaming service was embedded on game-related websites and microsites, social media site such as Facebook, and within specific products (such as smart mobile devices or digital TVs), as determined by the publisher. Users did not need to navigate to an online registration portal or download any software to access the games. Gaikai recommended an Internet connection of 5 Mbit/s or faster, and a 3 Mbit/s connection met the minimum system requirements. Gaikai's proprietary technology ran inside web browsers, in part, by using previously installed plug-ins such as Java or Adobe Flash, or alternately without using any plug-ins, as demonstrated at Google I/O 2012, where Gaikai showed a version of the service using the Google Native Client (NaCl). A demo video early on in the service, at GDC San Francisco 2010, showed Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Spore, Mario Kart 64 and Adobe Photoshop all running in Adobe Flash player. In May 2010, Gaikai demonstrated World of Warcraft running on the iPad using its game streaming technology. Gaikai's technology officially came out of a public Beta test and launched internationally on February 27, 2011, with Dead Space 2, The Sims 3, Spore, and Mass Effect 2.
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