At the end of last month Big Fish Games launched its cloud gaming service for Android tablets. The gaming company’s latest news comes a mere month after launching the same service, called Big Fish Unlimited, for PCs with internet connections. The move to Android tablets and other Android powered devices will make the 100 games in Big Fish’s library available to a wider audience and inch the company closer to its goals of creating a cloud gaming service that can be enjoyed anytime, anyplace and on any device. Big Fish will use a subscription model to charge clients for an account that will give them access to the casual games.
Big Fish Unlimited uses cloud computing to provide games to its subscribers. The game actually runs in a data center that is connected to the user’s PC via the internet. OnLive is a similar cloud based game service that recently shut down. The company is attempting a comeback, but OnLive’s similarities to Big Fish has critics wondering if Big Fish will face the same fate as OnLive.
Paul Thelen, CEO of Big Fish, is adamant that the two firms are quite different. He attributed the downfall of OnLive to their heavy infrastructure needs due to the nature of their content. Thelen says that OnLive was trying to run very high end 3D games which required massive servers. According to the CEO, Big Fish has low-tech, 2D games which do not need anywhere close to the infrastructure that Onlive required. As an example, the company mentioned that in order to support demand in the US, Big Fish uses only one data centre on each coast of the country.
Another difference between the failed OnLive and Big Fish is game ownership. OnLive struggled because it had to license games and then give it to users. Game developers were unwilling to give up their product and OnLive ended up paying licensing fees. On the other hand, Big Fish own 60 to 70 percent of its games and have exclusive streaming rights for all its games.
This should be a good match with the company’s ambitions to stream games on as many platforms as possible. Big Fish is growing steadily and currently has 550 employees. Ever since the firms inception in 2002 a network of 500 developers has contributed games to its library including its own game studio.
Source: Venture Beat
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