Gametree TV Gaming Model

There are a few ways to deliver games to the set top box or iDTV. The traditional model is that a company provides the games and servers themselves. The games are developed in-house and remain casual in nature. All intellectual property is owned by the company delivering the game service. Operators can either host the game portal themsleves or pay for them to be hosted on a server.Digiquest is an example of this type of model. Typically their games are simple, casual games that target many platforms.

Another way to deliver games is by streaming video. Here the games, usually full Console or PC titles are actually run remotely on a server or gaming console and video of the result sent to the user. This allows any games to be run at all, but has considerable issues of lag and bandwidth to overcome. In addition the server back end could be expensive to setup and maintain. Operators would not run this server service themselves I guess. One company providing such a service is Playcast which I have previously blogged about here.

Free, in the box games exist of course, but they are of little interest commercially speaking.



Now TransGaming Inc are attacking the TV gaming world. Known for their portability layer for the Mac platform, Transgaming have established a gaming service called Gametree. Here the company concentrates on servers, porting apis and crucially apis to support various business models for delivering the games including advertising. The idea is that certain PC games will run on next generation set top boxes. Transgaming, rather than develop the games themselves, enables the porting and integration of existing games onto the platforms and their Gametree server and business model.

This seems like a good idea. So much so, Intel have invested. This is logical as Intel perhaps make the porting easiest with their Canmore and in the future Sodaville devices. Its not clear if the relationship is exclusive.

There is a video available from the Gametree site. Its highly marketing oriented, but it does push the ability of games developers to integrate apis that allow advertising and various purchasing models for the games. Something important until we understand well Gaming on Demand. Also, Transgaming plans to integrate gaming controllers into the platform. An absolute necessity and again reaffirms my view that next generation set top boxes will no longer use the traditional RCU.

The biggest problem of this method of delivery is that the game must run on the set top box which of course is not a PC. This means only a limited range of PC games are applicable. Thewebsite has this to say:

While the graphics performance isn't on the same level as high-end triple-A gaming, it is not intended to be. It is truly amazing the number of titles that are possible on GameTree.tv, including native Linux games and Flash-based games.

Nontheless the problem of which games to deliver is shifted from Transgaming to the games companies, where it should be. The server and supporting APIs are provided by Transgaming, where they should be. Business models are flexible, as they should be. It all sounds rather good.