When you say Gaikai, you say revolutionary technology, and revolutionary in this context means the possibility to play on line in your browser ANY game you want. Gaikai comes in with an extremely new approach – it hosts the games, runs them, updates hardware and software streaming them to the users, that is why it is called the “Streaming Worlds”. All is there to be needed is a browser and internet access. Browser’s ability to give free streaming of video enables the flow to be fast, efficient and reliable. The Gaikai puts its service at your disposal with a high resolution, high quality steam with stereo sound.
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The developer David Perry made a demo of the new Gaikai game streaming showing a variety of games from Mario Kart 64 to World of Warcraft in only one browser window. The question that one raises is in what way this new Gaikai approach differs from its previous OnLive? The point is that OnLive is striving to get an audience that sits comfortable in the living room and play this feature. It is quite a struggle since they have to put up with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo by trying to gain more players, thus “stealing” them from the above mentioned corporations.

Gaikai plan is to help developers and publishers to change the manner in which people discover their games. Once sold the technology to the publishers it will enable them to save a fortune on advertising, and they will be the ones to worry about how the users are charged. Gaikai at the moment are not licensing, publishers can host the games through Gaikai service, and therefore no license dealing is requested.

Launching in the public will happen in California, and depending on how this launch goes, the open beta will start going nationwide. Up to now there are a lot of companies that have started licensing the last Rockfree game even before they have finished developing it, and in this light they will reach the level of having an incredible amount of player traffic in the following 6 months. The partnerships they have with GameInvestors and Acclaim are great. These two companies incorporate very talented people, and Acclaim, for instance, has now over 10 million players, but for the time being the main focus of Gaikai is to develop games with no frictions.

They are still working to develop the Open beta, but the results are yet to be seen in the progress at Rockfree Web site. Gaikai is still considered to be one of the first companies to promote free playing and this aspect is gaining more reality in the USA, whether you like it or not.

In an interview with Gary Dunn, managing director of European development for Sega, talks about the publishers propensity toward mature titles for Nintento’s Wii, about his desire to work on 2012 Olympic games in developing Sonic titles outside Japan. He speaks about the developers he gathered inside the Technology Group, developers that perform the best graphics together with other general game programmers; they were the same to assist in creating PS 3 version of “Viking: Battle for Asgard” and their work is quoted to be tremendous.
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As Dunn declares, Sega has a focus in being overall developed in Europe, and with the release of “Total War” they have already taken the first steps. They have also the Football Manager Live on which they are still doing the PSP content and have to be sure of its availability on proper devices. As it was the case with Xbox 360 that didn’t seem to be an appropriate format thus determining Sega to pull it off the market.

As to the mature-rated content for the Wii, such as “House of the Dead: Overkill” and “Ghost Squad” proved to be profitable to Sega comp. That step allowed them to gain confidence in wanting to push the experiment even further. With the “Mad World” released in combination with Platinum Games it was merely an attempt to get behind the products and even though the game didn’t sell good, that doesn’t necessary mean that the mature Wii titles is history for Sega. With money to invest in development it will not be a hard thing to keep the story going.

Dunn expressed his desire to personally work on a game based on the 2012 Olympics, since he saw this as an wonderful opportunity for a game developer, but there hadn’t been nothing established yet. At the same time, working outside Japan is a big responsibility but also a challenge that maybe every developer would grab at, if offered. The co-operation with Sonic Team proves to be very constructive in the SumoDigital, that makes Sega want to take further steps next to them.

The Wii-mote that uses motion control technology from Microsoft and Sony opens a new area that offers so many possibilities in performing good tasks with videogames. This also implies a new way in approaching the things they have for so long accomplished in Sega comp. as totally different styles of games could be conceived. This new technology needs to be considered since it enables them to have access to genres that weren’t to be approached before. This requires also money and time investments into products that have to be created from the scratch. As one of the largest publisher on Wii, they have experience in gesture features so it won’t be so much of a problem to grab at this new opportunity.

Wii-mote comes with three different motion controls options, as well as three different platforms, and it is up to Sega to determine which one is the best to work with.

When Techland and Ubisoft release “Call of Juarez” two years ago, a story of a first-person shooter that took place in Wild Wild West, they didn’t necessary see it as a start for a series, but meanwhile “Call of Juarez - Bound in Blood” appeared to complete the story from its origin. The figure that draws attention to this game is the anti-hero character in the form of Reverend Ray who leads the bible and a band of six shooters with the same ease in his search for a mythical cursed treasure. This new story brings us back to the origin of their quest for gold.
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The game begins with Ray and Thomas McCall, two brothers fighting in the Confederate Army, who desert in order to save their family from Union soldiers. Then a series of events take place: the two brothers fleeing from their commander’s chase and meet a Mexican bandit leader, called Juarez, and his concubine, Marisa, both of them delivering some information about the Cortez treasure. The McCalls have to face also some Apache menace, presumably connected to the gold as well. The story is narrated by William, the youngest brother that fills you in on the actions of the other two.

As a player you can choose one the two characters, Ray or Thomas, that have different styles of weapons. Ray is a more powerful character, being able to do all sorts of things that require strength. Thomas is a character based more on his agilities having the skills to climb different structures or use the lasso to get on higher ground. The two characters help each other in different circumstances, so you don’t need to be concerned which one to choose best.

The focus is on your gunshots, with every enemy down you can get ammo, various weapons to replace yours or you can cash money to buy supplies. Another thing is that killing each enemy adds to your concentration counter, meaning that either Thomas or Ray are allowed to trigger a bullet time-like effect (that lasts one minute) to quickly defeat their foe. The shooting system works like this: when you draw your weapon, a reticule will point to the opponent’s body, and then you can pull the trigger in order to perform a lethal wound.

The fights are fun, but sometimes you have the feeling that some of the chapters look alike even though they happen to be located in other settings, and the tasks to be performed seem to limit only to the two characters riding toward a location, shoot whoever is around and then move further. Visuals are very well rendered, though there is some screen editing that keeps on popping between the events of the story. The graphics present themselves pretty good, maybe a little more variety in the creation of the enemies characters and their environment wouldn’t have hurt.

The IGN’s rating for “Call of Juarez – Bound in Blood” is 7.7 that qualifies the game as a GOOD one.