Cloud gaming service provider GameString released a demo video yesterday showing popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft running on an Android-powered HTC Desire. Just to be clear what cloud gaming is, that’s when 3D rendering is done on a remote computer so the phone’s limited processing power and bandwidth can focus on displaying the pure video and handling user input. This particular demo was played over a Wi-Fi network (good luck on 3G), with a computer that was running WoW about 80 km away.
We’ve seen this kind of scheme working before on the Omnia with Crysis, and the iPad with Quake 3, but no doubt the World of Warcraft fanatics who have already stocked up with the official Armory and Auction House apps are wondering what’s next in Blizzard’s bag of mobile tricks. While I doubt they’ll bring WoW proper to a phone or even a tablet, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Blizzard create a tailored mobile MMO using any of their established sci-fi or fantasy IPs.
Meanwhile, third parties like GameString here can try to get popular games into portable form factors (be it Android or otherwise) and tap into a highly-loyal user base. Personally, I think the lag would be too significant to do any really intense gaming, but as is, it looks like their system is good enough for casual puttering around maybe doing some solo quests. Over time as networks and device hardware improve, maybe cloud gaming schemes like this will be able to accommodate those critical milliseconds of reaction time required for anything fast-paced, but we’re certainly not there yet. Besides, cramming such a big experience on to a small mobile phone is asking a bit much though, isn’t it? I’d rather play on something like the iPad, or maybe some equivalent big-screen Android tablet.
If you want to try this out, GameString is launching their Adrenalin service as a beta in about 45 days – go ahead and sign up over here.
[via Droidgamers]