Chinese casual gaming fans will soon be able to put down their smartphones and instead pick up their remote controls. That’s because Ubitus has just announced that its GameCloud platform will launch in the country in partnership with China Telecom on October 1st, 2012. It’ll bring “cloud gaming” to owners of web-enabled Smart TVs or set-top boxes, allowing them to play console-style high-definition games without the need to actually have a games console. The Ubitus library of licensed titles will bring games covering motor racing, sports, RPGs, virtual fighters, puzzlers, and more, all into the living room on the big-screen.
Games consoles like the Xbox are technically illegal in China, and are only available via the grey-import market. The only real – well, legal – challenger to this new Ubitus and China Telecom tie-up would be the newly-launched, home-grown CT510 ‘eedoo motion’ device.
Chinese brand Skyworth already has plenty of 'smart TV' models.
It gives Taiwan-based Ubitus the first commercial cloud gaming platform that’s running in China. No pricing details have yet been revealed, and this will likely be limited to China Telecom (NYSE:CHA; HKG:0728) home broadband subscribers who actually have a fast enough connection speed (after factoring in China Telecom losing more than half of your promised speed somewhere in the tubes) to handle this new wave of cloud gaming.
The deal also saw three major makers of HD smart TVs – China’s Skyworth and Konka, and South Korea’s LG (066570:KS) – brought in to demo the new platform at China Telecom’s own 2012 Tianyi (E-surfing) 3G Handset Fair which took place this weekend in Guangzhou, and where the announcement (pictured top) took place. It’s not clear if they’ll also be demoing the cloud gaming system in-store in the run-up to its October launch.
Just last week we looked at new stats which showed that 30 percent of new, web-enabled smart TVs were being sold in China, making the market second only in terms of enthusiastic adoption to Japan.
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