Game Changer

Otoy programmer Jules Urbach has promised that his company will do for videogames what iTunes did for music and what YouTube, Hulu and Netflix are doing for video: put all the content on servers and let gamers play the latest titles on nearly any device with a screen, an Internet connection and a basic microprocessor. Putting games entirely online removes the costs of manufacturing, distributing and retailing them, which eat up an average 45% of retail sales. Chip giant AMD gave Otoy a custom-built server with a thousand of its newest graphics cards lashed together. Urbach takes advantage of the fact that graphics chips have some downtime, measured in milliseconds, while the computer retrieves colors and images from memory or performs other tasks. Otoy's software lets the graphics chip cores juggle multiple tasks when they aren't in use.