Playcast raises $10 million for cloud gaming

Series B round from MK Captial and JVP bolsters company's games-on-demand service

Cloud gaming company Playcast Media Systems announced Tuesday that it has raised $10 million in Series B financing from MK Capital and JVP, with participation from existing shareholders Xenia Venture Capital and C.Mer Industries.
 
MK Capital is a Chicago/Los Angeles-based venture fund and JVP is an Israeli venture capital firm; both are focused on digital media. As part of the deal, both MK Capital partner Yair Laudau and JVP partner Gadi Tirosh have been appointed to the Playcast board of directors.
 
Playcast produces a next-generation games-on-demand service that converts any standard set-top box into a gaming platform, all without a console. The system is installed in cable, IPTV and Hybrid DBS headends, allowing for people to get their game on by adding only one component to their system: a joypad.
 
The company says they have solved any latency issues by testing a variety of games at large scale over live networks. Licensed content in Playcast’s collection include games from many top publishers, including Activision, THQ, and Atari.
 
New director Gadi Tirosh makes a solid argument for the attractiveness of this statrtup:
 
"Playcast is at the nexus of some of the most powerful trends in the media business today – turning media from DVD sales and broadcast to on-demand streaming, enabling a new release window for AAA games, over-the-top TV services and the introduction of cloud computing to media services.”
 
With offices in Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States, Playcast is a decidedly global company. Its CEO says the business has already seen considerable success in both Europe and Asia, something the company would like to replicate in other markets. Just how successful in uncertain, but we’ve reached out to the company to find out more. Playcast only just launched in Europe in November 2010, so it’s hard to say how widespread user adoption might already be.