Square Enix has started rolling out “Dive In”, a cloud gaming service, in Japan on December 3, 2014.
The company is offering Final Fantasy VII International, Final Fantasy VIII and adventure game Season of Mystery as the initial batch of titles (with more games to follow in the next few days).
Dive In requires:
- a fast Internet connection (Square Enix recommends at least 3Mbps)
- a recent and powerful Android or iOS tablet or smartphone
- the so-called Dive In Viewer app, which can be downloaded for free on the App Store or Google Play
- a Square Enix account (free)
Square Enix is charging subscription fees for each game individually, not for the service as a whole (see here for details): users can access the titles in full for a certain period of time – there are no micro-transactions or other monetization techniques.
I spent a few hours with the service and must say it’s working pretty well for a first version.
The one-sentence summary is: Dive In works, without being perfect (at least in this first iteration).
Here is a video showing me how I play Final Fantasy 7 International, which is being streamed on my iPad Air 2:
