It is with deep regret to announce that the GameRail network has been discontinued at this time. Thank you to the gamers who have participated in the GameRail trial and support of its development as we worked to solve the issues of latency and network quality and their impact on gaming. We believe that latency and network quality will continue to affect the gaming experience and while we are still believers in the GameRail concept, the market does not appear to be ready to support a standalone network for gaming at this time.

GameRail operated a high speed network that directly connected online game players to servers hosting popular games. GameRail’s business model was to deliver superior performance to its subscribers by peering directly with ISPs, universities and game server providers (GSPs). Low latency is crucial in multiplayer first-person shooter games like CounterStrike, where a slow connection can leave a player at a competitive disadvantage. But gamers are also a price-sensitive crowd, as noted by Wagner James Au at GigaOm:

GameRail’s death notice suggests a broader reason: There are probably very few gamers out there willing to pay extra to become what’s colloquially called an SLPB, or “super low ping bastard.”

Team Pandemic will be the first pro-gaming team to exclusively game on Dell XPS systems featuring Intel Core 2 Duo processors and Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate. “Dell’s college initiative provides us the opportunity to work closely with the industry’s technology leaders,” said Chris Lemley, president of Team Pandemic. “With Dell Unleashed as a title partner, we have a unique variety of media to further reach the college-aged gamer.”

The Frag Dolls, a team of seven women gamers, will hold a casting call for a new member as part of the sponsorship with Dell. I wrote about the Frag Dolls on GameJournalism.com back in 2004, and it turned out to be one of the best read articles on that blog (now part of Video Game Media Watch). The combination of attractive women and FPS gaming was a hit magnet, which is clearly what Ubisoft was thinking when it assembled the team. The Dell sponsorship will likely raise the Frag Dolls’ profile even further.

Applicants for the casting call will be interviewed Aug. 2-5 in the Dell booth at QuakeCon in Dallas, and the qualifiers will compete in the finals on Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas at Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle, Aug. 24-26.

“We selected TeliaSonera International Carrier in order to expand our operations into Europe and support the initial release of online games this summer,” Derek Wise, GNi president and CEOWise explained. TeliaSonera International Carrier in partnership with IXEurope will also provide GNi with high density colocation facilities located in Frankfurt, Germany. GNi, with OGSi, is one of the leading providers of managed Internet services in the United States, offering robust, highly competitive infrastructure and bandwidth to the games industry.

Online Game Services Inc. has been refining its game hosting service provider business model since its inception in June 2004. The company now works with a number of online game companies, providing them with fully managed dedicated game hosting services.

CEVO holds online video-game competitions in North America and Australia for both amateurs and professional gamers. With a base of over 30,000 registered members, events typically have 2,500 gamers competing for up to $30,000 in cash and prizes. CEVO’s whole online experience comes through the Internet Platform provided through the LT platform, which stores player, team and match data on highly secure and accessible database servers. Layered Tech’s infrastructure operates the live virtual environments for each competition. Since launching in 2005, CEVO and its sponsors have awarded over $150,000 in cash and prizes to event participants.

“Combining our two companies clearly strengthens our ability to serve the game industry with innovative hosting solutions,” said James Hursthouse, CEO of OGSi. “We’ll also be taking our ‘pay-as-you-grow’ model into new areas such as interactive TV, video and music services, and social community websites.”

OGSi currently has more than 1,000 blade servers packed into 12 cabinets in 365 Main’s San Francisco data center. OGSi has been developing its game service provider business model since 2004, hosting sites for Ping0 LLC and GoPets Ltd. with the new Hellgate London online game. With its acquisition by GNi, OGSi expects to have over 4,000 additional servers operational for games clients in 10 datacenters worldwide by the end of 2007.

“We’ll be building out these gaming dedicated hosting infrastructure in other data centers operated by 365 Main,” said Hursthouse. “Our goal is to provide the industry with every excuse not to build data center infrastructure in-house. It’s a drastic reduction in risk and cost.”