3D Cloud Gaming (Hardware provided by the Data Center)

[cbn]

http://www.onlive.com/index.html

http://www.onlive.com/about.html

What do you guys think about this?

 

[Rebel44]

It will fail because of latency and capacity related problems (IMO).

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Beaten to death topic. It should have been rolled out a year ago.

Not worth a discussion to be honest.

 

[SHAQ]

Bandwidth isn't large enough for triple monitor stereo gaming I'm pretty sure. If it does take off won't it be great when you have to pay an hourly fee to play a game?

 

[BD231]

Sounds expensive. One high end PC purchase would probably save you a lot of money over this service.

 

[blanketyblank]

It maybe the future, but it's way too soon. Not everyone has highspeed internet yet in the U.S. I think it could work overseas though in countries like Korea or something houurly fee is normal and they have highspeed internet everywhere. Thus it makes total sense to get a cheap computer there and subscribe instead of getting a high end gaming PC (especially since parts are usually more expensive outside the US).

 

[Keysplayr]

The day comes where I have to pay an hourly fee to game, on TOP of my electric bill, cost of game etc. Is the day I quit gaming. I hear Backgammon is quite entertaining.

 

[cbn]

Sounds expensive. One high end PC purchase would probably save you a lot of money over this service.

I think for them to make this work the game content has to be at a higher standard than PC.

Why buy games through subscription when steam sales are so cheap and $100 video cards play console ports so easily?

 

[cbn]

The day comes where I have to pay an hourly fee to game, on TOP of my electric bill, cost of game etc. Is the day I quit gaming. I hear Backgammon is quite entertaining.

Yeah, but if it raises the standard of gaming I'm all for it.

When the Cloud computing game starts losing subscribers they can then knock it off as a regular PC or Console game (able to be purchased through Steam, Best buy or wherever)

 

[blanketyblank]

The day comes where I have to pay an hourly fee to game, on TOP of my electric bill, cost of game etc. Is the day I quit gaming. I hear Backgammon is quite entertaining.

Not into WoW or other MMORPG? True it's technically not hourly, but it's fairly close depending how much you game/ can do without sleep.

 

[cbn]

http://www.onlive.com/partners.html

I'm noticing one of the partners is Nvidia.

Who thinks there might be a chance to see some very sophisticated TWIMTBP games on this service? Wouldn't mandating subscription reduce piracy and increase game developers chance to make a profit with respect to these type of games and simulations?

 

[BD231]

I think for them to make this work the game content has to be at a higher standard than PC.

Why buy games through subscription when steam sales are so cheap and $100 video cards play console ports so easily?

I can't find much detail on the hardware behind the data center so there's a lot to question.

It all sounds expensive considering how demanding some of today's titles are, but, maybe they found a way to provide this service in an affordable fashion. I'd pay a monthly fee if I got to choose from an assortment of games every month and do away with buying titles all together. Free to play as long as long as you pay would be interesting.

 

[dguy6789]

No chance it will take off. It's going to fail. To do what they say they are going to do, they would need very near a 1:1 servers to customers ratio. No chance they will have the money for that. Can you think of even one company that has as many servers as it has customers?

Then there's the latency issue to consider.

It's not like PC gaming is so hard or expensive to do that tons of people can't afford it and are desperate to play PC games. A $50-60 video card in a $400 desktop PC will play every single PC game ever made at medium quality settings. The PC doesn't even offer very many exclusives worth playing anymore either. Why would someone put up with all of the hassles that will inevitably plague On Live when they could just buy a console or a video card?

 

[cbn]

It all sounds expensive considering how demanding some of today's titles are

To me, the situation is the opposite with PC gaming. The titles are not demanding relative to the progression of hardware.

I'm sure a lot of IT people would like to see a business model that helps to escalate the hardware requirements for PC gaming/simulations. Maybe Cloud computing is one way to achieve this or maybe it is not?

 

[happy medium]

I signed up for beta testing. Looks cool.

 

[cbn]

It's not like PC gaming is so hard or expensive to do that tons of people can't afford it and are desperate to play PC games. A $50-60 video card in a $400 desktop PC will play every single PC game ever made at medium quality settings. The PC doesn't even offer very many exclusives worth playing anymore either. Why would someone put up with all of the hassles that will inevitably plague On Live when they could just buy a console or a video card?

x2.

I also agree with you about people not exactly being desperate to play games. Maybe there are ways to make the games more like simulations with some interesting educational content included?

 

[cbn]

No chance it will take off. It's going to fail. To do what they say they are going to do, they would need very near a 1:1 servers to customers ratio.

Could games be run from servers not being fully loaded? (ie, gaming service uses the surplus time/capabilities of the data center).

If so, what type of servers would be best suited for this task?

 

[BD231]

You need a dedicated/comparable GPU for every end user, which is demanding. With all the goodies, eye candy and high resolution's people play at these days; titles are most definitely demanding.

Jump down to a mid range graphics solution and your XBox quickly becomes a more enjoyable experience, not to mention a cheaper option.

 

[novasatori]

I don't think its going to be hourly fees.

I signed up for beta testing. Looks cool.

It is cool. :sneaky:

 

[cbn]

You need a dedicated/comparable GPU for every end user, which is demanding. With all the goodies, eye candy and high resolution's people play at these days; titles are most definitely demanding.

Jump down to a mid range graphics solution and your XBox quickly becomes a more enjoyable experience, not to mention a cheaper option.

But why is Xbox 360 so much better than a modern PC with a 2009-2010 Midrange Video card?

I might be wrong but I think I remember some developers stating (in online interviews) that programming for consoles is so much more efficient than PCs. More efficient programming makes less hardware perform better? Hmmm...that makes sense.

Why can't this same efficiency be applied to a strong Cloud computing datacenter?

 

[dguy6789]

When a developer programs a console game, the hardware that will be running the game is static. They can make the game take full advantage of the machine's strengths while avoiding situations that would be difficult for the machine to handle. The result is really polished games that perform well and look good at the same time.

When a developer makes a PC game, they need to make it be able to run on all kinds of computers with very large ranges of processor power, amount of ram, video card power, hard drive speed, etc.. They also have to take into consideration different operating systems, different versions within the same operating system(SP1, SP2, etc..), and different driver versions. PCs also have to run the operating system at the same time as the game, which takes away some resources that could be used for the game.

On Live looks like it is just going to take standard PC games and run them through their own software and server farm from what I have read.

 

[blanketyblank]

You don't need a great GPU at all, but you would need games that are programmed differently. Since you're just sending data and receiving commands the goal is to do as much of the processing ahead of time as possible. In other words you want to do something like the old FMV games a while back with prerendered graphics. It would require more storage to save every possible alternative, but considering how cheap HD space is getting now it's possible.
I think they are counting on developers willing to make special games available since there are copyright issues as well. You'll notice most of the EULA's contain clauses restricting the use of game titles and include things that stop them from being used in like netcafes.

 

[dflynchimp]

bandwidth issues would drive ISP costs through the roof if this was to match the kind of visuals we have with locally stored games. That and input lag would be horrendous.

Of course I'm not ruling this technology out come ten years into the future, but the infrastructure to support it isn't mature at this point in time.

 

[cbn]

http://www.betanews.com/article/AMD...percomputer-for-graphics-rendering/1231475506

Here is a nice concise article on an OTOY/AMD Cloud gaming collaboration.

"That's right, the company is suggesting that its cloud could pre-render graphics that a cell phone's processor isn't capable of rendering in real-time, and beam it to its user faster than its native processor would normally work."

 

[Lonbjerg]

bandwidth issues would drive ISP costs through the roof if this was to match the kind of visuals we have with locally stored games. That and input lag would be horrendous.

Of course I'm not ruling this technology out come ten years into the future, but the infrastructure to support it isn't mature at this point in time.

Oh really?
Care to explain that?
It would only affect IPS with a bad buisness model...and a congested network.