NVIDIA introduces GRID - Might be the end of consoles!

[SirPauly]

I think that is extreme --this is another way of generating revenue.

 

[BenSkywalker]

To call OnLive junk and the idea of cloudgaming junk is retarded.

Yeah, we all know the speed of light doubles every eighteen months, so obviously cloud gaming is going to get a lot better.......

 

[railven]

Why distasteful? PC gaming in its infancy isn't what it is today; why can't cloud gaming improve and mature as well. Another example of the PC and GPU technologies evolving to bring in more revenue. Having more revenue generated for PC gaming is a healthy thing.

The advantage of the PC was its flexibility to evolve into much more, imho.

Does this actually benefit PC gaming? From the article I read, it seemed you didn't even need a PC to game on it, let alone a powerful one.

More importantly, who profits more from this - the devs or the streaming provider? I wonder how licenses will work for something like this.

We aren't technically renting it (which renting gives the IP owner royalties) and we aren't technically buying them (so I wonder if 1 license can cover more than 1 user.)

Man with the whole used game fiasco, I wonder how devs would respond to something like this.

 

[MrTeal]

I can't see how this would be cost effective for anyone that would need an increase in their bandwidth to support it. You'd be better off buying a $150 GPU every couple years, and 1080p on something like a 6870 would be vastly superior to how much they'd have to compress the stream to fit 1080p over most residential connections.

For mobile devices like a tablet or ultrabook, this might be interesting. I'd love to see a demo of it in action on a thin IB ultrabook, where thermals keep you from actually using a real GPU.

 

[Grooveriding]

Who wants to use this instead of their gaming rig ?

You just answered how successful cloud gaming is.

 

[formulav8]

Wow, people defending this... pretty obvious failure? Could be wrong but how many games would this actually be able to provide a good user experience?

 

[SirPauly]

Does this actually benefit PC gaming? From the article I read, it seemed you didn't even need a PC to game on it, let alone a powerful one.

More importantly, who profits more from this - the devs or the streaming provider? I wonder how licenses will work for something like this.

We aren't technically renting it (which renting gives the IP owner royalties) and we aren't technically buying them (so I wonder if 1 license can cover more than 1 user.)

Man with the whole used game fiasco, I wonder how devs would respond to something like this.

Look at some of their partners:

http://www.pcper.com/image/view/13617?return=node/54384

NVIDIA isn't going at this alone though and as you would expect of a company with this much gaming cache, they have lined up the best in the business. Online game streaming services have signed on including Gaikai and OTOY, virtualization technologies from Microsoft, Xen, Citrix and VMWare are support and system OEMs like Cisco, Dell, IBM and HP will be able to produce systems with the GeForce GRID processor

 

[njdevilsfan87]

No thanks. By the time we can stream 1080p decently, the mainstream TV and monitor will have moved onto quad-HD. It's a cool idea, but we'd have sacrifice too much quality to pull something like this off, and I'm not willing to do that at all.

 

[blackened23]

Pauly, This announcement does nothing to further PC development and the fact that nvidia is embracing something that should be the bane to every hardware tweaker on the planet, is worrisome. Even some of the biggest nvidia fans on other boards don't like this at all, and for good reason.

 

[Dark Shroud]

I say this as someone who actually owns a Killer 2100, you can't magically speed up people's internet connections.

There is no way in hell this going to kill off consoles.

 

[railven]

Look at some of their partners:

http://www.pcper.com/image/view/13617?return=node/54384

No offense, but that isn't a very compeling list. Epic is probably the only real healthy dev outside of CDProject (who still really only have one strong IP.)

And this really didn't address my question, not that I expected you to have "the" answer, more or so, with devs recently fighting publishers (and indirectly consumers) on what they claim is being short-changed, I'd really be interested to see how streaming technology benefits the devs.

I wonder if the streaming provider pays a flat out rate...I remember when Netflix first started, the studios thought it would fail and asked for pennies in royalties, then bam when it became a boom the studios wanted cajillions more which sort of screwed Netflix.

 

[n0x1ous]

This is definitely not for us, but maybe is just their way of "potentially" getting a piece of the console type crowd since it looks like AMD got all the next gen console deals.

I don't think it means we have to worry about their commitment to traditional PC gaming.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Cloud computing I don't know to big brotherish

 

[railven]

This is definitely not for the us, but maybe is just their way of "potentially" get a piece of the console type crowd since it looks like AMD got all the next gen console deals.

I don't think it means we have to worry about their commitment to traditional PC gaming.

The only way I'd see this targeting the console crew is if the consoles offered the function of using the streaming service, which I doubt either one would since it is a direct competitor to their own services.

I could probably entertain the idea that console makers would use such a technology to offer a rental option for their own games (or IPs.) With even giant publishers trying to get more of the pie (EA + Origin) I personally don't see the devs/publishers working together on something that cannabilizes their own channels.

Worse if they implement a lock-out period like studios do to rental outlets that don't buy their own stock. I believe it's 45 days.

 

[tviceman]

Casual gamers can get a Llano or Trinity laptop for cheap to do all their work on and still game better without latency issues or network interuptions, streaming bottlenecks etc etc.

Fail service is set to fail.

Wake me up when Llano and trinity are in tablets and phones.

Oh wait.

 

[railven]

Wake me up when Llano and trinity are in tablets and phones.

Oh wait.

Do you have a smart phone? Have you noticed the extra latency pegged by your 4G provider?

If the latency on a home network (wired) is questionable, I'd not even consider using my 4G provider.

When I was re-doing my living room and had to cut off the internet for about a week, I tried to use tethering via my 4G phone. I had great speeds, but man was the latency killer. I'm talking 400MS+ in an area that downloaded off 4G 2MBs+

 

[tviceman]

Who wants to use this instead of their gaming rig ?

You just answered how successful cloud gaming is.

I think any PC gamer would rather have the performance benefits of their own setup, but if Steam were to adopt something like this to go along side their download and play service, traveling with a phone or laptop when out of town, or simply at a friends house, would mean you still have access to all your games without having drag around a 30+ lbs. gaming rig.

It's a neat concept that can coexist along side and compliment the services, habits, and luxuries we already enjoy.

 

[tviceman]

Do you have a smart phone? Have you noticed the extra latency pegged by your 4G provider?

If the latency on a home network (wired) is questionable, I'd not even consider using my 4G provider.

When I was re-doing my living room and had to cut off the internet for about a week, I tried to use tethering via my 4G phone. I had great speeds, but man was the latency killer. I'm talking 400MS+ in an area that downloaded off 4G 2MBs+

If you are anywhere there is a big screen TV, chances are good that you won't need to rely on your carrier's network service. Wifi is prevalent.

 

[KompuKare]

Wow, people defending this... pretty obvious failure? Could be wrong but how many games would this actually be able to provide a good user experience?

I have this feeling that some people here would defend anything if it was made a certain green company...

Oh, and the only device manufacturers who might be interested in this are Internet TV since that kind of interactive thing might fit in there. I still can't help to think of 'Dragon Lair' one of the most hyped slideshow ever.

 

[Mistwalker]

Does this actually benefit PC gaming? From the article I read, it seemed you didn't even need a PC to game on it, let alone a powerful one.

PC gaming would definitely not be the benefactor of this technology.

Logistically I think they'd be forced to focus on casual games and portable systems, anything beyond that and the system fails due to (take your pick): latency, bandwidth constraints, bandwidth cap constraints, network connectivity issues, or simply having no need for significant processing power in the first place. Which will probably suit Nvidia fine since a lot of people are spending more time with those devices anyway. Interesting technology in any case, shame its potential applications are so blunted by our lovely communications companies.

I can't see it as a rival to existing consoles either, if you want to beat the visuals they can provide your bandwidth requirements skyrocket. Even if GRID can deliver "only" 166ms lag (not gonna happen on a cellular network), action and shooter genres are out, and they tend to be the ones requiring the extra computing power in the first place...it's a big catch-22.

Lonbjerg has it right: this is for "casual" gamers. Who live in countries with no network usage caps. It most certainly won't kill of auto-aim or the like, which are mechanics designed for that very crowd, and latency will increase the need for it--not lessen it.

 

[railven]

If you are anywhere there is a big screen TV, chances are good that you won't need to rely on your carrier's network service. Wifi is prevalent.

Understandable, but have you been on public WiFis? Just curious, as someone who travels a lot these are a few things I learned:
Hotel "free" WiFi is worse than DSL tier 1, I'm talking 20-30KBs downloads, and 300+ latency, probably due to congestation and freeloaders.

The only place I enjoyed decent WiFi was the airport.

I had a HDTV at the hotel I stayed in when I went to NC. My 4G was faster than the hotel's free WiFi. It also had lower latency. I did my WoW dailies with 400+MS over 4G versus the 800+ MS from the hotel (EDIT: This was probably about peak time too, 7:30PM).

Don't get me wrong, I'd support a service like this (see my first post in this thread) I just don't our infastructure is there yet. Not even close.

 

[railven]

PC gaming would definitely not be the benefactor of this technology.

Logistically I think they'd be forced to focus on casual games and portable systems, anything beyond that and the system fails due to (take your pick): latency, bandwidth constraints, bandwidth cap constraints, network connectivity issues, or simply having no need for significant processing power in the first place. Which will probably suit Nvidia fine since a lot of people are spending more time with those devices anyway. Interesting technology in any case, shame its potential applications are so blunted by our lovely communications companies.

I can't see it as a rival to existing consoles either, if you want to beat the visuals they can provide your bandwidth requirements skyrocket. Even if GRID can deliver "only" 166ms lag (not gonna happen on a cellular network), action and shooter genres are out, and they tend to be the ones requiring the extra computing power in the first place...it's a big catch-22.

Lonbjerg has it right: this is for "casual" gamers. Who live in countries with no network usage caps. It most certainly won't kill of auto-aim or the like, which are mechanics designed for that very crowd, and latency will increase the need for it--not lessen it.

I'd definitely agree with this post. More casual slower paced games can definitely benefit from something like this, but at the same time those more slower paced games tend to run well on our current crop of mobile products (if available that is.)

I don't fully understand who would benefit from these type of products, especially if there is (which there will be) a subscription fee. I'm in no rush to pay $15 a month for the ability to play games I already bought on the go, and at that with some heavy restrictions.

I admit, I've been using my rooted cell phone in a fancy way, I use the HDMI out to play emulators any where I go with a niftly little BT controller. That to me seems more do-able than this technology and it would benefit devs directly (since you'd be buying their games.)

 

[Schmide]

I have this feeling that some people here would defend anything if it was made a certain green company...

Oh, and the only device manufacturers who might be interested in this are Internet TV since that kind of interactive thing might fit in there. I still can't help to think of 'Dragon Lair' one of the most hyped slideshow ever.

As a child of the 80s Dragon's Lair and Space Ace were awwwwwwwesome.

The lower bar on this graph, provided by NVIDIA, represents what a typical user's latency would be on a "console gaming system." The times here are pretty vague, though the 100 ms game pipeline and the 66 ms display latency seem somewhat reasonable.

Really? 100ms reasonable???

So we're talking a 10fps pipeline? Ok. Another how to lie in a bar graph article.

Edit: How to know this is BS? 166ms equates to 6.25fps. I don't think consoles would sell if they averaged 6.25fps.

 

[railven]

Really? 100ms reasonable???

So we're talking a 10fps pipeline? Ok. Another how to lie in a bar graph article.

This.

My only reasoning is they adjusted the ms through some means ie, if the console renders it at 600p in 20ms, then if we double the resolution to 1200p which is what you'd get from our service, bam now its 100ms!

But even that to me is stretching things haha. I have no idea how they came up with those values. This thing is amazing if it has LESS latency then a console hooked up directly to a tv.

This thing is telling me GRID is ~20ms FASTER!

 

[Olikan]

I can't watch videos at 1080p realtime....i have to pause and wait...

good luck gaming at 240p