New Service Aims To Replace Consoles With Cloud Gaming

ThinSkin writes "Imagine playing bleeding-edge games, yet never again upgrading your hardware. That's the ambitious goal of OnLive's Internet delivered gaming service. Using cloud computing, OnLive's goal is to 'make all modern games playable on any system,' thanks in large part to OnLive's remote servers that do all the heavy lifting. With a fast enough Internet connection, gamers can effectively stream and play games using a PC, Mac, or a 'MicroConsole,' 'a dedicated gaming client provided by OnLive that includes a game controller.' Without ever having to worry about costly hardware upgrades or the cost of a next-gen console, gamers can expect to fork over about $50 yearly just for the service. If this thing takes off, this can spell trouble for gaming consoles down the road, especially if already-established services like Steam and Impulse join the fray."

Comments

Caps

[Spad]

It's all fun and games (no pun intended) until you've been playing for a couple of hours and used up the whole of your monthly bandwidth allowance.

I know that some people have the option of truely unlimited service, but an awful lot don't and that puts this service out of their reach.

Re:Caps

[tepples]

It's all fun and games (no pun intended) until you've been playing for a couple of hours and used up the whole of your monthly bandwidth allowance.

Or if you have your video games set up at a family party, away from the Internet entirely, and you don't think an air card or a tetherable data plan is worth $720 per year.

Re:Caps

[Moryath]

Hmmm.

Anyone else reminded of The Phantom?

Re:Caps

[poetmatt]

Fiber is 100mbits where? Japan? Last I heard of promises were 50mbits, and that even that was the language of "up to" not "actual/realistic". Bluray will truly use 50 megabits a second, not "up to 50". Difference there. so I agree, uncapped. However, how often have you heard of an uncapped connection? We've had capped connections longer than the issues of packet shaping. Certainly not getting better.

Lans' are 100megabits? Wha? You can buy an 8 port gig switch for 40 bucks (25 AR).

Meanwhile, I do agree with the rest of what you said. There is no real improvement here in general, I'm just saying being able to play all the games off a local network with only one host would be nice for consoles which aren't really friendly to that idea right now. Mostly because they're more locked down than any other DRM that exists. It's "you want to play more than 4 people/more than one game at once, you need more consoles".

The no piracy claim tells me that this is vaporware, really. Cloud computing as a whole is vaporware and it's own form of not so subtle DRM, remote VM's are not.

Re:Caps

[Em Emalb]

May as well reply here.

Am I the only one that actually enjoys owning hardware? I like my PS3. I like my N64. I like my Atari. I like being able to sit down in the "man cave" and play games on my large tv without having to plug in a computer to it (other than the PS3) and if I want to pause or scratch my nuts or whatever, I can.

I have FiOS at the house as well, so it's not like this would be a bad thing bandwidth-wise, but still. No thank you.

Re:Caps

[SanityInAnarchy]

Also worth mentioning: Even assuming you've got a magical encoding machine which only adds a few milliseconds to the latency, there's the simple fact that most video streamed over the Internet is done through a relatively large buffer.

In fact, Flash audio and video (Youtube and friends) seems to just download as much of the video as it can, as fast as it can, and start playing once it thinks it has enough.

This means it's possible for your connection to drop out completely for a second, or just vary by the amounts Internet traffic typically does, and so long as it comes back in time, your video will just keep playing.

This applies even to most sane "live" broadcasts.

Trying to do it actually live, within a few milliseconds, is completely different. The slightest blip in connectivity, which a sufficiently buffered stream would skip right over, is going to be catastrophic here.

And just in case it wasn't obvious: Buffers inherently add latency, proportional to their size. Add a buffer that can handle even half a second of connection trouble, and you've just added half a second between the time the player says "turn left", and the time they see the camera turn left.

I mention all of this because I suspect that the reason you'd think this is a good idea is, you've got a Roku, or you've used YouTube, or even Skype, and you've concluded that the Internet is now fast enough to do video. Maybe, but I don't think it's fast enough to do the kind of high quality, live, low-latency video demanded by a gamer.

No thanks

[Macthorpe]

Instead of normal online game lag, you have lag between you actually pressing a button and the game responding at the server.

Even a tiny amount in this situation would make the game 'feel' unresponsive.

Re:No thanks

[Albio]

So they've transferred the executable to you. Great. Now where is your hardware to execute it?

Re:No thanks

[orkybash]

every game will be playable for as long as the company feels like supporting it.

You say this like it's a good thing.

Re:No thanks

[TrekkieTechie]

There will also never be any issues of backwards compatibility, every game will be playable for as long as the company feels like supporting it.

This is a problem in my book. Once I have purchased a console, it's mine forever, and the games I purchased to go with it are mine forever too. My copy of Super Mario Bros. on the NES won't stop working just because Nintendo has decided they don't want to support the game any more.

No No No!

[godfra]

Fuck the cloud! I don't want all my gaming delivered down the pipe as a metered "service". I like owning hardware, and having the ability to play games without being hooked up to a subscriber model.

Internet gaming is often subject to ISP drop-outs and traffic shaping. Why would I willingly embrace single-player gaming in the same poor environment?