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

[Moryath]

Hmmm.

Anyone else reminded of The Phantom?

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

[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.

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?