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Gaikai Drawing Interest With Low-Key Demo, Believable Claims
Earlier this week, we discussed news that games industry veteran Dave Perry had posted a demo of his upcoming cloud gaming service Gaikai. Now that people have had time to speak with Perry and evaluate the demo, reaction has been surprisingly positive. Quoting Eurogamer: "What struck me about the presentation was that there was absolutely nothing unbelievable in it whatsoever. There were no claims of streaming 720p gameplay at 60 frames per second — games were running in differently sized windows according to how difficult they were to compress, and video itself runs at the internet standard 30FPS. There was no talk of world-beating compression systems that annihilate the work of the best minds in video encoding today, the demo was using the exact same h264 codec that we use ... And finally, there was nothing here to suggest that we were looking at a technological breakthrough that would make our PS3s and Xbox 360s obsolete... just that this was a brand new way to play games in an ultra-accessible manner." By contrast, OnLive was received with much more criticism, in part due to their dramatic promises. While playing online games with Gaikai will naturally add some amount of latency, the article points out that single-player games need not lag more than you'd expect from a console controller. Meanwhile, unlike OnLive, Gaikai is not trying to compete directly with the major console manufacturers, instead trying to work with them in order to deliver their first-party games to new audiences.
Sell out?
Who'd buy these guys, a gaming company or a streaming media company?
Stop giving it press.
Gaming is already ultra-accessible, this is the solution to a problem that, for consumers, doesn't exist. The only people this will benefit is the game companies.
I will not rent my game software.
This isn't OnLive - that's the vaporware competitor to this. He's stated that Nintendo has already turned down OnLive but is talking to him about possibly bringing it's games to Gaikai.
Its not a good sign when a company who makes most of the classic games that people remember rejects your ideas, and I'm not sure Sony or MS wants to jump on the bandwagon (though it wouldn't surprise me if MS bought the company if they managed to turn out a decent product).
The console manufacturers have everything to lose and nothing to gain by helping out. If this service succedes no one will be buying specalized gaming systems anymore and this company will be buying comodity hardware to run these games. At best they could each have their own roku type box that connects to the service. Even with the pc games eventually this company will end up wanting volume licensing and start taking a cut of the sale.
This is like going to EMI and asking to license their entire catalog for a new mp3 downloading website. Eventually Apple and Amazon got them to do it, but this is like asking them in 2001.
I'd see the biggest benefit of something like this is NO CHEATING, which is the bane of most PC games, FPS types especially. It's pretty hard to be running a wall hack on your client if you only get sent an already rendered image from a central server!
Hardly. Console manufacturers don't make money on the hardware, they make money on the software. Those that want the best experience (hi-def, surround sound, etc.) will still buy the hardware. Those that don't or can't afford to now don't have to. But they still need to buy the games. Cha-ching! You've now sold a game to someone who didn't have a console. How exactly is this going to hurt them?
And EMI's stupidity in not embracing 21st century technology shouldn't be held up as a banner example. I'd like to think gaming companies are a tad bit smarter than the recording industry.
Cloud huffing. Although you'll want to be sure of what's in the cloud before you huff it. A tubgirl when you expect it the less can knock you out.
You just got troll'd!
Indeed. Actually I would have loved if Slashdot had been there since prehistory.
The hot air balloon is invented : "Oh noes now the evil government will use that to spy on its citizens from above!"
The telephone is invented : "Oh great, one more way for the government to effortlessly eavesdrop on our conversations!"
The television is invented : "Pfft, as if newspapers and the radio weren't enough means of government propaganda!"
Internet multiplayer games are invented : "Waaah waaah 500 ms latencies over my 33.6 modem"
Mankind is invented : "Oh great, so now I can meet people who'll try to rob me, kill me, defraud me or have offsprings with me!"
Romantic and sexual relationships with members of the opposite sex are invented : "If I wanted to coexist with living creatures who'd suck me and give me orgasms I'd get some leeches and stick porn on their backs"
Basements are invented : "HOLY FUCK SHIT YEAH!!"
You just got troll'd!
In the video he talks about having a sub 20ms ping. I think the idea is that they would setup lots of smaller servers spread out geographically to reduce the amount of lag as much as possible. What people perhaps overlook is that games naturally have quite a large lag already, once you've pressed a button it takes up to 1 frame for that change to be registered, another frame to update the physics / animation etc, and finally a frame to render based on the previously calculated physics information. In a 30FPS game that's between 66-100ms, and that's assuming a really damn good engine which is responsive, which a lot of game engines aren't. There was an article on Gamasutra on this very topic about a year ago, if you want to read more. If the check out the third page of that article you'll see the response times for some popular games, and you might be suprised!
Moderately interesting article, though it would be more interesting IMHO to see something similar done for PC games and user interface more generically.
What I don't understand about your post though...
On my cable modem connection right now, my ping to a dns server generally are between 20-30ms. Let's say pressing a key and transmitting it to "the cloud" takes 25ms on average. Now it's input to the game, the game's 66ms processing time takes place, and the result is streamed back to me...30ms+
We're now at a minimum of over 110ms latency assuming everything runs full speed and we don't get any "buffering" etc...
Now if ping times are closer to 40-50ms ... I would expect that would be fairly unplayable...
Am I wrong?
I'd love to have this available for personal implementation. Granted - I'm thinking of very niche use. But I've attempted similar things with VNC and WoW in the past - with painful results. I'm not expecting to take my remote display in to a raid or battleground. But it'd be nice to be able to do auction house tasks, crafting, mailbox, banks, etc. wherever I happen to be at the time; reasonably quick tasks where a little latency isn't an issue.
Of course - it looks like their intent goes well beyond this.
I don't disagree that games CAN be made playable...but afaik, with the games you list--unreal, quake, etc--they have at various times implemented client side prediction and other methods to minimize the effect of lag. I remember in the days of quake1 when anyone with a sub-100 ping was a lpb :p I don't know how many games will ever be designed to work specifically with this kind of 3rd-party hosting.
Long story short, I don't ever see this technology in the near future working for that huge group of games that falls into the genre of "twitch" gaming.
Console manufacturers don't make money on the hardware, they make money on the software.
Except of course Nintendo, who is a significant contender. Also, if previous console generations are of any indicator, the current-gen consoles for Microsoft and Sony will eventually turn a profit near the end of their life cycle.
But they still need to buy the games. Cha-ching! You've now sold a game to someone who didn't have a console. How exactly is this going to hurt them?
Both Microsoft and Sony have a problem with it, because it means that some consumers may not buy/rent/whatever the software from them (so they can get their cut in the game sales) and may instead by from the other current-gen offering.
And that's why, in a nut shell, why all three major console players wouldn't see much to gain with more to lose by going along with Gaikai.
When are people going to start realizing that the "cloud" is an old idea with new hardware, and that reinventing a concept by putting it on the 'new' cloud platform isn't a business model that stands on its own?