Slashdot Mirror
OnLive and Gaikai — How To Stop a Gaming Revolution
happierr writes "The gaming industry has been struggling in the last few months, and it is about to struggle even more when OnLive and Gaikai launch later this year. The new services are both a step in the right direction to counter piracy and provide easily-accessible gaming to people with low-end PCs. They might even do for PC gaming what the Wii did for casual gaming; greatly expand the market and draw interest from people who would not ordinarily play games. The services are a real threat for the Big Three video game companies (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo). How will they combat these revolutionary services? There are a few steps that the Big Three are taking to combat the New Two, such as an increased reliance on peripherals and vision cameras, exclusivity deals, and more online multiplayer features, which OnLive and Gaikai will have a hard time matching."
Neither OnLive and Gaikai wont make any gaming revolution. Yes, they might have the power and bandwidth to run the game as streaming video off their servers, but the major issue is still latency with controller. Even 50-100ms lag will be *really* noticiable when you're just moving mouse to look around. And in some fast games when you see the enemy you'll be already dead on the server.
OnLive shows Burnout Paradise in games catalog too, and racing games are another genre where you need fast input from the controller or you will be rolling your car down the hill pretty soon. These days latency is not gonna make it. Unlike bandwidth and power, latency is a lot harder issue to overcome in future too. Sure, it works from keyboard to pc really fast. But not when its gonna move hundreds of kilometers back and worth. It's already pushed to nice 50-100ms if theres nothing interfering with your local network or something along the way. You can talk in phones in real time too (well, with the same latency, but its not noticable in that use). But for controllers, specially for mouse, its not going to work. And more so you need to stream huge video all the time that can't be prebuffered like YouTube or other video content because its generated in real time.
Games like Counter-Strike and other multiplayer games work because the amount of work and data is split between client and server. You're only sending small amount of information to the server, like current position, shots etc. and the server is sending the client back other players information. Not a huge streaming video, but small packet with coordinates and so on. And even then we all know how crappy it goes if latency grows and the game lags.
What comes to removing piracy via online delivered content, the answer isn't streaming the game as video. Answer is delivering content when needed in game. Yes, that still needs lots of bandwidth and an active internet connection, and you pretty much fuck the customers over with it. But it makes piracy a lot harder if you need to authenticate to server and you only get some, but still significant amount of content during game, dynamically. However technically that way is A LOT closer possible than streaming the game as video and sending controller movements back to the game server.
Bandwidth can grow, but latency issues aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Only things this might work with is something like chess games, but I dont know if Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are going to be so worried about that.
Soon to join the corpses of several other services that tried to do the same thing.
Broadband doesn't have the amount of penetration yet to make this possible.
The gaming industry has been struggling in the last few months, and it is about to struggle even more when OnLive and Gaikai launch later this year. The new services are both a step in the right direction to counter piracy and provide easily-accessible gaming to people with low-end PCs.
Article troll you!
This Slashdot article is SO manufactured by a PR company to promote their client, it's not even funny.
As as been pointed out elsewhere, measuring the video game industry on a month by month basis is idiotic. The US and the entire world is in a bit of a slump, but video game sales are still pretty solid overall. Traditional measurements don't account for things like online purchases, or whether or not any majorly anticipated games have been released. Keep in mind that videogame development takes place over *years*. So, those of us (well, at least me) who make games for a living just tend to shake our heads as people talk about monthly "slumps", etc.
I've heard nary a whisper from any of my colleagues and friends in the videogame industry about these new services. Most that I've talked to about it believe it to be somewhere between vaporware and wishful thinking. Yes, eventually this sort of solution may make a lot of sense. But at the moment, it's far more practical for the client to have access to local data and do the job of presentation (rendering the world) for the user. The issue of latency is simply going to be a showstopper. Unless they've figured out some sort of magical solution to turn 150-300ms latency into a snappy user experience, gamers will not flock to these services. And without gamers paving the way, the service won't be going anywhere.
You'll notice that just about every business under the sun is dying to get you to sign up for a *service* instead of purchasing *products*. This seems to be the new matra in software development of all sorts. Subscription-based services mean regular and predictable income. Everyone is looking at the cash Blizzard is raking in, and want a piece of that action. Online services also are just about the only viable protection against piracy, another bugaboo with industry execs and publishers.
This reminds me a lot of DivX - the DVD alternative, not the video codec. It was the movie industy's wet dream. Purchasing DVDs that you didn't actually own. This strikes me as something vaguely similar - a system designed for the benefit of the publishers, not the consumers. As such, it will die a slow, ignominious death as it's largely ignored by those who insist on a top-notch gaming experience.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Now we will no longer just add draconian on-line activation to the games, we will no longer give you the game itself.
Even with steam you get the game data, which could still be cracked and used if steam would go belly-up.
And there is of course the latency issues mentioned in other replies. Unless somebody breaks the laws of physics, latency will always be there. It takes roughly 40ms to cross the atlantic, making for a 80ms RTT. Routers add more as it goes, not much per each but it all adds up.
I found a fast warez site: http://warez.it.kth.se
OnLive will not be a viable option for most people.
Firstly, the streaming video quality will be quite poor.
Secondly if the video is a high enough bitrate, ISPs will get upset and eventually start filtering it. That, or you're on a metered plan and will only be able to game a few times a month.
Peak gaming hours are probably also peak internet surfing hours, and many ISPs struggle to provide webpages in a decent time, never mind decent definition streaming video.
You'll get better video quality out of a $50 video card in your current PC. Anyone releasing games exclusively onto OnLive is nothing short of barking mad.
And I've never heard of the other mechanism, I presume it is similar.
As a PC Gamer, I want to BUY my games. Why is every company trying to take that away from me? I want to walk into a store, pick up a box with a DVD in it, pay at the register, go home, and play. I also want to be able to play the game, say 5 years from now. Perhaps 10? The only thing that should stop me from playing a 10+ year old game is having a 10+ year old PC or a PC emulator. Lastly, If the game is shitty, I would like to sell it and maybe recoup my lost money.
I have cash, I want the DVD, is that so hard? Valve's games come on a DVD, but is still requires Steam to install it, so no reselling there. If steam decides to no longer support my game, oh, well. All of the games with online activation and limited installs, again no reselling and good luck playing them in 10+ years. Lastly, OnLive and Gaikai...these "revolutionary services", well...you know what your getting into to begin with. But if this is the direction PC gaming is going to take, then I am out.
For the record, Anti-PC gamers that complain about having to "upgrade every 6 months" is full of shit. I have a 4 year old system that runs new games fine. The only thing upgraded was the video card, and that was two years ago, with a bargain-bin 512Mb Nvidia card.
Also, Yes, I do replay my 10+ year old games. Hell, I even buy old classics off Amazon, good luck doing that 10 years from now!
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Ok so your ISP has low latency in itself. That is not impressive. I have a regular DOCSIS2 cable modem here in the US. Not fibre, no special new technology. However, I get pings on the range of 10-30ms to other Cox customers, and Cox sites in my state. That's wonderful... But it doesn't hold up when I have to start traversing longer distances. For example going to Google, well now I'm up to 50-60ms. Google is pretty quick, since near as I can tell it is a datacentre in a neighboring state that I'm going to, and there is a direct connection from Cox to Google. How about something over on the East Coast, say Juno, an East Cost ISP? That is more like 80-100ms. All that and I'm still in my country, still on my continent.
Now please remember that my numbers, like yours, are all minimal network pings. These are extremely fast. The actual latency for an application can often be higher since more processing has to be done and you have larger payloads.
The upshot is that you only tend to have these awesome low pings to things that are very close to you both in network terms and physical terms. In your country, maybe everything is physically close. That's not the case in the United States. My city is 100 miles away from the next major city, and that 100 miles is filled with a lot of nothing. You could fit most nations in my state with room to spare and it isn't the largest one.
So, while you could get low latencies, potentially, by sticking servers in lots of ISPs, and in lots of geographic locations, that just isn't really feasible. Barring that, there is no way you are going to have super low latencies. Sorry. There aren't magic technologies out that that people are just holding back. A large part of it is simply router speed. It takes time for a router to get a packet, figure out where it is going to go, and send it out. Every router adds a little bit of time, and unless you want to have a giant mesh with all nodes connected to all other nodes, there's going to be a lot of routers in the middle.
With longer distances, the speed that data travels through the lines itself becomes a factor. While light speed sounds really fast, it really isn't on the scale of the Earth and the time scale of data. Assuming you had an ideal vacuum situation, a beam of light can go around the Earth in about 133ms. So, even as fast as it could possibly be, we are still talking perceptible lag at long distances.
This gets worse since we don't have ideal conditions. For one, optical fibre has a higher index of refraction than a vacuum. This means that light travels slower through it. It goes maybe 2/3rds c in good fibre. Then there's the fact that fibre doesn't run in nice straight lines to its target. It goes around and over obstacles, it follows roads, rails and so on, it goes in and out of buildings and so on. You end up having a longer run than an "as the crow flies" situation.
So no matter what you do, you are going to have latency when dealing with distances, and at long distances it isn't going to be trivial. The routers are going to add latency, the cable is going to add latency, translations from one form to another will add latency, and so on.
Thus the only way to have ultra low latency is to be close physically and through the Internet to your target. This is not always feasible.
Your numbers are for the speed of light in a vacuum. How much slower is it in glass fiber? And the speed of electrical signals in copper?
The 15ms from NY to SF provides a boundary case that we can't improve on, but the *actual* latency is going to be far worse than this.
These services will / might succeed if they can be used also as video services. Since they also provide their own "DRM" that's accepted by the end-users, they could be in the position of allowing acces to video content while still keeping MPAA happy.
if they don't add video content to the mix they arer doomed, since they can't offer a unique competitive advantage over existing players in the field.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
I think 186 miles is a long way. I have a remote control for my tv so I don't have to move the six feet from my sofa.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
It can't work here in Belgium for the simple reason of capped internet. I've got a maximum of 30 gb/month as do all the big isps. Let's assume that these services need 4 mbit/s. That's like half an hour of playing every day, without downloading anything else. Unless if they can make a deal with these isps to let their traffic costfree, it just won't work.
Hah, you losers might have crappy upload speeds, but I am with Virgin Media cable and that nice mr branson has recently DOUBLED my upstream speed! Ha ha! I now have EIGHTEEN THOUSAND BYTES PER SECOND upload. Read it and weep, bitches!
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
And the most popular variants won't: FPS, racing.
Hell, even RTS games will suffer. (i certainly know those last few ms were what counted in some losses and wins on SupCom)
Unless they have created Tachyons or have some groundbreaking compression, i don't think it will work very well.
It might restart the PC games of yesterera, nice and simple games that are more game- than control-based, but that is about it.
The only other way i can see it being a success is if the developers of games make dedicated categories in their online sections for those who are going through things like OnLive. (detected directly, of course)
Still, bandwidth and latency will probably kill this, rather than the whole "IT IS DRM" thing or that you don't own it. (and i say this because people are perfectly happy with Steam)
Sending 1080p over at 60FPS is quite an intense operation, especially when you multiply it by all the users. Higher resolutions even worse.
As i said, unless they have some extreme compression, it will kill them unless they make users pay some crazy subscriptions to play. (yes, subscriptions, no one-timers here)
I say good luck to them, they will certainly need it.
The closest analog today is streaming video. And let's compare and contrast.
First, streaming pre-encoded, pre-rendered (if applicable) content is all they do. Companies trying to stream the video component of a game will require massively more amounts of computational power to do the live rendering and encoding. Also, the pre-encoding process takes advantage of both backward and forward prediction to build intermediate frames with full knowledge of what came before and what will come after a given frame. This is also something they will not have. This likely means their algorithm will not be able to compete. They say vague things like 'our algorithm is designed for gaming to get better results', but at best it sounds like they count on game output to look simplistic, which seems a poor assumption.
Video companies achieve remotely acceptable performance by extensive buffering to compensate for dips in network performance. Generally, while watching a live stream, there is always a few seconds of buffer between you and the actual end of stream thusfar. They will not have this luxury in a gaming scenario, the alternative would be to drop frames in a network performance dip.
I've only seen this work on the low-quality youtube videos (i.e. the buffer never getting drained). 'High-def' (often 720x480 is called high-def in streaming world btw, much much lower than consoles and pcs are pumping out for games commonly today) almost always stutters or has a very long pause up front while it builds up a sufficient buffer to not get exhausted. In other words, even with the advantage of not worrying about realtime considerations.
As mentioned above, the standard for remote video resolution is a *lot* lower than the standard for gaming. I expect to run at 1920x1080 on a TV and better on my PC.
Of course, as others have mentioned, simple network latency round-trip is way too high for control to feel good (I heard enough complaints about a slightly lagged TV), however this is insignificant compared to the buffering latencies that video requires to work. For video streaming, this is not an issue. The only way to mitigate this would be to have datacenters everywhere with special deals with ISPs, very much driving up costs to be even more non-competitive.
Finally, streamed video *still* has more artifacts than buying the disc or downloading the thing in advance. Trying to fit in a realistic bandwidth footprint in a streaming video context requires much lower bitrates than are comfortable. If OnLive expects to get at Video gaming resolutions.... Well... I suspect it will look badly.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Games like Counter-strike work because the input don't need to be send to the server to show a change on the screen.
You press LEFT, and the char move left on your screen. The left movement still has to hit the server, procesed, and return.
300 ms lag with Counter-Strike is playable, but feel lame. 200 ms with input lag is unplayable.. playable with training, you need to train yourself to move the character like a drunk. And that the better way to explain it. On today games, the clientside adds the quick reactions, before the data is send to teh server. Withouth that faking (clientside prediction stuff) you will move and feel like a drunk with 2 vozka bottles inside.
-Woof woof woof!
I'm going to make up some numbers pulling from Amazon EC2 and current costs of what I see as equivalent hardware. During this I'm going to ignore the cost of buying a game as this will add a whole new level of complexity that I will skim over at the end of this post.
During this I will make the following assumptions
Both consoles will be used for 40 hours a month.
Both consoles will be used for both online and single player.
I am not an economist as such the number will be wrong, the maths broken and overly simplified but as this is all for my own fun I think I can get away with it. Please correct my mistakes.
The total cost of ownership of a system can be split into the fixed costs (the price of the system) and the operation costs (the price of running the system - such as electricity).
A consoles fixed costs are quite high, a new 60 gig 360 is $300. The running costs for a 360 are the broadband connection(1) at about $15 a month and the electricity need to feed it. A hunt about put the electricity cost at $1.7 a month(2). Finally for the 360 you have XBox Live Gold at $4.17(4) as multiplayer is required.
The Cloud system will also require some hardware in the form of a IP-enabled MPEG player with a controller. This is an advanced DVD or Blu-ray player so I would guesstimate a cost of $70. It is very likely that the end user would not pay for this directly but for the sake of argument we will leave it as a fixed cost.
As with the 360 we will have a broadband connection at $15 a month and the electricity. I will use the electric cost of a PlayStation 2 as I think the two would be approximately equally powered. Plus the new system will likely also use things like wireless controllers offsetting any gains by modern construction methods. As such it will cost just $0.45 a month to run.
On top of this the rental of a computer is required. For this I will use the high end Amazon EC2 VM instance. I think it is unlikely that this will be powerful enough to run a video game and compress the video as such a device does not contain a dedicated video card but should company dedicate itself to gamer VM instances it is likely they can push the price down into the same range.
We state above that the machine will be used for 40 hours, so 40 hours of CPU time each month. On top of this I will estimate that one hour of gaming can be sent as 0.5GB of video(3) and 0.01GB of incoming user IO (controller, voice etc). I will assume no IO internally to Cloud or use of extra Amazon features. This gives a monthly cost of $13.04.
In summary with have -
Console: $300 + $20.87 a month ($250.44 a year).
Cloud: $70 + $28.49 a month ($341.88 a year).
We now need to look at the life expectancy of each device and would the local Cloud device survive the regular hardware refreshes that happen in the console market. If we start simple and give both a life expectancy of five years then the total cost of the console is $1552.20 and the total cost of the Cloud is $1779.4.
If we now assume that the local Cloud device can survive the refresh, but the 360 is replaced then the future five-yearly costs of the console is $1552.20 (the full cost above) and the Cloud is $1709.40 (just the operating cost).
Games add some extra complications to the equation. Plus the cost of games on the Cloud is unknown with ideas such as unlimited rental being included in a monthly cost of the device.
Digitally distributed games (such as Cloud games) do not have resell rights. Some people include the amount they can sell a game back as part of the overall game price, this is not possible in a digital distribution model. Also video games would only have one distributer (the owner of the cloud the user is connected too), unlike shop bought games where competition between stores come into play. Linked the previous point, prices do not degrade as quickly on digital stores as they brick and mortar stores. Finally you have the lack of piracy for Cloud games, hopefully leading to a better price for the ho
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
According to the Wiki entry for OnLive: "Broadband connections of 1.5 Mbps dials the image quality down to Wii levels while 4-5 Mbps pipes are required for HD resolution."
Assuming 4 Mbps (500 kBps) and a monthly quota of 60 GB, this equates to:
60*10^9 Bytes / 500*10^3 Bytes/sec / 60 sec/min / 60 min/hr = 33.3 hours of gameplay.
Even if you're not a hardcore gamer and you average less than 1 hour per day, a 2GB per hour dent is still pretty stiff.
Every since I've read about OnLive I've wanted to know why this is big deal. I've wanted to know what is it that their little box can do that is SO impossible to do on an existing game console. What is it that will make Nintendo, Sony, and MS suddenly stop innovating?
People get caught up on the latency issue, and as far as I know if OnLive licks is that will be a bigger deal than the gaming aspect. But latency aside, what does OnLive offer that can't be don't by the Big 3? Is it a cheaper console? I imagine that with the low hardware requirement for OnLive that the Wii could run a similar program with just an update. How OnLive anyone compete that? MS and Sony can't.
Then there's the matter of games. The Big 3 have them, OnLive needs them. In fact what on live is likely to have are PC games, which are cool in there on right, but according to the "popular believe" PC gaming is dead, or dying or whatever. Apparently everyone is in to consoles these days. If OnLive is to succeed does that mead everyone will drop their consoles and start playing PC games en mass? I would like to see that, honestly being a PC gamer myself.
If the Big 3 somehow loses to OnLive the they deserve to lose. That means that they did nothing to activly compete. But I don't that that they won't stop competing.
I don't see this working when doing the same Over LAN with stuff like photoshop, cad and stuff with high bandwidth and cpu needs is not that good and hear you are talking about ISP with more traffic and lower speeds as well caps.
As you might know, many people just want to play small games in-between things, not invest too much time, etc. And for those people, Flash games are perfect.
According to the German IT/telco industry association "Bitkom", 73% of all online-players from 14 years upwards prefer games in the browser.
And while a call my self a pro gamer, I love Kongregate. Those games have no ultra-realistic graphics, no real stories, etc. So they have to concentrate on good gameplay / mechanics, and then give it nice aesthetics. They can also explore new ideas rather quickly, without a 3-5 year development cycle.
But as usual, xkcd has said it better already: http://xkcd.com/484/
It's really true.
And this is, where a big part of the future of (casual) gaming lies. At least in my eyes.
P.S.: I hope I make sense. I just woke up and my brain has only just started booting. Which makes my sentences somewhat strangely structured. Especially these foreign language capabilities.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
TFA would have been better referring to the Ansoff's Product-Market Growth Matrix.
Market penetration - exclusive games to attract gamers from other consoles.
Product development - selling new kinds of peripherals to make more from existing customers.
Market development - Guitar Hero has also sold a lot of consoles to previously non-gamers, Wii took Nintento away to new casual market (doing this via product development, but the major change was their market).
Diversification - media centre, though really it's the consoles themselves which are a diversification for MS and Sony whom previously focused on different products to different markets.
At the moment Natal seems to be intent on spanning most categories but I think it's primary objective is market development.
I don't see anything to suggest that OnLive is the trigger for any of this, the competition between MS, Sony and Nintendo is. My guess is OnLive will either blow them out of the water or be insignificant. In the (however unlikely) event that OnLive works as hyped at a reasonable price, it should have the potential to do anything the console guys are doing so the "big three" will only have title exclusives to defend with.
The concept that the increase in gaming peripherals is in any way connected to services like OnLive is just ludicrous.
One might look to, say, the $1+bn success of the Guitar Hero franchise and the staggering success of the Wii (with its new input method) as a potential reason the industry might have an interest in games with peripherals.
Perhaps.
Has no one grabbed these people by the ears and told them : "What you are trying to do is stupid by design" ? I've eviscerated clients over far milder offences.
Yes, the latency issue is obvious. Even if they can get it down to 30ms round-trip (perfectly feasible in the U.S.), it's still too much. Why ? Well let's assume 30 fps progressive display, that means every single action will be at least three frames behind. Why ? Because games already work on a precisely synced loop. The input will get there 15ms late, so it misses "its" rendering cycle and has to wait for the next pass. Then the video result needs to be compressed and sent back with another 15ms delay. Even assuming instant video compression (yeah right!), by the time you see the result of your action, the game engine is processing the 3rd frame ahead. In reality the video compression probably adds another 15 to 20ms at the very least, so you're now four frames behind - IF you're lucky.
Then there's the infrastructure to deliver this remote gaming experience. You need: big honkin' game machines (one per simultaneous client), big honkin' top-tier bandwidth, big honkin' support crew. None of these things are cheap, and since your servers need to be physically close to the customer base, everyone's going to be playing around the same time slots, and your game servers will sit idle about 2/3rds of the time. How can that be profitable ?
I think from an conceptual/philosophical perspective, instant anywhere gaming is a futuristic ideal. From a practical standpoint, it doesn't fly due to the damning technological limitations. It is a service that could be far better delivered by individual ISPs, just a hop or two away from the client, and that might be a good partnership strategy for this company, but to self-deliver the service like any other web service, that's suicide.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Not a huge market wants to play PC games because they prefer the living room experience, and you can't use proprietary console controllers (guns, dance mats, motion controllers, etc), so consoles are out.
Twinstiq, game news
Reading this posts it looks like people aren't looking at the big picture. Latency issues? Physical possession of a game?
Let me put it this way. Companies want to reach widder audiences and have bigger control on their assets. We all know this.
They also know people like ease of use. That is why services like Xbox Live and Steam are so popular. IF most people could try and buy a game without
even geting out of their house, you can bet they would do it. If they could play it anywhere, you bet they would. Now the only thing that could set people off is
technological limitation. And that my friends, is becomming less and less of a problem. We will pretty soon have a fast enough internet to get near no latency. And no,
it won't take a few more decades. It is happening now, and believe me the big dogs are watching. AMD has a huge investment to build a server farm for cloud gaming using their hybrid CPU/GPU technology.
Microsoft has huge investments in cloud computing and believe me, their Xbox Live service is just a small trial to the real thing. All this guys are getting ready for the switch.
So much so that their now beggining to focus on peripherals to set them selfs apart.
In a few years you'll be subscribing to an online Xbox Live cloud computing service. You'll have your project Natal at our living room, and games will be streamed to your TV.
User created content may as well be uploaded to their service if they so wish. They could release an API to communicate with their services. It is only a matter of adapting the industry to this new reality.
The article touts Guitar Hero and similar games as the "big three's" counterattack to streaming game content, but that doesn't make sense, because the Guitar Hero franchise exploded while the streaming services were barely thought of. The author of the article is talking out his ass IMO.
Also I hate the digs he takes on the streaming services. Oh Noes! Is the new technology going to upset your precious status quo?! Get over it bitch. Either write an article and give me facts, or write an editorial and give me opinions. Don't give me a half-assed mix of both.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso