WoW On an iPad Via Gaikai

Gametap writes "If cloud gaming works for enough genres, it can't help but find popularity. Even just a game like WoW might be enough to make it happen, and Gaikai's Dave Perry posted a picture of doing just that on an iPad. So is it the future or not? Could somebody make a tablet with nothing more than a screen, battery, network port, and video decoder, and have it be a good gaming platform? Will it change the mobile, PC, console, and TV world as we know it? Lots of questions, lots of skepticism, lots of players and money being invested — but one thing is for sure: it will be very interesting to see how this evolves."

Comments

Re:Yeah right

[linj]

Quake 3 (Arena) works fine one tier up, though. Runs playable (50+fps) on a (clocked down) 800MHz C2D with that GMA X3100. (:

At this rate, mobile phone performance is likely to surpass the platform I'm on very soon. Just recently, Intel demo'd a 100fps Q3A on their prototype mobile phone.

Re:Input

[Dragonshed]

I totally agree.

The ipad puts alot of design constraints on apps. Most games turn part of the touch screen into a controller input that plays similar to a portable console (think gameboy). Doesn't work for a game like WoW, or Blizzard would've ported it to consoles long ago.

-ds

How to do it properly

[Macka]

Yes, you're missing a mouse. Applications (games specifically) need to be modified to make use of accelerometer and touch input to be useful on a tablet device. The better games exploit this by adding gestures and multi-touch input to enhance game interaction. You can see this for yourself: there's a 1:28 demo of the iPad version of N.O.V.A where they show all this stuff off.

Re:How to do it properly

[cynyr]

nope, just make the accelerometer send out mouse signals, or an app to translate the data that way, why would games need to be modified for touch? an FPS tilting the tablet would send WASD key presses.

But the game you linked did nothing with the accelerometer. What would be cool is http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/keyboards-mice/77ba/ but as a multitouch surface with on screen buttons, and palm rejection. I wonder how hard it would be to set up one of those displaylink monitors to do that.

hardly a surprise

[Cederic]

I had WoW playable on my T-Mobile G1 (an Android phone) via VNC over a year ago. With the added bonus of a hardware keyboard for text input..

That a more modern device with a better processor and bigger screen can also do something like this isn't a surprise at all.

For me the form factor of the iPad precludes its use for serious online interactive gaming. It's a sleek elegant device with diabolical gaming inputs. Why bother?

Now, getting WoW to run natively on my n900.. that's a fun and worthy achievement. It still wont be a viable replacement for a 1920x1200 screen with full sized keyboard attached.

Re:PC-only MMO?

[delinear]

Maybe it is - I don't think they specifically refer to what the "other" OS is (although it's pretty clearly meant to be Windows), but maybe it's the equivalent of "I'm a car", "I'm a Ferrari" - indicating that they realise of course that the Ferrari is also a car, but it's of a higher pedigree than average, in which case there's nothing wrong with their usage of the term (although their interpretation is open to debate).

Re:THIS IS ASTONISHING!

[Azureflare]

I know it's fashionable to not read the article on Slashdot, but you really should.

It may be possible for WoW to be re-compiled to run on the iPad, but that's not what happened here. They are using Gaikai, a cloud computing server which is still in beta. Gaikai is designed as a service to play games on hosted servers and stream to your client which essentially acts as a dumb terminal. This would essentially remove the requirement to have a 3D graphics accelerator on your computer.

It's a very interesting concept, and if they can do it I will be very impressed. I'm guessing there are going to be a number of hurdles with this operation, because this is not a typical cloud service; there is a lot of processing involved here.

It'll probably cost a lot to subscribe...

Re:THIS IS ASTONISHING!

[BitZtream]

But surely the title should be: Fully Featured MacOS Computer Runs Game That Already Runs on MacOS Computers

Too bad thats not whats happening. The iPad is only displaying and taking input, the game runs elsewhere. That is why this story exists. Its roughly like playing the game via RDP or VNC. Do you think that RDP or VNC some how magically transport the code and data for the application to your local machine to run it?

No, wait, I have a better one: Expensive Fully Featured MacOS Computer Runs Game That Already Runs on Any Cheap-Ass Commodity Windows Computer

While that is true, it has no relation to this story at all. the iPad isn't a fully featured Mac computer. Its an iPad, it is a cut down tablet style PC with input methods that are pretty much nothing like a cheap ass commodity windows computer or a fully featured Mac ...

A little verbose, but I think accuracy is important in journalism.

If you think accuracy is important than why are you so completely out of touch with the story and its facts? You essentially got every single thing wrong in your post and you want to talk about accuracy? Next time before you start talking about accuracy you should probably get at least one of the facts of the story straight. Its really a good idea to actually HAVE A CLUE before you start telling others they don't.

Really? Modded insightful? So not only are you a moron, but at the time of writing this, at least four other idiots followed right along with you.

This is a perfect example of why slashdot needs a -1 WRONG modifier.