The Tiny Console Killers Taking On the PS4 and Xbox 720

An anonymous reader writes "As the next generation of consoles looms, we've seen a growing trend towards low price, compact alternatives such as the Ouya and GameStick, many of which run on the Android mobile platform. But this article on the trend raises a very good point: through the use of cloud computing and game streaming technology, it's entirely possible these machines will be able to keep pace with the powerhouse technology inside the Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox 720, and perhaps even overtake them. After all, if these little boxes can simply stream from powerful servers, how can the stalwarts of gaming keep up?"

Comments

Re:latency

[TheLink]

The sad thing about latency is the networking bunch may do their jobs fairly well but the input/output hardware and software people often don't or can't.

So each router hop on the internet might only take 1ms or less whereas a mouse button click or keyboard key press might take 16 milliseconds (debouncing etc) and a crap TV might take another 16-50 milliseconds or even more.

Of course if you're unlucky to be an ocean or two away from the servers your ping goes up by 200 milliseconds or more. But if you're not, don't be surprised how little latency might be added by the network and server.

For instance my ping to www.google.com is coming back within 5 milliseconds.

But if the game server and client bunch leave Nagling on that often adds another semi-random 200+ milliseconds. I personally think Nagling belongs in the past and no longer should be enabled by default - causes more problems than it solves. It is a kludge that does something at the network layer that should more properly be done at the application layer.