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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?"
Rural areas. Dialup and satellite internet suck in this application. 3G? Unless one has a large data cap or uses their console infrequently.
yea you know what, my shitty internet has trouble streaming from youtube sometimes
Most people don't have fast enough internet to stream high quality without lag and a lot of people have data caps. If you can't even stream a Netflix movie without it buffering all the time or using up your data how are you supposed to game for hours on end?
We've talked about this a thousand times. After your normal input lag gets sent to a server, the video gets rendered and sent back, your latency is so bad that twitchy games are unplayable. I'm sure it would work fine for slow-paced games, but then... what do you need the server for?
Bandwidth use, control lag etc.
A 6 year old kid can notice the lag in Lego Batman when used on a Smart TV not in Game mode and be irritated by it.
Even under the best conditions the lag by the 'games streamed entirely from servers' is worse.
I'd accept PS1 era graphics and tight controls over 'real-life' quality streamed graphics and horrible lag.
I'm not sure the anonymous reader understands how computers work. You can't just stream CPU power. Plus, one of the main reasons for using a console is that it "just works", and having to have it connected to the internet whenever you play would be a huge pain.
The console-killer always has been the good old PC. A reasonably specced-out PC with a mid-range graphics card is far, far better than any console. But nobody listens to me. Nobody loves me.
They won't keep up.
Mommy may want to buy some shitty Ouya console cause its cheap, but little Jimmy won't want to play this shitty half assed games on it.
Seriously, do you think people WANT to phone quality graphics on a 60" TV? No, they don't even want to see it on a 15" laptop.
Anyone who thinks streamed games have chance hasn't played a game. Even for turn based games, lag that is noticeable sucks ass, and no ones internet is lag free all the time. Even if the last mile doesnt' lag, there are plenty of other hops to cause problems and introduce lag.
Consoles, current or next gen, have no worries at all about being beat out by a Gamestick or Ouya console, local or streamed. Anyone who thinks this is utterly disconnected from reality.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
They claim one of their selling points is the large amount of existing Android games available.
Can someone tell me how I'm going to play a touch-screen based game on a controller based TV console?
I'm tired of reading bullshit articles day after day from idiot bloggers. What makes systems like xbox and ps3 so powerful isn't necessarily their hardware specs but their dedication. Anything with stock android isn't good for jackshit, and will force you to buy better and better hardware just to make it go faster, a problem the ps3 and xbox gaming consoles excel at.
did you forget to take your meds?
Even with a cloud network that comes equipped with millions of graphics cards, I just don't see how they are going to get around the bandwidth bottleneck. Unless the only games being offered are board games, I just don't see how anything like an FPS being played via cloud computing due to obvious things like: 1. bandwidth needed to download the images to update the gamer's display 2. network latency causing input delays Even with great compression algorithms, you're still looking at a problem of somehow refreshing the display at a minimum of 30 fps. I cannot help but speculate you would need either large bandwidth with low latency or special hardware to uncompress the image stream. But the most important question is, what the hell happens when either the cloud is down, or when you lose your internet connection?
just sayin'
There is no way in hell they will call it Xbox 720. It would be a terrible marketing.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
Power has nothing to do with it.
The quality of the content does.
And for quality content, you do not need a giant octo-core monster with a dedicated GPU that will burn through the PCB without a proper heatsink and fan. You need power to produce another shitty cookie cutter game running off UDK, hence the reason for the Xbox 360 and PS3.
I played plenty of games in 1997-2004 that were astoundingly awesome (and still are today via emulation). For those kinds of games, even the OUYA is drastically overpowered because it runs Android and they didn't feel like writing their own OS. Seriously, if someone started from the ground up and built their own console with their own OS and their own SDK, you could pull off some impressive things with a 500mhz processor and 256MB of RAM. If you think that's bullshit, then you need only look into the history of gaming to say otherwise.
So, yeah, I suppose what qualifies as a "tiny" console today could give the 360 and PS3 a decent kicking if they got enough talented developers on board who actually had an interest in making solid games (and game engines) rather then barfing up some more crap in UDK or Unity.
The only problem is it doesn't exist yet.
So it's like the current games but with 100x more financial reason to shut down the multiplayer servers after a couple years. That sounds like a great idea! Just ask PC gamers how much they love that.
is to avoid a fractious market. This lets developers focus more on the actual game, and less on supporting all the different hardware/OS combinations. This also lets consumers spend more time playing games, and less time diagnosing problems.
For example, I got a new computer back in the summer, and found that it played a couple games incredibly slowly for no good reason (Warhammer Spacemarine and the new XCOM). The games ran fine on friends' computers, but chugged on mine even at minimum settings. I eventually found out that this was an issue with certain versions of certain motherboards and that the solution was to update my BIOS. I'd never done this, and had read stories of people bricking their computers as a result of BIOS flashing gone wrong, so I was understandably nervous about just trying a bunch of solutions. After further research, I found the BIOS upgrade I needed, and proceeded to try installing it. Woe unto me, the BIOS installer couldn't read my flashdrive, and the only clue as to why was some mention on some old forum of thumbdrives larger than 512 mb not working. Fortunately, our IT guy at work had an old 256 mb drive buried somewhere and let me borrow it. I copied the files over, booted into the BIOS flasher, and everything went smoothly. When the computer finished restarting, I was very pleased to find both games now running at perfectly playable framerates.
On my Xbox, I put the disc in and the damn thing just works. Will that still be the case if we have umpteen different consoles?
VT05, now that was a real console.
That is one of the most stupid applications for cloud computing. Centralizing processor hungry processes. Can anyone take a guess how badly it will become as this escalates?
After all, if these little boxes can simply stream from powerful servers, how can the stalwarts of gaming keep up?"
By *not* streaming from servers. I like the idea of turning a thing on and start to play, even if the service has gone out of bussiness.
After all, if these little boxes can simply stream from powerful servers, how can the stalwarts of gaming keep up?"
By building their own systems utilizing their larger amounts of revenue, infrastructure investments and personnel resources?
I'm looking forward with tremendous anticipation to new products from Sony and Msft. I will be on the edge of my seat watching those two paragons of evil beat each other to a pulp again and lose more $billions. A Tweedledee vs Tweedledum extreme mud wrestling cage fight. And I need to see if they can manage to burn a few houses down between them this time, especially since Microsoft got oh so close last time.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
This 'cloud gaming' stuff seems severely overrated; but there might be another way in which cheapie consoles do cause real trouble for their more expensive brethren:
Because(with the historical exception of Nintendo) consoles have been sold at a loss(and have also generally been somewhat odd ducks, with a fair amount of custom architecture thrown in), with the economic logic being built around massive volume sales of officially blessed games that pay a tithe for the privilege, the present sales model is only viable if it is assured that they will be sold in large numbers to customers who will buy lots of games for them. If the sales numbers suffer, or the attach rate goes to shit, the available subsidy will dwindle considerably.
We've certainly seen a rather dramatic shift on the mobile side, with 'free-as-in-you-already-own-one' cellphones and cheap downloadable games striking a certain amount of fear in the hearts of dedicated mobile console makers. Notably, they haven't done this by being objectively better(if anything, pure touchscreen gaming is sort of mediocre, and a lot of cellphone games are worth all 99 cents they cost); but they sure are convenient.
On the home console side, we could end up seeing a very similar squeeze from the low end if Google or Apple's attempts to move their mobile ecosystems into set top boxes end up working, or if one or more cable/satellite companies decide to kick out a set top box that doesn't entirely suck. The effect on dedicated fans of Medal of Halo: Gears of Assault will be limited; but lazier and more casual players could easily skip the console if they can download games from their set top box in 30 seconds for less than the cost of a new xbox AV cable... On the top end, the longer the consoles go without a refresh, the relatively cheaper PC gaming becomes.
Given the inherent weaknesses of 'cloud' gaming, and the fact that nasty little mobile SoCs aren't as powerful as CPUs that cost several times as much, the little guys aren't going to match the consoles; but the traditional console model depends on a big market in order to be viable. The more sales they lose, the harder it becomes to offer the subsidies that make console gaming cheaper than PC gaming and the AAA several-hundred-million-dollar platform exclusives that help drive sales.
When will people understand that there is no console killer. Just like TV didnt kill radio. Computers and consoles didnt kill TV. Consoles didnt kill PC's. Consoles are good at what they do and fill that niche market. Nevermind that the devices mentioned are consoles themselves. If Ouya can produce quality blockbuster titles then it will do well, if not, it will most likely go the way of the Jaguar, 3DO, Virtua Boy and other failed consoles. If not then it will fill its own niche market but never truly compete with next gen consoles. Cloud Gaming or w.e they want to call it is nice on paper but since broadband speeds are relatively slow in the US and not everyone has high speed internet, you lose a huge chunk of the market.
Sure, cloud gaming can work. Despite what people may say, OnLive works, and some people have a good time playing on it, but those people are knowingly making a sacrifice to play their game on OnLive. Cloud gaming will be fine, but even the tiniest lag is a step backwards. It's adding one more thing on top of all the other things that cause lag, and cause a game to feel bad.
Call of Duty has some of the fastest response times for any game -- that means when you pull the trigger, it feels like you instantly hear the gunshot and see the muzzleflash. Not everyone can pinpoint why a game like Call of Duty "feels" better, but it's in large part to that minimum delay, and I have no doubt that it played a not insignificant role in the success of that particular franchise.
Adding a trip across the country through your ISP is a step backwards, and it's a trade off that some people may accept -- and that's fine, hardware can be expensive after all -- but it's not a trade off that I want to see.
After all, if these little boxes can simply stream from powerful servers, how can the stalwarts of gaming keep up?
Assuming streaming is the future of gaming (and I don't think it is at all) the major players could keep up and surpass the little guys by simply buying more powerful servers.
streaming will need a lot of data centers all over the place to keep lag down. And even then people in some areas will be left out. Also 3G / 4G lag sucks.
only hackers buy a console for the hardware. Everyone else buys them for the games.
Dear God, this is the worst version (or a contender for it) of how things are supposed to work with the internet.
It seriously ranks up there with people who repeatedly stream the same YouTube clip or NetFlix movie over and over again. You're supposed to download things locally, then use them; not stream / tether them to a server. Why? Because it's the equivalent of driving your car to the super market to buy a single can of coke, driving back home, drinking it, then driving back to the store again...and so on, a few dozen times. As bad as it is for the environment for you to be driving your car as such, so it is bad for traffic on the internet.
Do you know why the people behind VOIP and other fun techologies want to regulate the internet (aside from the control / money angle)? It's because these idiots are creating so much traffic with their tethered apps; so much traffic, that (and this is the head trip), rather than inform the customers / providers that this shit needs to stop (use a cache you morons, and a big one), they're going to give them priority over other, non-latency specific traffic (like you downloading a regular file). Anyone who has studied networking should be facepalming at the thought of this design.
But no, the content providers like it, because it keeps people tethered, and their *precious* (said in Golum's voice) safe from thieves.
For the longest period of time, I couldn't understand why MS / Sony shipped their consoles with such tiny HDs. It now makes sense.
I am John Hurt.
Consoles had had bad firmware updates / issues like a pc only with alot more forced ones.
cause the idea has been around since the atari
and FAILED?
This will fail just like every other cheap android console solution. These people don't get console gaming. They assume consoles are just cheap PCs so therefore making the cheapest POS equates to a win and it won't.
G-cluster’s Games Machine is a new contender in the game streaming space currently dominated by the likes of OnLive.
That's the OnLive that nearly went bankrupt and apparently only ever had 1,800 concurrent users?
There's 2 flaws in that argument, 1) if you want to stream games from a "powerful server", you need to own a powerful server to stream games from. Who's more likely to own those servers, Microsoft and Sony, or some dude who can put together a SoC? 2) The whole idea of "cloud gaming" is ridiculous, why are we still pretending that it's real? Games need the lowest latency of almost all software. If anything, the next generation of consoles will try to tie you to the cloud (because owning all the infrastructure instead of having it in your user's living rooms makes more business sense), and that's why they'll fail.
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Routers (devices that forward your packets along the way) add much less than 1ms of delay. Single core router can add as low as 20ns. OP is obviously correct on this count.
You are right that it might be confusing what is added by the hop itself (router and light propagation delay in fiber), and what is user perceived latency. Your "ping" time is affected for example by how long it takes to process it on the target machine before sending back, and on your own machine before the result is displayed. Also count in relatively larger delays for access line (DSL/wireless) compared to core links.
Those "ping" times are usually (much) larger than pure transmission times.
if these little boxes can simply stream from powerful servers, how can the stalwarts of gaming keep up?
By using every dirty trick in the book.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Did you try OnLive?
I played Duke Nukem Forever on the OnLive demo, and it was OK. Not to my taste, but responsive enough for me.
Some games rely on millisecond twitching - Quake 3 is one - but lots of games do not. I can't play Quake 3 against online opponents because my brain is too laggy. I'd happily play, say, a recent Prince of Persia on OnLive.
How is Ouya or any other indie console maker going to deliver their products to people in South America and Asia? They look awesome for the biased views of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs but reality is things are more complex than that.
none
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"What a world. What a world..." - Last words of 'The Wicked Witch of the West'
With AAA exclusive titles. Each console has its collection of games that fanboys enjoy. This will ensure those games stay on the system and attract other players.
I keep hearing DRM is bad, "always online" requirement is bad and now someone wants to outsource my PC?
Bigger latency, less control over my own stuff, why on Earth would I do that?
If the winner of a particular generation is all about difficulty of making and running infringing copies, then why didn't GameCube win? Its nonstandard format (80 mm DVD, six pinholes in the lead-in whose positions are stored in the BCA, reshuffled physical sector format) made it the hardest of the sixth generation to pirate, if I remember correctly.
And with the newly announced SoC you can have independent display on your tablet and your HDMI connected viewing screen. Which sounds awefully like that new Nintendo thing.
True, a lot of the functionality of a Wii U GamePad can be simulated through a 7" Android tablet connected to a PC through Wi-Fi or a 7" Android tablet connected to an HDTV through HDMI. But the Wii U GamePad also has physical buttons for those parts of a game where physical buttons are superior to a flat sheet of glass. The Archos GamePad is an Android tablet with buttons, but it's not out yet in North America.
If I want an OUYA Console, it'll cost me $NZ215.
How so? I thought Ouya was 100 USD, and 100 USD exchanged to 119 NZD. Is it shipping or customs that's so high?
the entire catalog of Android games require a touch screen.
"Entire" is a strong word. I am aware of multiple games for Android that already support keyboard control even prior to the Ouya's release, and Android on my Nexus 7 tablet translates USB gamepad presses into keyboard presses.
I wouldn't even dream to play Sonic without my controller.
Provided your tablet is compatible (some aren't, unfortunately), Sonic 4 is one of those few games whose on-screen gamepad actually works. There's really only one button, and I'm told the way it simulates a D-pad (displacement from initial point of contact, so you can lift and press to recenter) is comfortable to use. Where it gets difficult is any game that has both jump and fire buttons.
"Xbox 720" is a temporary name adopted by the press, much like "GCNext" before Revolution (pre-production name for Wii) was announced or "Wii 2" before it was officially called Wii U. It expresses the same meaning as "Microsoft's eighth-generation video game console" with far less text.
Buying a console, is not option to me. Not everyone is home bound.
I don't fully understand what you mean by "home bound", but Nintendo 3DS? PlayStation Vita? Buying a console and running its HDMI out to your existing desktop PC's monitor?
Not to mention, that when I move, I have to sell everything
I don't understand why. A console fits in luggage better than a full-size PC tower ever would.
Most people live in cities. More people move from rural areas to cities. Been that way for years, and will remain that way for the forseeable future. Why target a small market, that is hard and expensive to reach, and that is in decline?
Consoles have issues, yeah, but they are much less frequent than they are on PC. And when the console itself isn't defective in some way, all games generally run without issue.
Maybe when the standard has become 10mb/sec download/uploads this could be a reality. Until that point, I'm going to go ahead and say the XBOX 720 and PS4 will come out and have a traditional console life. The following iteration of consoles will probably have something to fear.
If Nintendo sets up a VM on the console, that's not additional hassle for the user. But if I have to set one up myself on my PC, then it is.
Then it's a good thing that old DOS games purchased from GOG.com come with DOSBox.
there has been support for Bluetooth/USB connected gamepads since at least Android 4.0
Which is something extra to carry, at least compared to a Nintendo 3DS or PlayStation Vita. It's also something extra to buy, and application developers can't depend on end users already owning one. Video games that require a specialized controller tend to be popular only when bundled with that controller (like DDR or Guitar Hero or Wii Fit), and that's possible only for games that come on a disc or cartridge, not for purchased downloads.
You pair an Android tablet with a PS3 controller by connecting it via USB once. Paired via Bluetooth forever.
I tried doing that with a Wii Remote. It worked with my Nexus 7 tablet under Android 4.1, but the update to Android 4.2 "swapped out an essential component of bluetooth with a different solution" that broke the driver application. I don't own a PlayStation 3 console, so before I buy a controller, will PlayStation 3 controllers continue to work even through Android upgrades?
Couldn't be simpler.
It could be simpler if the PS3 controller broke into two pieces that snapped onto the sides of the tablet. Otherwise, the player has to put the tablet down and pick up the controller to do a controller part of the game, then put the controller down and pick up the tablet to do a touch part of the game.
But especially, I'd expect a lot of indie games from people who don't want the pain of dealing with MS/Sony/Nintendo - quirkier, edgier games.
This alleged "pain" ensures that a console's app store won't be dominated by "a bunch of wannabe game developers making a ton of shovelware tetris/bejeweled/sokoban clones", as CronoCloud put it. A flood of me-too titles already nearly killed the video game market once three decades ago.
What? There are 360 games that output 1080P!
Not all of them though. A lot of the major titles, such as Call of Duty series and reportedly Final Fantasy XIII, render in 576p so that they can use better shaders. Then they scale it up to 720p or 1080p depending on the machine's TV settings. I don't own an Xbox 360; my cousin does, so I haven't had a chance to investigate whether the HUD is added before or after this upscaling. True, 576p isn't "standard def with no AA" as mjwx claimed, but it's not HDTV either. Resolutions up to 576i are considered SDTV; resolutions up to 576p are EDTV.
Re: the content providers like it,
And the internet service providers like it because they can charge you for each time you download it, especially when they can charge metered rates on your ISP or your telephone contract. And the advertisers like it because google gets to serve you more ads each time you re-view and re-load the youtube page. And nielsen and soundscan like it because they get to add a metric called "repeated viewing" for videos and "repeated play" for songs.
.
My cousins and and aunt and uncle were also totally totally surprised when I showed them how they could take their collection of CDs and put them onto their own itunes application on an apple. They'd bought my cousin an ipod touch about 4 years ago and installed itunes on a PC and they'd been giving him money and gift cards to keep repurchasing songs which they already had in their home collection/library of discs!!! They were seriously shocked when they realized that the $40 bucks a month they'd been giving him for buying music (why can't my parents be this crazy at throwing money away?) had just been used to repurchase songs which they already HAD!!! Anyway, I believe the answer to why people keep doing this sort of repeat purchasing and repeat streaming is that they are idiots, they are stupid, they are stupid idiots who do not know any better about how the internets ought to operate.
still The Personal Computer!
Perlsix - Second system dun goofed.