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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.
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
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?
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.
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?