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Sony Exercising Its Acquisition of GaiKai, Plans To Stream Games To PS4
dmfinn writes "With less than 5 days until the reported PS4 launch event, new details are emerging regarding some of the console's next-gen capabilities. Since last June, Sony has been quietly sitting on its $380 million dollar acquisition of Gaikai, a cloud based gaming company. The Wall Street Journal, among other sources, is now reporting that the PS4 will have GaiKai's cloud-based gaming technology directly integrated, thought it is unclear exactly what types of games will be available for streaming. Back in June, a rumor circulated that Sony was planning to use the technology to support backwards compatibility with PS2 and PS1 games, though no further details have arisen regarding whether or not the new console will be able to play previous generation games. It appears that Sony will most likely be using the service to stream PS3 and indie games to the console, as the current technology only supports 720p, not high enough quality for blockbuster games. Constantly streaming interactive graphics, even if only at 720p, will still require a fast internet connection. Services like OnLive have struggled in the past due to the large amount of bandwidth they require, and many consumers complained of laggy connections and horrendous graphics. There is no word yet regarding the features of the games being streamed, including whether or not they will support online or local multiplayer."
Why such massive computational power? Just to decode h264 streams and spend lots of money in centralized servers? For that there is no need for releasing a PS4, they could use current PS3 hardware, more than enough for receive and play such streams.
IMO, Sony will go bankrupt eventually. That is non-sense, and non-scalable.
None of those old single player games were designed for lag and the vast majority of people just don't have the net connection for it. There's a reason online streaming of games went no where, it sucks.
If this is how they implement backwards compatibility what happens to people's existing catalog of PS1, 2, and 3 games? Do they have to pay again for the right to stream the games they already bought? This sounds like a wonderful idea to rip off consumers. (also Oxford comma forever)
None of those old single player games were designed for lag
Games with a slower pace, such as anything that's not a bunny-hopping FPS or clickfest RTS, could probably be adapted to 100 ms control lag. In fact, rhythm games have had explicit lag settings in one form or another since Dance Dance Revolution Konamix on the original PlayStation to account for upscaler lag in the monitor.
Tachyons : The Returnening.
These things are just seriously not useful for any game that requires twitch or even fast reactions.
Other games, sure, fine.
Of course, MP servers for those types of games would likely be killed to make space for new games, so local play (if it even exists) would be the only option, or self-hosted servers (again, if it even exists).
I will still never know why these stupid companies won't let you rent a server with actual cash, they'd make quite a bit of money from it.
I will still never know why these stupid companies won't let you rent a server with actual cash, they'd make quite a bit of money from it.
Because the amount of cash that one would be willing to pay to rent a server wouldn't be as big as the amount of cash if every player would buy the game's sequel.
You know very well that it's simply fun to have a new machine with better game graphics.
Then why not just buy a PC or put a new video card in your existing PC? A new video card will have HDMI out for your TV.
Serious question, am I the only one that sees the end coming for these big name Consoles? I don't know much about what Nintendo is doing, but Sony and Microsoft seem to be trying to, almost Rape people.
No used games, Massive DRM, Streaming, Lock-ins, Insane prices etc. These types of things are Bad, if they continue adding things that are Consumer unfriendly, I just can't see a future for these Companies.
You got these Mini-Consoles popping up now, almost as if they are the next evolution in Consoles and alternatives for people tired of the Big Boys behavior. You guys can't see all of this happening? It's quite clear to me.
For that there is no need for releasing a PS4, they could use current PS3 hardware
Likewise, for a game like Lumines in 2005, there wasn't much need for releasing it on PSP when it could have been easily done on the existing Game Boy Advance. In fact, three different developers ended up releasing three different fan-made ports: Gleam, Luminesweeper, and Luminate.
There are three reasons to sell a game for a new console rather than the old:
they could use it for streaming the menus of certain games, so an essential part of the game is ran on their servers while the game itself resides on the console.
Because the amount of cash that one would be willing to pay to rent a server wouldn't be as big as the amount of cash if every player would buy the game's sequel.
Wow... why would one need to rent a server? Doesn't anyone remember the golden age of gaming when online games came with server software pre-installed? For instance, most of the Quake servers were on gamers' machines. Pay for running a server? Maybe I'm just old but that sounds insane to me.
I guess in this age of corporate hypergreed we're not likely to see gamers running their own servers again. They're going to extract every pound of flesh from customers as they can. People just bend over and take it these days. Personally, I miss computer gaming but I just can't stomach today's corporate greed.
Free Martian Whores!
I very much suspect they plan to stream only parts of the game. You'd be missing an integral part (not only data as textures, but computations), which would make a pretty solid copy protection.
I doubt they scream graphics, as you notice the lag. But I very much could assume they stream the AI, background sounds (music), cutscenes or generally execute scrips (quest progression etc) on a server. That is easily queueable and you'd not notice some lag of 100 ms.
Doesn't anyone remember the golden age of gaming when online games came with server software pre-installed? For instance, most of the Quake servers were on gamers' machines.
The Quake 1 era was before the era of a half-dozen or more devices behind a NAT.
Pay for running a server? Maybe I'm just old but that sounds insane to me.
Then explain why Internet hosting companies don't give a VPS away for free.
I guess in this age of corporate hypergreed we're not likely to see gamers running their own servers again.
It's not just game publishers' hypergreed as much as the combination of ISPs' hypergreed and ISPs' failure to deploy IPv6 to home users in a timely manner.
There is no word yet regarding the features of the games being streamed, including whether or not they will support online or local multiplayer.
The fuckers will carry on doing everything in their power to kill local multiplayer.
All my favorite experiences with console gaming involved getting together with groups of friends or family and playing a game IN THE SAME ROOM. Many great nights were had. Loads of PS1 and PS2 games had 2,4 and even 8 simultaneous players. Now you are lucky to find a split-screen game, never mind a 4 player version - which would have been enormous fun now that we have our 1080 big TVs.
Online multiplayer is NOT a superior replacement for local multiplayer. They both have their strengths and weaknesses.
Sony screwed the pooch on their best franchise mark, EverQuest, with a lame PS2 version and no PS3 capability for Everquest II.
With the 3rd (4th?) redevelopment of EverQuest Next in the wings, I wonder if this is supposed to somehow enable cross-platform functionality with the PS4 for EQ and other MMO's.
Or is that to much vision to ask of SOE?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
"not high enough quality for blockbuster games"
God Of War 3 ran at native 720p. That was a blockbuster game if I ever played one.
Parent poster, please stop talking.
I know, I know. It is early and I have a hangover.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
True, the Pandora and nD failed to "come[] out on time and on budget". The original GP2X, GP2X Wiz, and GP2X Caanoo failed to gain professional developer support in the North American market despite "com[ing] out on time and on budget". What's to say Ouya won't fail just like GP2X?
If what you say is true, why haven't MMORPGs already "die[d] a horrible death at the hands of unreliable internet connections"? I'm guessing advocates of always-on DRM would assume that the rural market is an edge case, and the marginal earnings from selling more new copies because infringing copies and used copies won't work outweighs the marginal earnings from serving the rural market. Even handheld games are starting to assume always-on due to the proliferation of cellular data plans.
The fuckers will carry on doing everything in their power to kill local multiplayer.
How can the big game studios "kill" local multiplayer? They can abandon it in their own titles, but that would just leave the genres associated with local multiplayer to indie developers, and connecting a gaming PC, Steam box, or Ouya console to a TV would become a more attractive option.
Online multiplayer is NOT a superior replacement for local multiplayer. They both have their strengths and weaknesses.
For people who live alone or with a non-gamer and can never find the time to schedule play dates, weaknesses outnumber strengths. Online multiplayer is the only way to play multiplayer with pickup groups of strangers. For genres where each player really needs his own view and pointing device, such as RTS, weaknesses outnumber strengths. And for game types that depend on hiding information from your opponents, such as FPS where both players aren't on the same team, weaknesses outnumber strengths.
In Asus many online services run at 200+.
I haven't had problems with ASUS products. What problems did you have? Or if by "Asus" you meant "Aus" as in Australia, try playing games published by Australian companies on Australian servers.
Even today's consoles pull data constantly from optical disc, which has quite big latency times.
The difference here is that a Blu-ray Disc has 72 Mbps download speed and no monthly cap. Satellite Internet has a 10 GB per month cap (source: exede.com), which isn't even enough to transfer a 25 GB layer of a Blu-ray Disc in one month.
Jesus Christ the lag is already so bad as to make these things unplayable. Now they plan to stream games, in HD no less!
I'm no hardcore gamer, but here's what I want:
1. Games that don't lag.
2. Games that are not reliant on online only.
3. Online games that are not reliant on vendor servers, so that when EA loses interest my games does not evaporate.
4. Games that don't promise extreme realism and graphics, yet take 5 HEADSHOTS to bring down an opponent.
Now I realize that these are all issues for the game developer to deal with, not the hardware, but that's what I want.
On the hardware side:
1. I want some loading speed so I don't have to wait 60 seconds for every new game or scene to load.
2. Sony updates SUCK! Every time I turn the console on, there is another update that takes half a freaking hour to download and install, won't let you proceed without installing, and significantly changes the nature of the console. New store, new social "features" remove features like alternative OSes, block mods... Shove that SHIT!
3. I want a quiet console. I don't want to hear the fan howling because the game is playing HD cut scenes. Build in adequate passive cooling and keep the fan quiet!
4. Don't make me feel like everything I do, even just watching a Blu-Ray movie is under review and scrutiny. Give me back my privacy!
PCs have noisy fans -> Yes, significantly
PCs need to be replaced with a new model every 3-4 years -> Gaming PC's do, but not for the sake of a new model. All that heat fries your mobo and graphics card. You're $400 gaming PC might not have this trouble though.
More home-theater-appropriate cases are available. -> You won't build a $400 gaming PC that is a) quite and b) as fast as a current gen game console. Those quite cases alone are $200.
PCs support USB gamepads -> PC's support Microsoft XBox gaming pads. It's hell to set up anything else because there's no standard for button numbering. I've pushed button 1 on my controller and had it show up as button 3 in game. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit was particularly nightmarish to configure. XBox Controller Emulator helps this though.
Why did the Nintendo DS replace the Game Boy Advance after about 3 1/2 years -> The last GBA game was Final Fantasy IV Advanced, released 2006. So about 5 years, give or take.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The problem with the PC is that it is a moving target. I can never have all the hardware necessary to play the latest games properly on it. For 400 bucks I can tell you that you're probably not able to play Diablo III correctly, and you'd be plagued with an annoying slight stutter. Its because the dame game was made for high end hard drives and the only solution is a Solid State Drive because it's constantly streaming data off the dame thing to avoid load screens. A typical Gaming Hard drive is 250GB and at 400 bucks that's half the cost of your little "gaming" PC. According to Steam NVidia is the highest install base for Graphics cards and their highest install NVidia is the GTX 560 ti. Again that's half the cost of your 400 buck POS. Then there is RAM and Gaming RAM isn't that Cheap 20$ crap you play with. For decent Gaming RAM you're looking at spending a bit more. Then there is the God Dame Processor. According to Steam most people are running an Intel with 2 or 4 cores. That's another 200 bucks. Then there is the motherboard, monitor, and the MF constant upgrading because PCs arn't married to a single spec so developers are constantly changing the god dame target spec I need to play. 400 gets you a PC that can play games over 5 years old and No Monitor, and the latest games on the LOWEST graphical settings. You can't buy the parts to make a PC for as cheap as you can with a Console and get the relyable gameplay you do with them.
You won't build a $400 gaming PC that is a) quite and b) as fast as a current gen game console.
Acer makes the Aspire X series of compact PCs that are roughly the size of the original Xbox 360, and anything with an AMD CPU will come with an integrated graphics processor capable of gaming. I have one, and it's been far less noisy than my cousin's original Xbox 360.
It's hell to set up anything else because there's no standard for button numbering.
I'm aware of this, and I've been doing a bit of research toward this. A PC game developer's best bet is to find the most common controllers among users, possibly using some counterpart to Microsoft's Customer Experience Improvement Program, and bundle working presets for those controllers with the game. These would include at least the Gravis/Logitech layout and the Xbox 360 layout.
I've pushed button 1 on my controller and had it show up as button 3 in game.
Then you played defective games. A game seeing a particular brand of controller for the first time should show a list of buttons to press in order. Once the player has pressed Up, Down, Left, Right, Jump, Fire, Special, and Pause, the configuration for that controller is saved. Someone using a Genesis RetroPort, for example, would take eight seconds to press Up, Down, Left, Right, C, B, A, and Start, and that hurdle is surpassed on that machine.
The last GBA game was Final Fantasy IV Advanced, released 2006. So about 5 years, give or take.
You're referring to what some have called "lame duck" games and what others have called the daddy system. Games compatible with old PCs are still being released, just as PS1 games continued to come out during the first several years of the PS2 and PS2 games continued to come out during the first several years of the PS3. So I call this a wash.
For 400 bucks I can tell you that you're probably not able to play Diablo III correctly, and you'd be plagued with an annoying slight stutter. Its because the dame game was made for high end hard drives
You can pick out a poorly engineered game for any platform. Look at the long loading pauses in early PSP games. PSP Load time Heaven and Hell compares a WWE game to GripShift, where the player completes several objectives in the latter while WWE is still loading the first match.
400 gets you a PC that can play games over 5 years old
I think hairyfeet's experience differs from yours. Search this discussion for hairyfeet.
Then there is RAM and Gaming RAM isn't that Cheap 20$ crap you play with.
What makes gaming RAM different?
and No Monitor
I thought this article was about the PlayStation 4, not the PlayStation Vita. Consoles that aren't handheld don't come with a monitor either, and consoles that are handheld don't work with Gaikai while away from a Wi-Fi signal.
PC game companies write their products for the lowest common denominator: keyboard and mouse. Gamepad support is an afterthought, and it often shows.
Are you talking major developers or indie developers? And are you talking about games in mouse-heavy genres (FPS/RTS) or games in other genres?
even using a simple gamepad in Windows means mucking about with drivers.
How so? The drivers for both my Xbox 360 controller and my Logitech controller installed automatically when I plugged them into my PC's front USB ports.
What you are referring to are essentially custom order items through specialty boutiques. Meanwhile, I can think of at least half a dozen retail shelves that have consoles on them within ten miles of where I sit.
So your argument, as I understand it, is that products on brick-and-mortar shelves are inherently superior to mail-order products. What did I misunderstand?
The GBA was sold concurrently with the DS and DS Lite
And the PSOne was sold concurrently with the PS2. And the gaming PC was sold concurrently with homework-and-Facebook PCs with Intel GMA (Graphics My Ass) and with netbooks containing a Pentium 4-equivalent Atom CPU. It's called the daddy system. An advantage of PC games is that many support scalable detail levels, which is like getting the PS2 and PS3 versions of a game in one box: when you upgrade your PC, your game will grow with you.
Setting aside for the moment that we're suddenly living in a world where the steps to play a game are more complicated than "Insert game, turn on,"
Wii has been more complicated than "insert game, turn on" since 2006: you have to use the remote and the Sensor Bar to activate the Disc Channel, even if your game uses GameCube controllers or the Wii Classic Controller.
does the Windows 8 UI even accept a gamepad as input out of the box?
I admit that Windows still requires a bit of tweaking for set-top use. but apparently there's an app for that, more than one in fact. Console UI can't be customized at all.
A high end video card is $600-$750. A console, on launch, will probably be less than that.
Does this refer to a "high end video card" marketed for use by creative professionals and CAD engineers? We'll have to wait for the release of PS4's official specs to see whether or not it has a "high end video card" or just a midrange one.
Also, there is a bit of a chasm between PC experiences and console experiences for a lot of games, due to developer and publisher focus on consoles and lack of enthusiasm about development for PC
So for what platform should small developers develop games in genres that tend toward two to four gamepads rather than a separate mouse, keyboard, and monitor per player?
Frankly, it just sounds like you're pushing an agenda.
The only agenda I'm pushing is reducing the entry barrier to developing for a platform that has local multiplayer. PCs have games from small studios but local multiplayer is rare due to tradition. Consoles have local multiplayer but small studios with low budgets face cost-prohibitive overheads.
Developers need to pay the bills, and the cost of labor tends to run higher in the countries where major developers are located. This means the developers have to charge more. Customers in the BRIC markets have less disposable income, when converted to U.S. dollars, than customers in G7 countries. This is because their currencies have a lower value, in turn due to a history of producing fewer exportable goods. As of right now, I'm guessing advocates of always-on DRM would assume that the BRIC market is an edge case, and the marginal earnings from selling more new copies to G7 countries outweighs the marginal earnings from serving the BRIC market. Perhaps what the industry needs is a brazillion more Brazilian game developers exporting their games to the G7 to even the trade balance.
A lot of console games do not have servers hosted by the developer/publisher and they don't allow users to host the games on their own consoles. Or, rather, I should rephrase that -- the developer/publisher does host servers for the games -- but players have to pay a monthly fee to rent and run them. This is happening more often on PCs, too.
In other words, they no longer give you the facilities to simply install and run your own servers. And, in many cases, to even rent servers from a third party. And they don't provide their own community servers for free. They offload the cost of running those servers to players and force them to pay for it.
Don't forget why this has come about - developers believe they will sell more copies of a game if they abandon local multiplayer and force everyone online.
It could be because of greed; if so, David Wong of Cracked agrees with you. But it could also be because of deadlines. There might not be enough time before release to optimize the renderer for two to four split-screen views when the engine is having trouble handling one. But good luck getting a fighting game like Street Fighter series or Mortal Kombat series or Smash Bros. series or whatever they're playing nowadays to require a separate copy of the game per player. In general, games that put both players in a single view instead of splitting the screen are more likely to keep local multiplayer.
I bought my PS3 for $600+ (U.S.) it came bundled with the game
"Metal Gear Solid 4" 6 actions to shoot POS.
I had no use for the PS3 as I had gone to the PC for the CoD series but
it was the last version to be backwards compatible and I have a lot of PS1, 2 games.
My PC went down (had to replace the mother board) so I replayed my Ratchet and Clank
"Up your Arsenal". When you break crates nuts and bolt fly towards Ratchet; a lot of
crates and the PS3 emulator couldn't keep up with the graphics.
I ended up repurchasing all 3 of the PS2 versions of Ratchet and Clank on one CD (10Th anniversary edition or such.)
While very inexpensive by itself that game CD cost me hundreds of bucks ($, £, mula) everything considered.
But the games besides console ports and multi-platform releases rarely support [gamepads] properly.
That and smaller-scope indie games that probably would have been a multi-platform release had the developer been big enough to afford the organizational overhead of console game development. Since the announcement of Big Picture and the Steam box, those have been popping up on Steam lately.
broke family
Buying a whole LAN of gaming PCs and extra copies of each game for house guests is a luxury. I don't see how a family that doesn't do so is necessarily "broke" in a sense worthy of derision.
first-person shooters
Other genres exist. Would you rather require buying two to four PCs and two to four monitors to play, say, a fighting game or a vertically scrolling shoot-em-up?
postage stamp sized
One-fourth of a modern HDTV is probably bigger than the monitor you played the first two or three Quake games on.
Meanwhile, the game publisher is expected to make sure that their products look acceptable at all possible scaling options (or at least the popular ones), rather than focusing on other issues.
Is making sure that a product looks good on Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA any harder than making sure that a product looks good on Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3? Or navigating the developer qualification processes of three console makers?
Can Slashdot ever find anyone who knows anything about computers. Current consoles render AAA games at lower than 720P resolution, and upscale them. This is done to allow greater rendering complexity at acceptable framerates on the very ancient hardware of the current consoles.
It is CASUAL games that can easily be rendered at native HD resolutions. What kind of cretin would NOT know this, or could not work this out from first principles. Is Slashdot really this tech illiterate?
There is NO mystery about what Gaikai can achieve. Only a worthless no-nothing tech 'journalist' would claim otherwise. GaiKai is based on streaming X264 solutions created by the lead author of X264, the world's best H264 (MPEG4 AVC) encoder, and open-source to boot. It is SHAMELESS that a Slashdot editor would not know this.
As for the features of the streaming game, well even a moron would comprehend that the features will be EXACTLY the same as those on a native PS3. After all, the streaming is created by PS3 hardware in the first place. When did people get this stupid.
Clearly, Sony will only bother to create first class PS3 cloud streaming solutions in profitable locations, so only those within decent latency distance will get any form of worthwhile service. Again, anyone with an IQ into double figures could work this fact out without being told.
So, the story is simply "Sony to use Gaikai as method of providing limited PS4 compatibility on new PS4". Dribble 'analysis' from ill-informed morons like 'dmfinn' certainly not required.
Wow... why would one need to rent a server? Doesn't anyone remember the golden age of gaming when online games came with server software pre-installed? For instance, most of the Quake servers were on gamers' machines. Pay for running a server? Maybe I'm just old but that sounds insane to me.
Monthly server costs can be pretty cheap, and for some games, you really do need a business-class server for smooth netplay. For example, I used to play a lot of Battlefield 2 - that's a game supporting up to 64 players (and that game only really came into its own with that many people playing). A lot of BF2 clans would have monthly membership dues to pay for server costs - I almost joined a couple of them, and they only wanted $8 per month from me. Considering that I played that game a good 100 hours a month back in 2006, it seemed like a pretty reasonable deal. However, I stopped playing that game when I realized my borderline obsession with it was screwing up my grades in school.
I saw the same thing back when AlterIW was offering a dedicated server alternative to the TERRIBLE matchmaking system in Modern Warfare 2.
I'm thinking it might make it harder for cheating faggots to kiddy script hack these new ones? That and perhaps they will have established a more secure platform all around?
LOL...who am I kidding? This is Sony! They have deep pockets to brute force their success in an almost "too big to fail" kind of way. They can afford to make retarded mistakes, so they shall! Sally forth with retardation, damn the torpedoes!
Take the Red Pill.
Anyone with half a brain will refuse to buy Sony again.
They have made a relentless effort to be anti-consumer. Fuck them.
cunt
Why the obscenity?
Like, for example "Source?"
If I disagree with one or more points in a post but would appreciate evidence to the contrary, what is the appropriate way to reply to the other points without incorrectly implying that I agree with the points with which I actually disagree?
Write a comment against Sony and Microsoft and it gets modded up really quick to +5. Do a post against their precious pretendo and it gets modded down as flamebait. Proving once again the fucktarded shitdot sheeple are nothing more than a bunch of communist, nigger loving hypocritcal fucktards who should go and collectively slit their fucking wrists.
GO AHEAD FUCKING FLAME AWAY
OR WASTE YOUR GODDAMNED
MOD POINTS FUCKTARDED SHITDOT SHEEPLE OR BETTER
YET GO SLIT YOUR FUCKING WRISTS
FUCKTARDED SHITDOT SHEEPLE
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