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Sony Announces Game Streaming Service
You may remember Gaikai, a company built on the idea of cloud-based gaming. The idea was that a remote server would run the game and stream all graphics and sound to a player's device, which would allow underpowered or obsolete machines to run modern, graphically demanding games on high settings. In 2012, Sony purchased Gaikai. Now, they've announced at CES that their cloud gaming tech (dubbed 'PlayStation Now') is just about ready for the public. CES attendees will be able to try it out, and Sony will begin a closed beta test in the U.S. later this month. Full release is planned for summer. It will first support streaming to PS3s, PS4s, and certain Sony TV models. Later, it will expand more broadly to various non-Sony "internet-connected devices." Players will have the option to rent games or to subscribe for continued access. Forbes reports, "According to Sony, gamers who own disc- or digital-based games will not have access to those games via PS Now free of charge."
"Always play the most updated version of your game." Remove version control from my hands and I'm not sure I'll be happy with that. I've played a few games where the next version was, IMHO, inferior in some aspect I valued.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Don't you just love the constant creeping neofeudalism everywhere?
Time for a boycott?
Lack of money will change there thinking very fast.
You fossil.
People with that mindset said, "nobody would ever pay $70 (or more) a month for mobile phone service" and then the telecoms and smart phone makers proved that completely wrong. There's, in my opinion, a huge market of players and potential players who don't care and will flock to this. The only thing you can hope for is they will still make physical copies available.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"Pay per shot".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I wonder if I can use Gaikai to play a game I've always wanted on my PS3 called "watch a fucking MKV file"
No.
Boycotts don't work, unless they are well publicized and have a huge following. Chances are you might never seen one that effective in your lifetime.
There are always petitions. Though companies are great at ignoring petitions, especially internet petitions, unless they get a massive number of signatures.
Something that has a higher probability of working. It's a letter writing campaign. Not email, actual snail mail get a stamp dead tree format communication protocol.
Yes, have people send them physical letters. It only costs each person one stamp, and each one is worth a thousand emails or petition signatures.
Will that get what you want? I have no idea, but it is a lot more likely to get a response than a minor unexplained dip in sales that probably isn't even noticed.
... let's just say that right now, this is all just marketing to cover up the fact that game ownership is being undermined and taken away and they are feeding the dumb half to the population PR to shove it down their throats.
I have a hard time believing they can overcome the latency problems to my satisfaction. If you can play Frogger on this service than that's some pretty darn good latency.
It was the first version with the "Nightmare" skill level, as well as not having yet removed the swastika room. Many, many little changes were made to Doom up until v1.9, which was the final one.
Aha I just played through Doom 1 and I was damned sure when I lowered that particular patform that it formed a swastika and was confused by its slightly different shape. I wondered if I misremembered it. Thanks for clearing that up.
As for streamed games relative to versions that ship has sailed. Steam only sends you the latest version, and sure you can disable updates but what does that really get you exactly? You can't easily go backwards or install an old version later, and you usually need the new version to do any kind of multiplayer.
And the same stuff applies to disc based console games too. Sure you have the disk... 1.0 but if 1.2 was the best and 1.9 is the current... you have 1.0 or 1.9... good luck ever getting 1.2 on your xbo?? or ps??.
Even so I dislike intensely streamed games for many scenarios. But it might not be all bad for certain competitive genres if the lag is reduced enough -- as it can dramatically reduce cheating.
If video game publishers want pay per view, why don't they bring back arcades?
MKV has some amazingly useful and underutilized features. Everyone is (or should be) familiar with how it can do multiple audio/video/subtitle streams. It's chapter functionality is also really nice. The best and neatest thing is it's ability to pull in a separate file for a chapter. So instead of having 30 different TV show files each with the same opening and closing scene, you have those two scenes as separate files which are mixed in on the fly.
Data deduplication is a wonderful thing.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
All they need is a horde of younger players who love the idea who will shout down any older person who dares to object. That's how we got to the state where DRM is accepted and applauded in video games, so the publishers are now just squeezing tighter.
Imagine if the Ubisoft always-on DRM were an inherent, unremoveable aspect of the game system rather than just something tacked on to a few individual games after the fact, such that Ubisoft couldn't even begrudgingly neuter it in a patch. Well, this is even worse than that would be.
The game doesn't even run locally. All you get is streaming video/audio and all the lag you'd expect (including controller lag), which is a recipe for disaster in North America (before you even consider data caps).
Let's say you're lucky enough to have a 30mb/s connection. Why would you want to use it to transfer your game's video instead of, uh, a DVI cable, which is capable of 4 Gb/s? The people who developed DVI apparently understood that that 1920 x 1200 pixels w/ 24 bits/pixels @ 60Hz results in bandwidth well over 3 Gb/s. The people who push this stuff seem very, very confused (at best).
Some people consider IPS monitors unsuitable for games requiring fast reflexes (i.e. FPSes) due to their double-digit response times. Internet latency is often worse and certainly more unpredictable than LCD monitor response time, and with this tech it applies to audio and keyboard/controller/etc input too.
Those of us who know anything about bandwidth and compression and (especially) latency can see the enormous technical obstacles facing a service like this, and no one has ever done anything to explain how they intend to solve them. Onlive did everything they could to lock out independent reviewers with NDAs and closed demonstrations. A friend of mine described it as the gaming equivalent of the perpetual motion scam, and IMO that's spot on (except that it would still have the draconian DRM issues even if it worked perfectly).
Streaming games appear designed from the ground up to benefit the game publishers and fuck the customers, exactly what you'd expect from any DRM system.
will not be over rent vs buy. People have already demonstrated they will pay a monthly subscription if it gives them easy access to a broad range of interesting content; Netflix is a prime example of people's willingness to pay. The real battle will be over data use. Streaming services push bandwidth use up dramatically and as they become more popular ISPs will look for ways to make money off of the increased usage. ATT has already fired a first shot with their "content owner pays for data use" model they just announced. As more content becomes available via subscription look for ISPs, especially those that are cable providers, to look for ways to recoup money that is lost as people jump from cable to streaming content. I could even see the cable companies adding Sony's service as a package deal much like they have HBO and other premium channels, the only difference is what device uses the content.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
It's not unusual for Anime series to have canned credits on the way out which change in no particulars. And guess who actually uses MKV?
The people who pirate anime who are also obsessed with subtitles.