'Angry Birds' Developer Rovio Seeks Backers For 5G 'Netflix of Games' Service (dailyherald.com)

"The next success for the company behind Angry Birds could be twofold: convincing the U.S. public they should buy a 5G mobile phone from Sprint Corp., and developing the world's biggest video game streaming platform in the process," reports Bloomberg: Rovio Entertainment is in talks with "several" investors to take a stake in its subsidiary Hatch -- a "Netflix for games" platform that Sprint will use to showcase what its high-speed 5G handsets can do when it opens its new network in May. But Rovio Chief Executive Officer Kati Levoranta also needs new investors to buy into her vision for three-year-old Hatch, on which Rovio has already spent about 17 million euros ($19 million), to help it build up its library of games from developers such as Ubisoft and Sega.

"The Hatch service is brilliant for use with 5G, and many of our strategic partners are looking for services that demonstrate how 5G works and the benefits it brings," Levoranta said in an interview at the company's seaside headquarters in Espoo, Finland.... "5G is a big opportunity for us," Vesa Jutila, co-founder and chief commercial officer of Hatch Entertainment Oy, said in an interview. "Everyone seems to think cloud gaming is the way to tell the 5G story to consumers."

The app offers a portfolio of pre-vetted games to consumers, streamed to their handsets via a monthly subscription. Once the initial account is set up, mobile games can be played straight from the cloud, without needing to be downloaded or installed. The advent of high speed, low latency 5G networks makes the model all the more attractive to carriers looking to sell their latest services.

Comments

We will see the same traffic prices as before

[ffkom]

... because the mobile carriers already complain how expensive the 5G build-out will be, and they will certainly aim at increasing their profit margins, not lowering them.

The idea to stream games to mobile devices is dead on arrival due to the volume prices that haven't really changed for years - not with "3G", not with "4G". Streaming a 60fps 1080p action game will cost so much traffic that this is not going to fly.

Re:Delay

[ffkom]

Well "light-hearted all-ages type games that Rovio produces" would not require any streaming from some remote server, anyway. Mobile devices are powerful enough to run them locally.

Re:Wifi vs 5G latency

[Calydor]

I think the main idea is that you can stream the game while sitting in a bus, at a train station, etc. - away from your low latence WiFi network.

Re:Delay

[sanf780]

It all depends on the definition of input latency. The concept here is how much time it takes for a button press to show in image. 16ms equals 60Hz updates. Let me ignore the actual controller action to game logic latency. Most console games aim for 33ms updates. Add on top of that double or triple buffering or any modern sort of VSync. Add to that that most TVs include some postprocessing pipeline that takes around 100ms when you do not have game mode on.

As a side note, I remember Forza Motorsport 1 or 2 claiming their game code updated at 300Hz or so even if the render path was running at the slower 60Hz. The thing is, you cannot tell how much time it took for the game logic to show on your screen.

Re: Delay

[batukhan]

He's talking about interpolation and it does not slow things down, just adds another delay. We're talking about delay here, not throughput