

New tech could make consoles obsolete - edgefield
http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/new-tech-could-make-consoles-obsolete/1299562

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lliiffee
Isn't the major point of this that it makes piracy impossible? I think that if
there is no benefit (or even a small detriment) to the game experience,
industry will still embrace this.

As I understand it, piracy is essentially the reason PC gaming is dead now.

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njharman
> PC gaming is dead.

Yeah billions of dollars dead.

from 2007: "The biggest gaming platform last year was the PC. Why? Online
revenue alone exceeded 7 billion USD in 2007. As well, DFC predicts total PC
gaming revenue to top 19 billion by 2013"

from 2008 14% plummet in PC game sales, cause why, cause of MMO's and Steam we
buy online and not retail. [http://www.examiner.com/x-892-PC-Game-
Examiner~y2009m1d19-PC...](http://www.examiner.com/x-892-PC-Game-
Examiner~y2009m1d19-PC-Game-revenue-dives-14--but-PC-Gaming-is-in-fine-health)

~~~
lliiffee
Interesting. I know that there is lots of activity in certain sectors of PC
gaming based on a subscription model where piracy is also basically
impossible. (World of Warcraft, for example).

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23800152/>

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jcromartie
Could, but won't. I woulnd't want to subject myself to the lag inherent in
sending commands from my controller to a remote server and then recieving live
video back to my screen again. Multiplayer would simply not work.

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minitrollster
Even if it worked, here in Canada most ISPs have a monthly bandwidth limit
(usually around 20-30GB, which is ridiculously low), so it would be really
expensive for the end user.

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JabavuAdams
This would be great for a Myst-style game, or turn-based games, where latency
isn't as much of a problem.

You use the cloud as your distributed-renderer, instead of relying on a single
desktop, and send finished frames to the client. Maybe you do some compositing
on the client.

The graphics and AI for games designed around this approach's limitations
could be incredible.

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ed
Here's a hands-on impression

<http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/57855>

The bottom line: the compression algorithm needs some work, and latency, even
with GDC's optimal setup, is noticeable.

Sounds like the service is still a few years ahead of its time.

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snprbob86
It might be more than a few years ahead of its time... it might be physically
impossible.

At the theoretical speed of light, once around the equator is 2 frames of lag
for a 30 FPS game (which most console games are these days).

Back when there was the whole graphics card benchmark wars going on, driver
writers were buffering commands for two or three extra frames to prevent
pipeline stalls. This would allow the game to achieve a higher frame rate, but
introduced as little as 30 ms of input lag that hardcore players complained
about.

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rictic
Ignoring the fact that the worst case is halfway around the equator (though
real world routes could be less direct), when you want to reduce latency you
want to have data centers as near to your customers as possible. In that case,
10 to 15 ms round-trip time to many customers is feasible with current tech
and infrastructure. That's about one frame at 60fps.

So it's certainly physically possible.

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bd
You can see the original (almost one hour) GDC announcement video here:

<http://gdc.gamespot.com/video/6206692/>

It's actually pretty impressive, they do show actual stuff (for example high-
details Crysis multiplayer with one player on set-top box and another one
using browser plugin on low-end notebook).

\-----

About latency: I was also very skeptical, but in principle it could be doable
if they would deploy servers also locally (it can make economical sense for
dense urban areas). Google already does this.

I tried to ping around to check latency limits: even across Atlantic I could
get to around 30 FPS roundtrip. For servers that were few hundred kilometers
away it was ~100 FPS and for my ISP it's ~1000 FPS.

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zealog
While I think latency will still be an issue to some degree, it's probably not
nearly to the level people are imagining due to current experience since this
is quite different.

With current gaming systems, everyone's computer/console is rendering a
version of the game with all known info. As a player acts, that info is sent
to the server and distributed to other participants. If one user is
experiencing (or intentionally causing) latency with this exchange of data,
there can be what amounts to a "collision" in the state of the game. These
problems are solved in various ways (i.e. jumping locations) that affect game
play.

In this system, there is one central computer that is managing all happenings
in the game and rendering out a unique view for each player. There will be no
"collisions" of conflicting information because there are not multiple
entities creating and modifying game actions.

I imagine any lag would primarily be experienced as your character responding
to your actions in a delayed manner or a drop of video signal. Both would
definitely inhibit game play, but they should ONLY be apparent to the user
experiencing the lag. A lagged user would just be a sitting duck for any other
player, but not change the game play for anyone else. THAT would be a huge
improvement.

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jerf
You've got it backwards with lag. With local rendering power, minor lag can be
magicked away as the local machine applies prediction algorithms to make a
decent guess as to what the game state will be in the next .25 seconds. With
this system, every minor lag blip for more than one frame, which I will be
generous and assume will be 30fps and thus 33ms (rather than 60fps) will
manifest as total game freeze, because every minor lag blip is logically
equivalent to walking up to your real-life XBox and just disconnecting the
video cable, assuming a TV that would then hold the previous frame instead of
dropping the picture.

There's no way in hell this thing is going to play FPSs. Think "Bejeweled".
With no animations, or very choppy ones.

It's a terrible, terrible design suited solely for extracting investment money
from credulous investors. If you are a credulous investor doing due diligence
on this product and you've encountered this message, if they're promising
anything other than casual, graphically-unimpressive games, this is your cue
to run.

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mattj
Has anyone else noticed that you can't ping onlive.com? I wonder if they don't
want people to see what the latency is to their server.

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JimEngland
I don't see how this can work... yet.

Right now, even with broadband internet connections, players consistently
experience game-ruining latency, and that is sending magnitudes less
information.

I seriously doubt that OnLive could work in the U.S.; the broadband
infrastructure just isn't there yet. Korea and Japan, on the other hand? Sign
me up!

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DaniFong
Latency and bandwidth are fundamentally distinct. In particular, if all the
players in a game are on the same OnLive server, then there's no
synchronization issue between systems as there usually is, only a latency
issue from the renderer to your screen.

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buugs
The beauty of it is you don't need a console, but makes up for it in the
bandwidth needed. If my internet goes out I can still use my computer I can
play the wii, and chances are if my internet is out weathers not too good
outside so I don't really see me wanting something like this.

Idk about other people but I really do like tangible objects like discs or
even things stored on a harddrive not a thinclient experience. Another thing
is if this actually becomes big one wonders how much the quality would degrade
as servers would be gaining load and losing performance, so would play quality
go out the window at peak periods of the day, something you don't see with the
current system in place with consoles even in multiplayer games.

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Hexstream
"OnLive will supply players with a small set-top box, not much bigger than a
Nintendo DS, which will plug into your TV and your home broadband connection."

You mean like a console?...

"OnLive also includes some features you might associate more with your DVR
than with a gaming console, including a Replay feature that lets you save the
last ten seconds of your gameplay, and send it to your friends."

Only the last 10 seconds? That's nearly useless. First, 10 seconds is really
short. Second, you might not want to interrupt your gameplay immediately after
accomplishing some feat.

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jerf
My major problem with this console is that the price difference between "a box
that can feed the TV with a screen off the network and cope with all the
associated problems thereof" and "a traditional console" is not likely to be
wide enough to make the inevitable disadvantages worth it.

Cloud mania appears to have obscured the fact that personal computing power
continues to grow. We are currently in a momentary I/O bobble that will
resolve itself in a year or two with solid state drives (which, by their fast
pace of development, seem eager to catch up to all the other components of the
computer), leaving only multicore to deal with, which putting this sort of
thing in the cloud can hardly ignore either.

By the time this thing comes out, the box + one year of service will almost
certainly cost more than an XBox 360, and will probably be going head-to-head
with the "Playstation 4" or the "XBox 720" with what is now the current gen
readily available for $50. The PS4/XBox360 will probably be bragging about
pushing 120Hz of 1080P with surround sound.

My minor complaint is that this just won't work on a consumer grade network,
full stop. It will take years to make the deals with Comcast and everyone to
get the necessary QoS that this would take. _Nobody_ is streaming video out in
real time over the internet. "Real time" here doesn't mean "real time minus
two seconds" or "streaming a video while permitting a 5 minute pre-buffer",
"real time" means a solid, uninterrupted stream of data with no more than a
handful of frames of latency, where the slightest network bobble means your
game freezes solid.

Fat chance.

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sgrove
One thought I had as mainly a non-gamer is on the costs. Since this is being
done in the cloud, it'll cost a bit of money to keep a game running - a
company can't simply sell you the game, it now has to pay a bit for each hour
you play. As a game gets older, it becomes less attractive for a company to
support it.

Of course, I assume that the monthly subscription fees could cover it, or
perhaps a pay-per-drink model, but I wonder what will happen to the up-front
costs.

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jianshi
Latency is the biggest issue when it comes to competitive gaming. For the
casual market it's fine. But for the hardcore competitive players, it won't be
popular. It is also impossible for a up and coming player to get to a high
level of technicality when it comes to gaming. It's just not possible even
with the slightest bit of latency.

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shard
Looks like bandwidth is finally sufficiently cheaper than hardware for
companies to try to take advantage of that.

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eru
Latency poses a bigger problem than bandwidth.

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NyxWulf
Latency is mostly a solved problem though when it comes to high speed
connections though. Early when cable was released in my area there was high
burst rates but bad latency - so back then I went with a dsl connection that
had lower band width but better latency. These days though the latency is low
enough on the cable connection in my area that I can play FPS perfectly fine.

From the article it sounds like the were able to play an FPS like Crysis just
fine. FPS seems to be the gold standard, if you can run an FPS you can play
any other type of game because they don't have the same type of split second
reaction times.

It definitely sounds like an interesting system to try. I can't see how they
could possibly stream HD content fast enough to make an FPS playable - but
maybe that only works on a fiber connection.

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xenophanes
Latency is not a solved problem. Lag problems in Warcraft 3 games are very
common.

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krakensden
They're common in all games. Even if the ISPs got their act together (no sign
of that) the stuff on the consumer's end is still a problem. Lots of ISPs
distribute modems with significant problems. Lots of companies (Linksys,
Belkin, and DLink come to mind as offenders) sell wifi boxes that are not only
pathetically slow, but come with absurd defaults that make them even slower
(Think 150ms+ ping on the wlan).

Not to mention the huge variety of brokenness that happens with PCs, which
they're going to have to deal with (they have a client for Windows/OS X as
well as the set top box).

To be honest, I would be amazed if latency didn't kill this project. Or turn
it into a puzzle game platform.

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dmix
This reminds me of The Phantom game console created by Infinium Labs. It
promised to deliver games via the internet and be compatible with PC games.
The company blew through $60 million and the product was largely Vaporware.

It was most likely too early to be a significant competitor to consoles.

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tocomment
Could latency be worked around akin to how VNC handles your mouse movements?
I.e., it moves your mouse on the screen immediately and then lets the actual
mouse on the remote computer catch up. (I think)

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hfinucane
That's how games work today, combined with a bunch of prediction and conflict
resolution. Unfortunately, it sounds like their architecture fundamentally
prevents this- all the rendering is going to happen server side. I'd be
interested to know if they have some sort of halfway solution (rendering extra
scenes that you can pick from?) or if they just hope no one will notice the
extra 100ms.

(I know that doesn't sound like much, but for games that involve fast action-
from starcraft to quake- it's a lot...)

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foulmouthboy
This reads painfully like a commercial for OnLive. No need for big clunky
consoles! No download times!

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Raphael
The download time is sort of infinite.

