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On Demand gaming


Inky

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http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/24/gdc09-re...vice-and-micro/

The unique part of the company's concept is the fact that you don't need a high-powered PC gaming rig to play something like Crysis Wars, because, in effect, you're upstreaming your controller input to the company's servers, which is a tiny fraction of bandwidth, and they're streaming the game back down to you in real time. It's a strange concept, to be sure, but if an idea like this can work, imagine never having to upgrade your hardware ever again.

 

if this type of thing could truly be pulled off it would be a revolution.

It's basically like On demand movies from your cable or satellite receiver. I give it a70% chance of vaporware like the phantom. but if they manage to pull it off.... Sony, MS, Nintendo, Nvidia, and ATI would be in for a hell of a fight. color me interested

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Sounds like one of those "Good on paper bad on execution" kind of things...

 

Youtube videos lag for me now on average Comcast speed I can't imagine playing something fun and then a "bandwidth 37%" sign appears in the bottom, by the time it hits 100 your dead o.o.

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Ahhh, but this is a concept. It's functionality might lead the way for new ways to do things. And once we finally start seeing Fiber Optics... current max home connections will be more than trippled. Instead of 15 we might see somewhere around 50.

 

Also, this might work well in certain regions, as opposed to others, based on the load demands of a network. While working for Charter Cable, I notticed everyone suffered messed up VOD. Here in Central Florida, VOD almost always works. Internet speeds are always consistant... even during "prime time". Our stuff is new and set up right.

Edited by Belthasar
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Yuck. Sounds terrible. You don't own the games. You get to rent them. How much per hour, per minute? Can they revoke your licenses to use it when they see fit? Feel like modifying your hardware? too bad. You can't license our stuff if you've got a modded system.

 

Cloud computing? Isn't that a terrible concept for gaming? You get more and more people playing the cloud will get bogged down, bandwidth will crap out, video quality will get even worse (since it will, without a doubt, be compressed to save bandwidth & money).

 

I hope this goes down in flames. I will NEVER buy a console that can't be played from offline.

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Yea I certainly hope this fails. I don't think it would really pickup anyway, the only real beneffit I can measure, is their piracy security.

 

I don't thinkit'll catch on though. But this will open the door none the less for a different way to do things. I wonder what may come of this idea...

Edited by Belthasar
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the most interesting thing to me is that if this were to work you wouldn't have to play the upgrade game anymore. theoretically you can play Crysis on a $300 laptop with this type of service.

 

The Cloud is coming. weather anyone likes it or not. there is less and less reason to have a program installed on your hard drive as internet speeds go up. and just look at something like GGPO, latency and lag is getting handled better and better all the time.

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Not more than just optimized transmission of the display of remotedlyexecuted games. Unlikely to scale well compared with ressource strain.

 

In compareason, provided that your PC can receive video streams of X certain resolution without lagging, you could pull up with running PCSX2/Left4Dead maxxed out and streamed to your lowend P4/Geforce5 (article looks more sensationalist than factual, and hints at the idea of a tight vendor lock-in that will likely be associated with premium subscriptions for -continued- access to games. Also, many games are not supposed to be used in such commercial ways I believe -a specific clause against *streaming* for some games-).

 

Pay now, keep paying. Generating hype about your ideas early can be unwise, when just the idea is thrown in the wild, but not much/nothing to back it up, other than a theory about 1ms latency. Hats off if they manage that without specially tweaked proprietary tcp drivers.

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http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/25/video-o...ated/#continued

one hour discussion and demo.

 

edit: I've watched the entire thing. for those that don't have the time or want to watch a 54 minute video here is the sum:

the guy behind this is the original developer of quicktime.

much like Live it will be a subscription based service with games bought or rented on top of the monthly service.

the hardware may be subsidized much like cell phones.

OnLive has been in development for 7 years.

thats most of the good stuff, lots of salesmen jibberjabber of course. at around 15 minutes in the is live demo with the server about 40 miles away.

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