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 Digg.com Facebook Google Bookmarks N4G Gamerblips del.icio.us Reddit Slashdot.org StumbleUpon Pretty impressive stuff. Is this not the same as OnLive? although OnLive looked more impressive Very impressive stuff, especially the load times, but I'm not sure how this tech. is any different to current Thin Client technology such as Citrix! From a technical standpoint this stuff is quite impressive (even though as one poster said above it is very similar to the way citrix has worked for years).
I do however think that this tech is flawed. They would need a hell of a lot of very powerful servers to allow 10,000 odd sessions to run and you will have to hope that your connection never goes down or you will not even be able to play single player. Bearing in mind that the 360 and PS3 are more powerful than many standard servers out there can you imagine what the server how much a server that could run even 10 sessions of a PS3 game would cost! Also even a slightly slow ping on your connection and your joypad will feel like jelly. Cloud gaming can't work at the moment. If you live in the countryside then you are screwed, certainly. A 2mb connection like I have will never sustain a game. Then there's the issue of response time-signals just cannot be sent fast enough. Plus the fact that I don't want to pay a subscription to play a game, which is similar to renting from Blockbusters repeatedly. I also like to actually own my games in disk form, I don't want my games controlled by someone else. This would give the government the ability to cap the time we spent on our games. Yet another issue is the question of what would happen if something went wrong on their side? What if they lose my 200+ hours of Oblivion saves? At least if it's on my hard drive I can back it up. I want this, OnLive and any other of these types of services to fail, and I am fairly sure that they will. i dont think think they would use standard servers somehow, i believe you can get servers that contain many CELL processors in them so will be a heck of a lot mor epowerful than a single ps3. there companies that essentially rent space on servers so they may not need to buy any, hosted systems are a definate way of delivering software to clients, the company i work has acquired a hosting company and intends to use it for this purpose.
i dont know why some posts are so negative, this is only an option and it could well fail, but if it makes a profit and gives some people a different way of playing who cares? its not as if this is going to cause the ps3, 360 or wii to disappear overnight. Of course there are servers that are more powerful than the PS3 or 360. However a standard server can cost anywhere in the region of £3000-£4000 (which are not powerful enough to run a single PS3 game let alone a number of them) so what on earth would a server powerful enough to run a number of gaming sessions cost? Using servers for multiple hosting activities in a business environment is vastly different from hosting games. Websites use very little cpu power and even hosting videos is far less taxing than games.
The other major problem is that when the game starts getting used less and less they will more than likely take it off the server to free up space for a more popular game. This sucks if you still want to play that game. »
true, but these are problems for the provider, if they pull it off great, if they dont we are under no obligation to use it. »»
To be fair I'm assuming all this will be based on Server Farms rather than individual boxes, and the price of this tech. is no longer as prohibitive as was the case 10 years ago.
As for the point about remote "rural" gamers having access... unfortunately I'm sure that they couldn't give a shit whether they have access to the service or not, it's all about the mass population in densely populated areas, as that's where the money's at! It's all good in theory, but given that I can't even watch the (tiny) video demonstrating the technology without slow down and stutter I just can't see this technology working in a real world situation. That's the point of "Cloud" AKA "Thin Client" technology...all the hard work is done at the Server(s) end and streamed via very clever technology so it appears seemless/lagless at the desktop end.
To be fair and I know it was only a demo, but it was very impressive.
As for subscription based, none ownership online gaming, I think it's all part of the "Digital/Download Only" future, like it or not! Oh god no what have you done... :shock: Did someone say Clitorix?!! No? I got excited for a moment then, I'm bored again now.... I'm familiar with thin client technology, but there is a world of difference between what needs to be transmitted to the client in Citrix (Terminal Services, of any other remote desktop type technology) and what is required for gaming in HD. (not to mention the difference in delay tolerance)
My point was that the internet was barely capable of stream a low res video to my computer fast enough for me to watch it (and the video was pre-encoded), so I just don't see how streaming any form of high definition (even at 1024x768) video output is going to be practical, never mind achieving 10ms lag as Dave Perry is claiming.
Even assuming that they have managed to make the video stream encoding amazingly fast, you still have the general lag of the internet to contend with - I've just done pings on Google and PCzone and I consistently get around 40ms (which would be 20ms on a one way trip, but from controller movement to seeing the effect on screen, it would be the 40ms + frame render time + frame compression + stream delivery) so we are still some way from 10ms, at least in the UK.
For reference, if they are running games at 60fps, then the frame render time would be 16ms.
Requiring 1Mbit per second bandwidth works out at a data rate of 128KBytes per second for the video & audio feed (approx 2.1KB per frame). This works out at approx 450MB an hour, so this could decimate bandwidth caps! ;)
Even watching the iPlayer, it's rare for the video stream to go half an hour without a pause or two in the stream, you can over look this on the iPlayer and other video services, but when gaming that kind of interruption can ruin a game - particularly in multiplayer.
Don't get me wrong, what they have just now is very impressive, but just not market ready yet (or the market being ready for it..) »»»
It will obviously be using server farms as there is no other way to do it. And server technology is certainly coming down in price and increasing in power but only at the same rate as pcs and consoles. There is no way they could use one server per session so they will need to run multiple sessions per server. This will mean that the server will need to be at least 10 times as powerful as the PS3 to run 10 sessions of a ps3 game. No server I know of is anywhere near this powerful and although there may well be servers capable of doing it I can't even begin to imagine how costly they would be, multiply this my 10,000 and you will be close to what is required to run a reasonable service (although they will need to build some redundancy in there which will increase the number). Remember that these servers will be actually running the game session rather than simply organising the handshaking that current online games servers do. Then there are the problems with capped bandwidths or multiple people playing on one line. The pings will be unreliable also as the connection is only as good as the slowest point in the line. It only takes one slow point and your game will be practically unplayable. The other major problem is that many of the people they would want to attract will be expecting a certain level of graphics, when the PS4 and next xbox arrive the graphical level will be upped again and they will need brand new servers again in order to keep up. Our infrastructure is also not even close to being able to handle this. Virgin can't even deliver 1080p films or TV down their dedicated pipes let alone handle this sort of assault on their network. i use btvision now and then to watch films albeit instandard def and there doesnt appear to be any lag on that. it could turn out the games arent full hd or are mainly older games that reuire less grunt and bandwidth.
anyhow, i think its a good idea as it means anyone with an internet browser can play games and doesnt require continual upgrading of a PC. we shall see if they can pull it off but quake 3 is already playable in a similar way. i know its quite old but at least it shows it can be done.
to be quite frank, i doubt they care if the UK cant handle the bandwidth as other counties can quite easily and we are only a small speck in the world. if this venture can survive a few years then they will be well placed to lead the way once connections are good enough, its not all about the now as the consoles have too much penetration. Well Quake 3 does not run in the same way. It runs on Java Virtual Machine which means that it runs on your computer once downloaded. This stuff will not be running at all on your computer, the server will be running the game and your computer or set top box will simply be decoding the video stream and then sending the inputs back to the server.
If you think that the US (which is by far the biggest games market) has less problems than we do with bandwidth then you are very mistaken. In fact there are very few countries that can handle this on a large scale. and this is what you dont seem to get, this isnt a direct replacement for what we have, it is another option. do you really think everyone in the world will switch over to this on day 1? i think it will be fine as its a niche market for now. if they can make profit in the short term to keep going and improve the infrastructure in a few years it could be in a position to take on the mainstream.
lots of ifs and buts, however, i assume they have run the numbers and got a sound business model.
what would be interesting is if this runs in the ps3 internet browser. To make it work I would imagine they will need large numbers of subscribers (Depending on how much they plan to charge). Building the delivery infrastructure and licensing the software could be very costly.
Lets say a server can handle 10 players and costs something like £8000 (which is a very conservative price estimate, it is probably much higher). They would need to charge around £16 per month just to break even on the server cost over a 2 year period. This neglects the cost of licensing the games themselves and the OS licenses, support contracts, staff costs, energy bills and property leases. | 
