Doom Co-Creator Believes Cloud Gaming Will Be Successful

[Formica Archonis]

It's hard to disagree with Carmack, as he's not suggesting that cloud gaming will make platforms obsolete, just that it will be a great fit for some people. There will always be those who prefer having physical media, but just the same, there will be those who will enjoy the convenience that cloud gaming will offer.

Problem is, saying it'd be great for some people is an argument for anything. Carmack's wondering when that group of people is big enough to make it sustainable, and that "when" part is a big leap. After all, look at Mac gaming or Linux gaming. How big are those markets? Could a company survive just making games for Linux and/or Mac users? How big a company? How many companies? Would they be considered successes? If not, then cloud gaming has to surpass those markets before becoming viable. Perhaps far surpass since the cloud needs to be maintained 24/7, whereas a game (other than an MMO) has little post-release maintenance. It also has to avoid being a victim of its own success. Will the site go down when ten thousand people try using the hot new game at once? They need power to maintain their hardware during Christmas insanity in addition to the doldrums. I suppose they could rent the overage out during the slow times, but that implies a rather flexible cloud structure that can do gaming AND tax preparation or whatever. Possible, I guess.

And it might not make other platforms obsolete, but it is competing with them. Someone who buys Assassin's Creed 34: Caveman Assassin from the cloud likely won't buy it on the XBox 666 or the PlayStation i-times-pi. So there has to be some value-add beyond what consoles and gaming PCs provide. And just Linux compatibility won't do it, else there'd already be a large Linux gaming contingent.

But I guess my biases are showing. I'm nervous about cloud computing. I've been nervous about it since a friend of mine came back from a Windows product demo pre-"cloud" era and told me about their nice little talk of centralizing Office and charging for it monthly. (Software rental, I think they called it?) Amazing how easily you can get 1000 corporate IT techs to scowl simultaneously.

 

[Jared]

I really diont agree...I like having a copy, of somethign sat right in front of me,,,I dont want to have to pay x amount to see my collection...

 

[nik3daz]

If Linux support is good I'm totally abandoning windows.

 

[Fasckira]

He said that he hadn't had any personal experience with the services available

So hes never once checked out a rather impressive cloud gaming id title known as Quake Live?

 

[Disembodied_Dave]

Does He know something we don't?

Cloud gaming sidesteps DRM in the same way that the atomic bomb sidestepped a land war in Japan.

So it will prevent the loss of millions of lives for both sides? Sounds like a sweet deal then.

 

[Monshroud]

Until I can play a game at 60FPS in 1920x1080 with the graphics quality cracked all the way up with ZERO lag, I think the hard-core market just won't go for it.

I see OnLive and Gaikai being great services for the casual gamer, which is a huge market. Lots of gamers out there like their gamerscore/trophies and I have yet to see how those services would answer those features...

Besides the home console market is becoming more than just the games, there is a slew of services and community being offered that these newer services just can't provide.

 

[Ken Sapp]

Sure it will eventually be successful...so will space travel. But it's still a pretty long way off.

On hurdle to get over is the major hardware makers (both console and PC) who want everyone spending money for the next big machine, not just getting a fast internet connection and playing anything they want. Cloud gaming is definitely going to turn to industry upside down, and established powers like Microsoft and Sony probably won't like that much. Hell, nVidea and ATI might just go out of business if nobody needs a top of the line graphics card anymore.

On the flip side Microsoft and Sony are ideally situated to take advantage of a cloud-based gaming market. They already have millions of console subscribers and online delivery services which could likely be modified into cloud-based gaming services.

The triple-A game companies should also love the idea as it could allow them to continue making money off their titles after the initial sale.

 

[GodKlown]

I don't think I care for this heavy reliance on internet connections with things like internet-ready TVs, streaming movies through consoles/laptops, and then wanting to throw cloud gaming on top of that when I don't see any major improvements in stability or connectivity when it comes to internet access as it is. With the US wanting to broaden internet connections to rural communities, the draw is getting more and more severe on ISPs to get information to the consumer. Hell, where I live, we don't even have DSL, just broadband through TWC and I have to say I'm not impressed with that.

Unless cable and telecommunications companies start to severely invest in strengthening backbone connections to main servers, reducing lag, investing in expanding port access, and cutting out bandwidth caps, this service will fail because current technology just can't support it. There's almost no way in hell you could do this service through a Wi-Fi connection by the simple math of trying to constantly stream that much information over such a limited connection, and with all this other tech already taxing the system, it wouldn't be out of the question for the individual consumer to cause crashes at ISPs due to bandwidth capabilities now.

Cloud streams sound fine for the market of people who don't want to constantly upgrade their systems to play games. I can completely understand that. It's a good idea for a business, and in a perfect world, it would be just the thing to eliminate the hassle some people have with finding some games that aren't available everywhere. However, in this current state, technology just isn't up to speed with the task that is minimally required to make this a serious reality for everyone. We can't all afford $1500/month for a T1 connection directly to our homes, on top of subscription and equipment fees* just to play some games.


*equipment fees referring to the networking equipment, hardware upgrades, and accessories needed to get full use of a T1 connection to a home network.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

We can't all afford $1500/month for a T1 connection directly to our homes, on top of subscription and equipment fees* just to play some games.


*equipment fees referring to the networking equipment, hardware upgrades, and accessories needed to get full use of a T1 connection to a home network.

There is a problem with that last bit of your post: T1 lines are actually quite slow - they're ubiquitous so everyone knows about them, lots of businesses use them (see the bit where they're ubiquitous), and the price makes those who aren't cognizant of the full range of broadband options assume that things like "business T1 lines" must be fast given how much phone companies charge, but they're pretty much the bottom rung on the speed chart when it comes to things that are even vaguely "broadband-like". T1 lines only provide 1.544 Mbit/s of bandwidth - in the days where everyone used modems for home internet, that was amazingly fast, but these days I think the US government wouldn't even classify that as a broadband connection.

For comparison, the original ADSL standard approved in 1998 allowed for a maximum downstream rate of 8 Mbits/s, the latest ADSL standards can potentially achieve rates of 24 Mbit/s (though you probably won't ever actually see that rate in actual practice). And that's just ADSL over copper, the slowest speed with services like Verizon's FiOS is 15 Mbit/s down and 5 Mbit/s up; the mid-tier offering is 25 Mbit/s down and up.

So if you know somebody paying $1,500/month for a T1 connection to their home so they can play games over the internets, that person is probably an idiot wasting their damn money - T1 lines are slower than just about anything else you can buy and they cost WAY MORE to boot. The only real selling point they have in this day and age is reliability, and the only people who have any business buying one are folks running small businesses (because of the reliability thing, large businesses would have multiple linked T1 lines at the very least, and probably something much much faster).

The dream of "your own personal T1 line at home!" is an anachronism leftover from the 56k modem era, and one that, thanks to me just now, you won't be perpetuating in the future. Knowledge is power!

 

[Optimystic]

I think it can work, but definitely not at $60/game plus fees. You are saving them the costs of investing in DRM and stamping DVDs, they need to pass those savings back to the consumer.

 

[SalamanderJoe]

Well he's intitled to his opinion. Anyway I'm off to have fun with all my friends on OnLive...oh wait...

 

[dududf]

.

Khorne Avatar? Check.

Knows his stuff? Check.

__________________________________________________
With that out of the way, Cloud based gaming will become a big thing when the infrastructure around the world is good enough. I'm outside of the capital city of my country, and I have a wifi tower on top of my house, that gives me a shit multiplayer experience, let alone streaming high quality good ping video.

When the infrastructure is dealt with the idea may flourish, but as of right now it's just not that feasible in the global market. Now in having it exclusive to certain areas with incredible infrastructure? Gold idea.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

With that out of the way, Cloud based gaming will become a big thing when the infrastructure around the world is good enough. I'm outside of the capital city of my country, and I have a wifi tower on top of my house, that gives me a shit multiplayer experience, let alone streaming high quality good ping video.

When the infrastructure is dealt with the idea may flourish, but as of right now it's just not that feasible in the global market. Now in having it exclusive to certain areas with incredible infrastructure? Gold idea.

Indeed, the problem inherent to streaming services is that the quality of the infrastructure supporting them will make or break the experience. That's part of what makes Gaikai sound like a more workable system than OnLive in actual practice; they have a lot more data servers spread out over a wider area and plans in the works to lease or install a whole bunch more, and their system is designed to restrict access to the service if your connection has too much latency - if you'd see shitty performance running it, it's not even going to launch for you. This is irrespective of whether or not your personal internet connection has the speed required (and it doesn't really require a blazing fast connection) - if you're just too far away from any of their datacenters to get a decent ping time, it doesn't matter how fast your connection is as the bottleneck will be somewhere further upstream.

The beauty of that system is that anyone who can launch it is going to see good performance from it, and since their servers log all access attempts, if enough people from any given area are trying to run Gaikai and being blocked because there's no datacenter close enough to provide response times within their parameters, they'll know that installing a new datacenter to serve that location is worthwhile.

 

[GodKlown]

We can't all afford $1500/month for a T1 connection directly to our homes, on top of subscription and equipment fees* just to play some games.


*equipment fees referring to the networking equipment, hardware upgrades, and accessories needed to get full use of a T1 connection to a home network.

There is a problem with that last bit of your post: T1 lines are actually quite slow - they're ubiquitous so everyone knows about them, lots of businesses use them (see the bit where they're ubiquitous), and the price makes those who aren't cognizant of the full range of broadband options assume that things like "business T1 lines" must be fast given how much phone companies charge, but they're pretty much the bottom rung on the speed chart when it comes to things that are even vaguely "broadband-like". T1 lines only provide 1.544 Mbit/s of bandwidth - in the days where everyone used modems for home internet, that was amazingly fast, but these days I think the US government wouldn't even classify that as a broadband connection.

For comparison, the original ADSL standard approved in 1998 allowed for a maximum downstream rate of 8 Mbits/s, the latest ADSL standards can potentially achieve rates of 24 Mbit/s (though you probably won't ever actually see that rate in actual practice). And that's just ADSL over copper, the slowest speed with services like Verizon's FiOS is 15 Mbit/s down and 5 Mbit/s up; the mid-tier offering is 25 Mbit/s down and up.

So if you know somebody paying $1,500/month for a T1 connection to their home so they can play games over the internets, that person is probably an idiot wasting their damn money - T1 lines are slower than just about anything else you can buy and they cost WAY MORE to boot. The only real selling point they have in this day and age is reliability, and the only people who have any business buying one are folks running small businesses (because of the reliability thing, large businesses would have multiple linked T1 lines at the very least, and probably something much much faster).

The dream of "your own personal T1 line at home!" is an anachronism leftover from the 56k modem era, and one that, thanks to me just now, you won't be perpetuating in the future. Knowledge is power!

Wow, you totally missed the entire point of my post. Congrats on wasting a lot of time correcting a minor example I was making, you missed the forest for the trees. The point was there is no current reliable technology to ensure most people wanting to take advantage of cloud will have enough bandwidth to do so, regardless of their choice in connection to the internet. That's it. And for your information, I did happen to work at an ISP during the days of 56k modems, so thanks for calling me a fossil.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

Spoiler: ker-snippety

We can't all afford $1500/month for a T1 connection directly to our homes, on top of subscription and equipment fees* just to play some games.


*equipment fees referring to the networking equipment, hardware upgrades, and accessories needed to get full use of a T1 connection to a home network.

There is a problem with that last bit of your post: T1 lines are actually quite slow - they're ubiquitous so everyone knows about them, lots of businesses use them (see the bit where they're ubiquitous), and the price makes those who aren't cognizant of the full range of broadband options assume that things like "business T1 lines" must be fast given how much phone companies charge, but they're pretty much the bottom rung on the speed chart when it comes to things that are even vaguely "broadband-like". T1 lines only provide 1.544 Mbit/s of bandwidth - in the days where everyone used modems for home internet, that was amazingly fast, but these days I think the US government wouldn't even classify that as a broadband connection.

For comparison, the original ADSL standard approved in 1998 allowed for a maximum downstream rate of 8 Mbits/s, the latest ADSL standards can potentially achieve rates of 24 Mbit/s (though you probably won't ever actually see that rate in actual practice). And that's just ADSL over copper, the slowest speed with services like Verizon's FiOS is 15 Mbit/s down and 5 Mbit/s up; the mid-tier offering is 25 Mbit/s down and up.

So if you know somebody paying $1,500/month for a T1 connection to their home so they can play games over the internets, that person is probably an idiot wasting their damn money - T1 lines are slower than just about anything else you can buy and they cost WAY MORE to boot. The only real selling point they have in this day and age is reliability, and the only people who have any business buying one are folks running small businesses (because of the reliability thing, large businesses would have multiple linked T1 lines at the very least, and probably something much much faster).

The dream of "your own personal T1 line at home!" is an anachronism leftover from the 56k modem era, and one that, thanks to me just now, you won't be perpetuating in the future. Knowledge is power!

Wow, you totally missed the entire point of my post. Congrats on wasting a lot of time correcting a minor example I was making, you missed the forest for the trees. The point was there is no current reliable technology to ensure most people wanting to take advantage of cloud will have enough bandwidth to do so, regardless of their choice in connection to the internet. That's it. And for your information, I did happen to work at an ISP during the days of 56k modems, so thanks for calling me a fossil.

I missed nothing of the sort - there was nothing wrong with your point that the infrastructure required for cloud-gaming to really take off simply isn't there yet, and thus no particular reason to offer a response to it, since your point is perfectly valid.

The "minor example" you used to illustrate it though was exceptionally invalid, and confuses the issue because the assertion implicit in your post is that cloud gaming isn't feasible right now unless you're paying a fortune for your network connection; that the service you brought up is actually too slow for services like GaiKai or OnLive (while also being super expensive) is just more reason to chime in with a correction.

As for making you feel like a fossil, I'm a whopping 4 years your junior GodKlown (assuming your profile birthdate is accurate) - I remember when having your own personal T1 line at home was a bleeding edge fantasy, and parts of my brain still instinctively want to remember T1 lines being something impressive, which is the main reason I chimed in at all: for people from my generation who don't necessarily follow emerging broadband standards, the example you cited sounds perfectly reasonable (but isn't) - the problem isn't that it costs a fortune to get fast enough connections at home (I pay $35/month for a 6 Mbit connection), it's that broadband services aren't actually available at all in a lot of regions. Your example makes it seem like price is the barrier rather than simple availability, hence the correction.

 

[geret]

as for me I use ProteMac Meter ( www.protemac.com ) for bandwidth monitoring