Doom Co-Creator Believes Cloud Gaming Will Be Successful
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
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So it will prevent the loss of millions of lives for both sides? Sounds like a sweet deal then.oktalist said:
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.
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.
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.Avaholic03 said:
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.
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.
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.
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.GodKlown said:
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!
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.
Well he's intitled to his opinion. Anyway I'm off to have fun with all my friends on OnLive...oh wait...
Khorne Avatar? Check.Gildan Bladeborn said:
Knows his stuff? Check.
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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.dududf said:
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.
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 said:
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.GodKlown said:
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.