Spawn HD-720 Puts Console Games on Your PC

[Greg Tito]

Spawn HD-720 Puts Console Games on Your PC

Ever wanted to stream your console games so that you can play them on your PC? Me neither!

The Spawn HD-720 from Spawn labs retails for $199.95 and allows you to connect your console to a networked PC or laptop. If you then connect a controller with a USB port to your PC, you can play your console from anywhere within your LAN. The Spawn currently works with the Xbox 360, Xbox, PS3, PS2 and Gamecube, and soon will work with the Wii. If the Spawn is connected to the internet, it will also allow you to play your console from a remote location.

Being touted as the "Slingbox for games," hacker enthusiasts imagine many possible uses for a device like this, including playing your console remotely over the internet, allowing your friends to play your console games, or just letting your friends look in while you play. None of these are officially supported, and some might break a few copyright laws, but when has that ever deterred the hacking community?

A hands-on from Joystiq [http://www.joystiq.com/2009/11/24/hands-on-spawn-hd-720-brings-your-games-to-you/] reveals, however, the Spawn HD-720 delivers a gaming experience that is far from perfect. "When you first play a game through the Spawn," Justin McElroy said. "You're undoubtedly going to notice a delay between what you're doing and what you're seeing on the screen."

While a small delay won't matter in turn-based or slow action games, any game which demands a timed response would be decidedly unfun. Playing anything with "Hero" or "Band" in the title is probably going to epicly fail. The guys at Joystiq did say that the delay become less noticeable the more you played, but I'm not sure if the Spawn HD-720 is something that will appear on a lot of gamer's holiday wish lists.

I personally don't see the point. It will take more than a black plastic box to turn console gamers into PC gamers.

Source: Joystiq [http://www.joystiq.com/2009/11/24/hands-on-spawn-hd-720-brings-your-games-to-you/]

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[ultimasupersaiyan]

It seems like a good idea... in theory, but theory is a treturous foe. Also why bother with this? isn't there better means to do so?

 

[karmapolizei]

Don't see the point either, really. Sure, playing from a remote location sounds a bit like fun (but I imagine you'll have to pull off some other difficult stuff to make it work properly. For instance, you'd have to implement Wake-on-LAN for your console, or, alternatively, leave your console powered on all the time, which I shudder to think. Good luck with that, anyway), but I can't imagine that anyone besides complete nerds could put that to an actual use. It's kinda nice to be away from your stuff at times, isn't it?

But more to the point: Why should you want to play console games on your PC? I'd much, much more like to see a way to play your PC games properly in the living room... because just hooking up stuff is pretty easy, but maintaining ease of use isn't. So I'd really like a way to play FPS games in the living room without crippled gamepad input.

 

[Kollega]

Heh heh. Pretty damn smart, if totally useless.

 

[AndyFromMonday]

Is it this easy to invent useless shit and them pretend it's awesome? Just a sec guys, be right back. Inventing a useless piece of crap that will allow people to switch a TV channel WITHOUT actually using their fingers on the remote! How awesome is that?!?

 

[matsugawa]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the world's most expensive paperweight!

Seriously, I can't imagine anyone out there looking upon this thing and shouting, "At long last!" or anything along those lines. It's like a media center PC, but in reverse and for games. And yet, they wouldn't have made this thing if there hadn't been someone out there pondering, "You know what would be cool?" and rattling off the description of the Spawn.

 

[Nincompoop]

I don't see the point really. If, by some weird nerd thingamajigger it could be used to implement keyboards and mice (which I doubt since it appears to be just stream), it might get interesting.

Let's wait and see how the nerds of the gaming community up-down-right-left-in-out-or-what-ever-engineer this *****.

 

[LoopyDood]

So it's basically a small scale version of Onlive, but with your own console games at home?

 

[Frank_Sinatra_]

I can see how this could make Halo Wars more bearable to play, but other than that I don't see any point to this contraption.

 

[scotth266]

Um... why?

This just doesn't seem necessary, or even useful. It's just a waste of space.

 

[Pingieking]

I'd rather just tear apart my PS3 and put all the components back together in a laptop case. Like the guy did on the youtube video. It would be much more awesome than this box, and achieve similar effects.

 

[johnman]

I personally don't see the point. It will take more than a black plastic box to turn console gamers into PC gamers.

Wrong. You're still playing the damn console. If this was an emulator to allow console games to run on a PC though... I'd be all over it.

They do exist but since you need roughly three times the power of what your trying to emulate they aren't all that sucessful.

 

[mindclockwork]

interesting idea but i doubt it will work.

 

[Asehujiko]

So it's basically a small scale version of Onlive, but with your own console games at home?

Yes, the differences are that onlive has a fee, is laggier but has a few more games, most of which are licensed to somebody completely unknown with retarded ideas for a reason.

 

[squid5580]

I can see the point. You can use it to cheat, boost your gamerscore and or trophy count and make sure anyone who is unlucky enough to end up in a game with you has a generally unfun time. Good job.

 

[matsugawa]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the world's most expensive paperweight!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ANTIQUE-RUSSIAN-SILVER-BEAR-ROCK-CRYSTAL-PAPERWEIGHT_W0QQitemZ200403897811QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAntiques_Silver?hash=item2ea900cdd3

Correction: Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the world's SECOND most expensive paperweight! And it's only one-fourth as useful as the first most expensive paperweight.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Give it a cool name and call it cloud computing then everyone gets all breathless and talks about how they can see the future and can't wait to live there.