Valve Not Interested in Streaming Games like OnLive

[Rainboq]

As a Canadian, the thought of 'cloud computing/gaming' terrifies me, and here's why. 97% of our country have ISPs that give us 60 Gigabytes per month of bandwidth for about 60 dollars per month. If there was no alternative to cloud computing, Canadians would be screwed when it comes to usage. Plus, I like being able to know where and what my hardware is and be able to tinker with it.

You think we got it bad? Look south of the border. Their networks are a sad, sad atrocity.

With that in mind, I think the benefits of having the files on disk outweigh the benefits of having a slave computer. Cloud gaming just isn't worth it anywhere else but it's niche.

That maybe be so, but at least they have decent caps.

As a Canadian, the thought of 'cloud computing/gaming' terrifies me, and here's why. 97% of our country have ISPs that give us 60 Gigabytes per month of bandwidth for about 60 dollars per month. If there was no alternative to cloud computing, Canadians would be screwed when it comes to usage. Plus, I like being able to know where and what my hardware is and be able to tinker with it.

^This. As a Canadian I had the option of no data cap, but shitty data rates, or vice versa. I get a 175GB a month and normally cut it close. Streaming games would not be an option for me. Also as a PC gamer I like diving into ini files, tweaking the game, and modding it. I didn't spend the money on high end hardware to have it reduced to a super console.

As another Canadian I have to say that we may not be as screwed as you think. Last year Rogers and other ISPs were facing large fines for throttling World Of Warcraft. If cloud gaming caught on, its likely that similar rules would be enforced.

Throttling isn't bandwidth, its not the traffic that worries me, its the volume.

 

[tehweave]

They shouldn't anyway. They've got a successful business thing going. Why ruin it?

 

[Baldr]

Think about this way: The more cloud services there are, they are going to pressure ISP to have free and open internet. They know if ISP throttle/cap internet, it going to effect their business. I talked with David Perry of Gaikai and I asked him about this. He said they were constantly in talks with ISPs to make sure this was not happening to his services.

 

[devotedsniper]

Personally I like the idea for those who have a computer which wouldn't be able to play games otherwise, but I've tried the Onlive service and compared to what my computer can do with it's own hardware I'll stick to local installs and running off my own hardware any day, especially when my internet speeds drop a bit and I end up with blocks for graphics until it decides to pick back up.

Personally I think cloud computing is here to stay in some areas of the IT industry, it will even have a small place in the gaming industry but I highly doubt it will ever fully take over until the whole worlds internet is capable of running stable high speed connections (the UK is definitely not ready unless you pay a lot for virgins 50MB package).

 

[Doom972]

At the moment, it seems that cloud gaming is for people who want to play PC games, won't buy a gaming PC, and have a stable and fast connection. I don't think that there are many people like these (Obviously there are some).

The only way I see myself using a cloud gaming service is if I could play console-exclusives on it. That and Onlive going global.

 

[Strazdas]

Back when steam came in 2003, it was an awful piece of *beep*. Over the years they turned it into awesome distribution platform, so GO VALVE for that.
Compared to the many other plantforms of online trade at the moment, steam is leading in gaming, and it is doing so by not going always online which the OnLive needs. so obviuosly they dont want to allienate thier userbase, and being smart businesmen (unlike EA) they wont.

As for itnernet caps, yes those are not that great. we got a 300GB cap for new costumers, however those like me that use it over 3 years get unlimited traffic, and we got amazing speeds so i could do it, but i dont want to.

 

[Griffolion]

Seeing as how ISP are trying to restrict bandwidth due to the recent spectrum crunch (google it if you dont know) id say cloud gaming is never going to materialize to anything mainstream until we solve the current problems.

Such a thing only applies to mobile technologies like 3G and 4G. Cabled connections to the house, be it fiber, cable or DSL, do not fall prey to such a problem.

 

[Antari]

Cloud computing can take my processors from my cold dead hands. Not before.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

Cloud computing is a bust in most circumstances anyway, I feel. The idea of distributing your computing to a central server became obsolete for general-purpose use in the late 1980s, when personal computers became a legitimate contender to minicomputers. Think about how much bandwidth each frame of a computer game would take up, and consider that it would be easier just to buy a console. Internet bandwidth is not subject to Moore's Law.

Bah. I don't know what you're talking about. My VT100 is still totally legit. I mean, look at your avatar. That works fine with one. Heh.

 

[robert01]

As a Canadian, the thought of 'cloud computing/gaming' terrifies me, and here's why. 97% of our country have ISPs that give us 60 Gigabytes per month of bandwidth for about 60 dollars per month. If there was no alternative to cloud computing, Canadians would be screwed when it comes to usage. Plus, I like being able to know where and what my hardware is and be able to tinker with it.

^This. As a Canadian I had the option of no data cap, but shitty data rates, or vice versa. I get a 175GB a month and normally cut it close. Streaming games would not be an option for me. Also as a PC gamer I like diving into ini files, tweaking the game, and modding it. I didn't spend the money on high end hardware to have it reduced to a super console.

As another Canadian I have to say that we may not be as screwed as you think. Last year Rogers and other ISPs were facing large fines for throttling World Of Warcraft. If cloud gaming caught on, its likely that similar rules would be enforced.

That doesn't matter really. The problem with cloud gaming is they are pretty much streaming video to you. If they are in HD(I don't know if cloud gaming services are), that takes up a lot of bandwith.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Ironically, Steam used to have a feature where you could "stream" a game in a different way: It would download the files in a specific order, and once the engine files and the first level or two were installed, you could start the game while it finished pulling down the rest. I think they only used it for Half-Life 2 and then gave up. Admittedly it only works for linear single-player games, and would be almost impossible to do with third-party games unless they were engineered from the ground up to work that way, but still. No reason Portal 2 couldn't have worked that way.

 

[Weaver]

As a Canadian, the thought of 'cloud computing/gaming' terrifies me, and here's why. 97% of our country have ISPs that give us 60 Gigabytes per month of bandwidth for about 60 dollars per month. If there was no alternative to cloud computing, Canadians would be screwed when it comes to usage. Plus, I like being able to know where and what my hardware is and be able to tinker with it.

If you live in Southern Ontario or Montreal you should consider switching to Teksavvy; I'm with them and I have an unlimited plan. My actual speed cap (as opposed to whatever is listed) is around 3.4 megs a second. My upload is kind of bad though.

 

[baconcow]

Not sure where that 97% of Canada has limited bandwidth crap came from. Most people in and around Halifax use Eastlink which has unlimited bandwidth for a majority of their high speed plans. When I lived in Ontario, I had Bell which had unlimited. Than I had Rogers which had unlimited, than they downgraded to 100 GB so we dropped them like a stone. Not having unlimited in this day and age is absolutely stupid. My entire Steam Summer Sale 2012 was about 300 GB and I downloaded that within a week or two. I only have about 2 MB/sec and yet I have download statistics in the double-number TB over the last 3 years.