[ManuVlad3.0]

Google I/O: BulletStorm running on a Samsumg Chromebox:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbMF-X08etY

[DieH@rd]

Originally Posted by Billy Idol

Hm, little bit worried about Sony's direction?
GAIKAI points towards casual game support, as for 'hardcore' gamer the tec seems to be not appropriate yet...lag is awful and a pain in mp, but getting lag in sp seems like a nightmare comes true?!?!

Its not like SP games dont have lag.
http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/bull...nput-lag-video

Instead of rendering game at 30fps like on consoles [33ms per frame], Gaikai renders game on PC servers with 60fps [16ms] and then the remainder of that latency is spent on sending data to the user [1ms = ~300km of data traveling trough fiber optic line, but the last "copper mile" to the user adds a lot of latency]. Best case scenario is same latency as with 30fps console game. 60fps console games however... that kind of latency can't be achieved with cloud computing.

Also if you cant emulate system on PC, you cant get fast encoding [nvidia gpu based] or 60fps rendering. That puts PS3 gaming in great disadvantage, at least untill Sony finds the way to emulate PS3 on PC hardware [toss CELL emulation on some beefy AMD APU, and task GPU portion to emulate SPU's].

[Kb-Smoker]

Originally Posted by Arwin

Yes, you have those too - on PS+ you have 1 hour demos. They are the full game, but you're simply limited to playing them for one hour, then you have to pay. I tried out Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood like that, among others. Pretty neat in principle, if you have a fast download at least.

That is the problem, to try them out you have to take about a day to download and install. With this streaming service i would try them all out. That is if they can get it to work good as it does with the pc version.

Seems like the big problem is a lot of console games only run at 30fps. Going by DF article this would add too much lag.

[AzBat]

Not real surprising move. Figured both OnLive & Gaikai were prime targets for acquisition when they first launched. It's definitely the future whether some admit or not. IMHO, it puts a few more nails in the coffin for dedicated gaming consoles. I suspect we'll see Microsoft go after OnLive next. From a service & marketing perspective it makes sense, just not sure the patent portfolio would be entirely worth it though. I'm sure Microsoft has enough patents & research to roll their own. Buying Onlive would mainly keep their competitors from getting hold of the tech. Anyway, welcome to the future!

Tommy McClain

[RobertR1]

Sony paid for the software and infrastructure.

It's a smart move by them. It'll cut down their time to market (something they're always fashionably late to) and reduce the management headaches of the company actually working together on something.

They should continue to do this until they are able to restructure the organization to be more agile, internally.

Nintendo will do what they think is best for them. Online doesn't seem to resonate with them, no matter what they say in public.

For MS, software and services is what they ultimately are so they can do this internally, if not build on Azure, without much hassle.

[Acert93]

This opens the doors to all sorta of demos and post launch sales tactics. A demo could literally be the final game build streamed -- even loaded from a certain check point with a limited time to play from that point (e.g. 30 minutes). Post launch you can have various events, e.g. "play the first campaign" or "free MP weekend for everyone" etc to boost sales, especially during slow times of the year. Streaming is probably smaller than a download and access can easily be cut off. And it can be used to leverage digital sales.

Obviously long terms the cloud is where gaming is going and will offer 1 game on every device approach. MS already is developing their own cloud gaming services and Sony just took a short cut to the front of the pack.

This could impact next gen HW: Why go all out on hardware? Get a box that will scale down to $99 ASAP with all the key input devices and outputs needed and then let cloud gaming scale the gaming as an everlasting generation. Oddly I was going to post on this this weekend: This is the last traditional gen of consoles. It is written all over the walls, flour, ceiling, and the fat lady is singing it. In 5 years we may even see where the "Cloud" version is the best version.

[Boke]

Maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy but I don't like the cloud gaming idea at all.

And as for it being a complete replacement... just don't see it being viable anytime soon.
ISPs are already crying about bandwidth usage. Just wait until 1080p video games are being streamed all over the planet.

And streaming issues aside, are they going to be able to stockpile enough hardware to back this up? Its going to take a damn powerful machine for each gamer. There will for sure be times when you want to play but can't because all the rendering servers are in use.

What if I want to play a 5 year old game and its been deemed no longer worthy of being on the servers?
I wont have hardware powerfull enough at home to render it, so even if I could buy it, it wouldn't do me any good.

Bahh! I will not be happy if this becomes the norm.

[TheD]

Cloud gaming is flatout bad!

You lose any control over the games you paid for, you can lose access at anytime for any number of reasons.
You have a lot of lag, it looks like a youtube video, it cuts out a large amount of the worlds pop ect.!

It will not allow games that look better than what is practical for a mid/low PC at the time (cloud gaming does not mean things stop costing money!)

Wired internet infrastructure does not follow moore's law (unlike what one of the deluded cloud gaming PRs said). it takes ages and huge amounts of money to upgrade it!

It takes on the order of 1.6Gbits to have real time encoded near lossless 1080P at 60FPS!

Not only are phones and tablets not well suited to the controls of console or PC games but wireless internet could not be more unsuited to game streaming! It is shared bandwidth!

If you have the bandwidth for cloud gaming it would not take long at all just to download the game instead!

Reality is different to what the (head in the) cloud crowd thinks.

[Persistantthug]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

There's a whole other thread discussing the importance of BC.

What demo's are you playing?! Largest demo I've come across is maybe 2 GBs. 7-15 GBs is more likely the entire game.

There's a whole thread discussing that too, but as Sony were never selling PSN content as being forwards compatible any more than they've sold any other content as being forward compatible, there's no reason for consumers to assume their PS3 content should work on PS4, nor reason to think content sold as part of a network service or play-anywhere service like PSMobile wouldn't be trusted. And even then it can't be trusted, because they may remove content from the streaming service one day. Whatever Sony do with this, they can communicate the message effectively.

I also question whether this is any good for BC. What hardware are Sony going to run their PS3 games on to stream? The mother of all emulators on a truly monster PC rig? Old IBM Cell servers going cheap? Or a PS3 for each user? It won't be cost effective. Just let anyone wanting to play PS3 games use their existing PS3 until such a time as PS3 emulation becomes as cheap as PS1 emulation is now and offer people a nostalgia trip.

See, you're talking about technicalities....
sure..."technically", Sony doesn't have to do anything.
But capturing the hearts and minds of your needed consumers isn't about technicalities.....it's more of a case of the customers always right.

I know this....if Sony doesn't take care of the stuff that I bought, that I trusted them with, then I will never buy anything from them again....and rightfully so.

Sony needs good pub....all the good pub they can get. That's why I'm confident what I bought will work with the PS4 (or whatever it's gonna be called)

[AlphaWolf]

So who will you buy from if they don't? No one? Perhaps you should start cave shopping for your hermit status.

It'll be interesting to see how far Sony intends to leverage this acquisition (if at all) in terms of the next playstation.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Kb-Smoker

PS+ I believe the demo are the game. Saint row 2 was 15GB. Infamouse 2 demo was 7.5GB

Those are last 2 I played.

Okay, that is the entire game.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Persistantthug

Sony needs good pub....all the good pub they can get. That's why I'm confident what I bought will work with the PS4 (or whatever it's gonna be called)

Taht's a pretty ill-informed decision. The world is full of incompatibilities. You can buy a Canon EF lens now knowing it'll be a comatible with future cameras, but when Canon switched lens format in 1987 and rendered all those old Canon FD lenses redundant, it didn't lose them their business. You can buy a bike from a manufacturer, and then buy a replacement, and find your seat post isn't compatible. Wait long enough and none of your old components will be compatible. You can buy a TV with an analogue tuner and then find the world switches to digital making that purchase pretty useless and you have to buy a digital add-on. You can buy a PC to run software, and then buy a new PC years later that won't run the same software. You can buy a game for your Android tablet, buy a new, upgraded Android tablet, and find the game no longer runs. You can buy music on a download music service only for that service to die out and you lose all that music. So why assume a game bought for one console will run on another?

Sony can add value with streamed BC (although if it doesn't perform well, the consumer is no better off than not having any BC), but it isn't expected, unless consumers are oblivious to their everyday experiences of products changing over time and nothing lasting forever.

And how are Sony going to execute BC over Gaikai anyway? There's no easy answer I can see, meaning there's considerable reason to think it won't happen. All the hopes and expectations of the consumer count for nothing if its technically/economically impossible. It'd be better for Sony to offer a BC add-on, or just expect owners to keep their PS3.

[i_am_interested]

Originally Posted by TheD

Cloud gaming is flatout bad!

You lose any control over the games you paid for, you can lose access at anytime for any number of reasons.
You have a lot of lag, it looks like a youtube video, it cuts out a large amount of the worlds pop ect.!

It will not allow games that look better than what is practical for a mid/low PC at the time (cloud gaming does not mean things stop costing money!)

Wired internet infrastructure does not follow moore's law (unlike what one of the deluded cloud gaming PRs said). it takes ages and huge amounts of money to upgrade it!

It takes on the order of 1.6Gbits to have real time encoded near lossless 1080P at 60FPS!

Not only are phones and tablets not well suited to the controls of console or PC games but wireless internet could not be more unsuited to game streaming! It is shared bandwidth!

If you have the bandwidth for cloud gaming it would not take long at all just to download the game instead!

Reality is different to what the (head in the) cloud crowd thinks.

why has this anti-gaming-cloud mentality that feels like an entrenched On-live attitude developed? ive seen this across multiple sites and forums...

this idea that people will either be forced to choose between disc, DD, or cloud OR eventually only inside the cloud... and that this choice/force of cloud will cause people to lose access to their games???

#biggerpicture

why cant we have a plan to allow cloud play once a disc or DD purchase has been made? or even the possibility of a netflix style service? no one ever complains of losing movies there because we all understand the service

why do people see cloud gaming as one or the other instead of the possibility of a service that can support our current disc/DD situation? local games at home, cloud games on the go, accommodated by transferrable & cloud saves -- weve already seen a different yet similar mentality to this with ps3 + psVITA

[JPT]

Originally Posted by liolio

To have such a big huge megastore you need an OS.
Thanks to competition MS can now come with its market place which I'm confident a few year ago would have felt under the regulators attacks.

Istore is tight to iOS, Google play to Android, windows 8 market place... obviously to windows.

ChromeOS or just chrome it self is probably enough, especially sine there already is a Gaikai Chrome Native Client.

Put Chrome as the browser on PS4 and you can use the native client to support all Gaikai services. Then have PS4 do its own mumbo jumbo HAL OS thingy for native games if you like.
Or just do everything over Gaikai, then the Games just needs to run on whatever Gaikai stuff runs on, ie Windows, Mac, Linux etc etc.

Basically what you buy at home is a STB for all your Gaikai services ie no need for expensive CPU/GPU in PS5

[ShadowRunner]

Remember the Sony patents for a scalable 1ppu +4spu modules?



Was discussed here on B3D briefly

Quoting Shifty from that thread:

The patent itself does not look applicable to the PS3. It covers a processor with a memory interface unit that can be changed between working as an SMP extension to a processor, or as a conventional node within a distributed processing network. It's the former that is something special, the idea that you could have two discrete processing packages, one in a console and one in a TV say, that work as one processor with coherency across memory accesses and data sharing. To the system, there is one processor, a Cell with 2 PPUs and 12 SPUs, or whatever it is.

Currently Cell does not have a BIC capable of switching between SMP and distributed-computing modes. I don't think such a thing can be emulated by a SPE. Even if it could, there's no connection that allows two discrete device CPUs to communicate at full bus speeds. The patent uses Cell's current FlexIO BW as an example, that the BIC unit can't exceed 35 GB/s out+25 GB/s in, but the fastest port on a PS3 is HDMI at 10 gigabits, one way AFAIK. The gigabit network port would only allow for distributed computing models, which would require custom software written to support it. I know of nothing in development that allows 50+ GB/s communication between devices. You'd need something like a RAMBUS port!

Im thinking something along these lines of multi module add-in cards, along with NVidia GPUs, in each server could well provide the setup required for cost effective backwards compatibility in the cloud and greatly simplify any emulation required.

On another note, is there any use for cloud/distributed computing in helping to render games alongside the host machine? Im thinking things like complex AI,physics,game logic etc, freeing up rescources locally, but have no idea how latency sensitive such things are or potential bandwidth requirements.

[Platon]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

Taht's a pretty ill-informed decision. The world is full of incompatibilities. You can buy a Canon EF lens now knowing it'll be a comatible with future cameras, but when Canon switched lens format in 1987 and rendered all those old Canon FD lenses redundant, it didn't lose them their business. You can buy a bike from a manufacturer, and then buy a replacement, and find your seat post isn't compatible. Wait long enough and none of your old components will be compatible. You can buy a TV with an analogue tuner and then find the world switches to digital making that purchase pretty useless and you have to buy a digital add-on. You can buy a PC to run software, and then buy a new PC years later that won't run the same software. You can buy a game for your Android tablet, buy a new, upgraded Android tablet, and find the game no longer runs. You can buy music on a download music service only for that service to die out and you lose all that music. So why assume a game bought for one console will run on another?

Sony can add value with streamed BC (although if it doesn't perform well, the consumer is no better off than not having any BC), but it isn't expected, unless consumers are oblivious to their everyday experiences of products changing over time and nothing lasting forever.

And how are Sony going to execute BC over Gaikai anyway? There's no easy answer I can see, meaning there's considerable reason to think it won't happen. All the hopes and expectations of the consumer count for nothing if its technically/economically impossible. It'd be better for Sony to offer a BC add-on, or just expect owners to keep their PS3.

I do not disagree and I think that when it comes to disc based games the general consensus would be not to expect compatibility with the next gen hardware. I do not know though if that would apply to on line purchases.

For some reason, when you have bought it online and have just a digital copy on you HDD or cloud or whatever, then it seems that people might be less tolerable to not having it work on new hardware.

I think with how portable music and movies have become now, and you can play them on you PC, phone, tablet, fridge (coming soon) where you have either a file you just copy over devices or stream through skype or whatever, people have now been accustomed that a digital copy should just work everywhere. Again, I'm not saying it is right, but I can understand why it would make sense to people why they would have such expectations...

[BoardBonobo]

Would it not make sense for the PS3/4 itself to become a delivery node for the network? That way you could take your mobile device (Vita, Tablet, Phone etc) and stream games from your own platform. Like a version of directplay that works and is not reliant on the internet backbone.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Platon

I think with how portable music and movies have become now, and you can play them on you PC, phone, tablet, fridge (coming soon) where you have either a file you just copy over devices or stream through skype or whatever, people have now been accustomed that a digital copy should just work everywhere. Again, I'm not saying it is right, but I can understand why it would make sense to people why they would have such expectations...

I agree with that, and expect Sony Ps content to become platform agnostic in the near future. But it'll be via a framework, same as every other hardware agnostic platform, and not via emulation. My PSN downloads likely won't work on PS4. I don't believe the masses will be up in arms over that this time around. Next time, when everyone elses's content is portable, people will complain. But not this time, is my guess.

[BoardBonobo]

I wonder if Sony would be up for a similar service to BT with its FON network. Allowing you to stream games from your PS4 to complete strangers devices with the incentive that your either earn money from it or are re-compensated in some other way e.g. SEN credits or something.

[Persistantthug]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

I agree with that, and expect Sony Ps content to become platform agnostic in the near future. But it'll be via a framework, same as every other hardware agnostic platform, and not via emulation. My PSN downloads likely won't work on PS4. I don't believe the masses will be up in arms over that this time around. Next time, when everyone elses's content is portable, people will complain. But not this time, is my guess.

People would be pissed......

and rightfully so.

Maybe not you...probably because you understand the reasons why this would be difficult....

But common everyday people don't care about such technical reason....They just know they bought their stuff from Sony, and Sony better have their sh17 when they want it.

That's a customer's always right scenereo I was describing earlier.
Perception is reality, Shifty Geezer.....basically.

[Shifty Geezer]

But these same people buy PSP downloads and don't grumble when they don't run on PS3. These same people buy PS3's that don't run their old PS2 software. As long as the store categorises their existing downloads as PS3, and has a separate section for PS4 or PSN tiles, then the situation is no different to what the customer is already used to.

This is all in that other BC Importance thread, so I'll stop repeating it here.

[Persistantthug]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

But these same people buy PSP downloads and don't grumble when they don't run on PS3. These same people buy PS3's that don't run their old PS2 software. As long as the store categorises their existing downloads as PS3, and has a separate section for PS4 or PSN tiles, then the situation is no different to what the customer is already used to.

This is all in that other BC Importance thread, so I'll stop repeating it here.

I understand, and you're right...

But now, the stakes are getting higher for Sony.....alot higher...and on several different levels.


We'll see how Sony handles it....if nothing else, it will be interesting.

EDIT IN.....Most, if not all PSP GO games (downloads) work with the VITA

[Persistantthug]

And, what do we have here:

Report: Sony Says PS1 and PS2 Games Coming to PS3 “Soon” via Streaming Service



Baseless and ridiculous rumors I'm sure

[tuna]

What would be the point of PS1 game streaming? Why not just download them and run them in an emulator?

[Persistantthug]

Originally Posted by tuna

What would be the point of PS1 game streaming? Why not just download them and run them in an emulator?

Multi-disk games perhaps?

I certainly wouldn't mind getting the MONSTER RANCHER series on my PS3.