Remote game services (OnLive, Gaikai, etc.)

[Rangers]

http://kotaku.com/5181625/see-onlive-in-action

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-10202688-235.html

SAN FRANCISCO--Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, look out. Your traditional video game console business model may be in danger.

It's too early to tell how much danger, of course, but a start-up called OnLive announced a brand-new game distribution system Monday night that, if it works as planned, could change the games game forever.

OnLive, which was started by WebTV founder Steve Perlman and former Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey, is aiming to launch a system--seven years in the works--that will digitally distribute first-run, AAA games from publishers like Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Atari, and others, all at the same time as those titles are released into retail channels. The system is designed to allow players to stream on-demand games at the highest quality onto any Intel-based Mac or PC running XP or Vista, regardless of how powerful the computer.

The system will also stream games directly to a TV via a small plug-in device, and players can use a custom wireless controller as well as VoIP headsets in conjunction with it.

I'm guessing this is basically an investor scam?

I dont know if this is a console topic, but there is an alleged box that hooks to your TV if desired, aka a console.

 

[obonicus]

I don't think this is an investor scam, I just wonder if it'll work. Who's the audience for this? You need to have a fairly fast connection and not care about latency.

 

[DieH@rd]

1.5 mbit for SD, and 5mbit for HD [according to ggmania]. Its not so bad, but my main concern is latency. I think everything below 60-70ms is totaly acceptable IMO.


I would like to try it, i hope there will be some free trial.

 

[Rangers]

I dont think 5mbps is much to ask these days. I hardly live in a technology hub or the big city and bog standard cable here is 8mbps. Then I go on DSL reports and see a lot of cable companies are now at 16 mb and above, besides the lucky people that have access to Fios and such.

I dont understand how this would work even at a basic level, say I'm playing Crysis on the service. In order for me to interact with it, doesn't a high end PC have to be playing the game (which is then served to me) at their end? If so, how can they afford it? A high end PC per user at any one time is a very high expense (and not really more cost efficient in the macro view than me having my own!).

Except I supposed that that high end PC could be servicing somebody else while I'm asleep or doing other things. Even so, I would think at "peak" times and prime time, they would have to have a very high ratio of high end PC's available to satisfy peak demand, again meaning very high cost, since most people are going to want to play from 7-11PM and only from within 7-11 PM or so.

 

[DieH@rd]

They dont have a "high end PC for each user", they have a cloud of servers (presumably with lots and lots of Tesla GPU's ). So i think that they will manage to deal with high demand.

 

[-tkf-]

Sounds very promising:

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/introducing-onlive-and-the-end-of-consoles/?biz=

We witnessed Crysis (which is notorious for how it pushes PCs) being played on the server off a simple Macbook, and it was smooth and looked fantastic.

Interview:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/47080.html?r=1
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/47082.html?r=1

I am mostly curious about how they can beat real internet latency and send 60 FPS without noticeable lag

 

[obonicus]

I dont think 5mbps is much to ask these days. I hardly live in a technology hub or the big city and bog standard cable here is 8mbps. Then I go on DSL reports and see a lot of cable companies are now at 16 mb and above, besides the lucky people that have access to Fios and such.

I dont understand how this would work even at a basic level, say I'm playing Crysis on the service. In order for me to interact with it, doesn't a high end PC have to be playing the game (which is then served to me) at their end? If so, how can they afford it? A high end PC per user at any one time is a very high expense (and not really more cost efficient in the macro view than me having my own!).

Except I supposed that that high end PC could be servicing somebody else while I'm asleep or doing other things. Even so, I would think at "peak" times and prime time, they would have to have a very high ratio of high end PC's available to satisfy peak demand, again meaning very high cost, since most people are going to want to play from 7-11PM and only from within 7-11 PM or so.

I'm still wondering who'd really go for this (excluding early adopters who generally have more money than brains), unless the price were really competitive. It seems like it's the intersection of:

1) The people with moderately fast internet connections (need a reliable 1.5Mbit+)
2) Those willing to overlook IQ issues from compression and latency issues (this would exclude a lot of B3D)
3) Is in the market for complex, 'AAA' games like (from those listed) Fear 2, Prince of Persia, Burnout Paradise (double checking, it seems like Lego Batman is in the list there).

I mean, best of luck to the early adopters, but I wouldn't be surprised if, in case the system does catch on, it'll do it in SD and with the more approachable games like Lego Batman.

 

[obonicus]

Sounds very promising:

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/introducing-onlive-and-the-end-of-consoles/?biz=



Interview:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/47080.html?r=1
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/47082.html?r=1

I am mostly curious about how they can beat real internet latency and send 60 FPS without noticeable lag

Is it real internet or did they have the servers out in a refrigerated cargo hold somewhere?

 

[obonicus]

They dont have a "high end PC for each user", they have a cloud of servers (presumably with lots and lots of Tesla GPU's ). So i think that they will manage to deal with high demand.

Yeah, I don't think we're dealing with PCs, but on the other hand... well, latency will creep up unacceptably unless you keep distances between the boxes and the servers down. That means a lot of server farms. And if you don't live in a major city you're probably SOL. Are we going to see a wide launch or something a lot more focused?

 

[-tkf-]

Is it real internet or did they have the servers out in a refrigerated cargo hold somewhere?

My bet is on a server hidden somewhere, if not i am impressed. But afaik AMD demonstrated something like this earlier.

 

[Rangers]

They dont have a "high end PC for each user", they have a cloud of servers (presumably with lots and lots of Tesla GPU's ). So i think that they will manage to deal with high demand.

Which is basically going to be the same thing?

Just because you call it a "server" with a Tesla GPU doesnt make it not a high end PC for every (online) user.. I doubt theres any PC that can run two instances of Crysis at once..

Arent Tesla GPU's just Nvidia consumer stuff priced 10X higher?

Doing some math, let us say they can get bye with 1 PC for every 3 users (I'm skeptical, but ok).. how much is a "high end" PC? 1k? Usually people would say 2k or more.

So lets say its..30 a month? They'd recoup 90 a month for the three users the PC supports. So i dunno, they'd have to go a year to pay for a 1k PC? Next question is, how long is a "high end" PC high end, and when does that high end PC become dated? A year is a long time in PC terms..

Would people pay 30 a month for such a service? I wouldnt..

 

[Synergy34]

To many questions need to be answered for now, but I would take this very seriously if i were MS, Sony and Nintendo. May not so much nintendo but keep eye on it.

Rangers i think you would have to agree that publishers would be paying them to put software on the service and you know there will be some sort of advertising going on somewhere. Subscription fees can't be the only source of revenue

Lets say it is 30 a month.

Would i pay?? Depends what the games would cost to buy and rent. They would have to be way cheaper than 60-70 bucks. No shipping, pressing of discs. no paying licensing fees to use DVD or BluRay. That savings list is pretty extensive IMO.

If i could buy the newest games for under 30 bucks i would say it's more than worth it.

 

[Richard]

For MP this is a non-starter since people won't be able to cheat anymore. Seriously, JC talked about this idea a few QuakeCon's ago. Without real-world latency tests this is nothing but academic though.

 

[DrJay24]

I'm guessing they found a way around the speed of light to make this playable? Sounds like a scam to me. I live in Silicon Valley and most people have 1.5-3.0Mbps DSL, so 5.0Mbps might be a lot to ask from most people.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Seems interesting, but like everyone is saying, input lag would probably be a deal breaker. I mean, unless they've solved the problem of internet latency (which would be a bigger deal than this gaming service), I just can't see how it would work. I can believe that they can have a high quality HD stream of the game, but the input is a problem.

It'll be interesting to see how it is priced.

 

[obonicus]

I don't think input lag is necessarily a deal breaker, it just has to either be in genres were input lag doesn't matter (much) or with an audience that doesn't care about input lag. The former is a pretty restricted set of genres. The latter... well, again, I have a hard time believing that the people who don't care about 2-6 frames worth of delayed controls will care for those 'AAA' games. In fact, I doubt those people will pay for a subscriber on-demand game service.

Again, who's this intended for?

 

[Asher]

It's a ridiculous concept doomed for failure.

Putting aside the obvious issues like input lag and compression artifacts and lag, how about other stuff -- 5Mbps for HD? That'd eat into my bandwidth cap VERY quickly, and I've got the highest cap possible with my ISP (95GB/mo total).

Not to mention the cost of the hardware. Say a game like Halo 3 or GTA4 gets released. Can you imagine how many compute clusters that'd need to meet that spike of demand? I doubt they'd even invest in it. Then what -- you'd have a queue to play a game? a "service unavailable" error?

I don't think they've thought this through. To fund the necessary infrastructure to ensure anyone can play the game they're buying, it'd cost a fortune just to account for the exceptional cases of peak usage. That's aside from the litany of technical issues.

 

[Rangers]

This whole thing reminds me of the Phantom. Or the Lucidlogix Hydra that was discussed in the GPU section, or the Gizmondo. It smells exactly the same.

My guess is they're looking to score some investor cash, the release date will continually get postponed until they fade away..

 

[Scott_Arm]

Well, if they sold it to ISPs that could provide it as part of their service offerings, I can see some potential. Like IPTV, it wouldn't count against your monthly bandwidth or something. It would obviously be a partnership, but I can't see any other way this would work. It would help with the latency problem and eliminate the bandwidth issue. Also, they could roll it into your monthly internet bill.

 

[Synergy34]

This whole thing reminds me of the Phantom. Or the Lucidlogix Hydra that was discussed in the GPU section, or the Gizmondo. It smells exactly the same.

My guess is they're looking to score some investor cash, the release date will continually get postponed until they fade away..

That what i thought to at first(phantom) but this isn't being run by someone with a history of cheating investors. Did the Phantom appear anywhere as a working product? i don't recall.

also isn't this being demo'd at GDC?? I want to know the details of it. to me it seems to have stronger legs than Phantom.

I would also like to here from some of the developers that have seemingly signed up to put content on the service.

EDIT: The people behind this new company.

Steve Perlman initially attracted notice as a principal scientist of Apple Computer, Inc., where he led the development efforts for much of the underlying multimedia technology incorporated into the color Macintosh, including the underpinnings of QuickTime technology. He also developed WebTv.

Perlman is joined on his management team by former Eidos Interactive CEO Michael McGarvey and Charles Jablonski, former VP of broadcast and engineering at NBC.