Sony's Hidden Online Strategy

[dodo3]

Found this on another forum, do you think this is possible?

This picture is from the Sony Pre-E3 Conference and showcases a very peculiar sentence. P2P Secure Communication.

What this means is that not only will their service most likely be free, the network of Playstation World won't be hosted on a farm of servers (a la Xbox Live) but will instead be a virtual network in the spirit of Kazaa and Limewire. Kutaragi has repeatedly made allegedly ridiculous statements about "Millions of Cells directly communicating with each other across the world", which can be interpreted in several different ways, one of which was that the PS3 would have multiple cell chips working with each other, but that obviously didn't happen.

One of the main benefits of having a P2P gaming network is that Sony doesn't have to pay for expensive server clusters hosted all over world. Not only are servers expensive, they're complicated as hell to maintain properly. And if they're aiming for a 100% free service, buying hundreds of thousands of servers would be financial suicide. In order to maintain a free service that still has the features that people love about Xbox Live and numerous other online PC games, a P2P network makes perfect sense as long as the technology is fast, efficient, and secure.

Imagine signing into Playstation World, which is simply a secure website that stores News articles, updates, free and pay-for-play content, and previews of upcoming games and movies. This would be a simply login page that can be skipped over if you want to play your game against online opponents which are automatically filtered out by bandwidth and ping for minimal lag, and start the match up within seconds.

There's multiple ways to set up this idea, but I would personally love to have this kind of network. Too often have we had to play matches against people with horrible broadband connections, and, as all gamers can attest, it really screws up the fun factor. If any of you have a better online strategy, type away!

What do you guys think?

 

[rabidrabbit]

What does this mean for the early adopters, if the PS3 is going to be short in supply there will be less P's 2 P, and thus the network experience will be slow(er) and (more) unreliable in the beginning until there's millions of PS3 connected.

On the other hand, I think hundred(s) of thousands of PS3's online could already make a good P2P, would it?

Good thing is, it can only get better

 

[dodo3]

What does this mean for the early adopters, if the PS3 is going to be short in supply there will be less P's 2 P, and thus the network experience will be slow(er) and (more) unreliable in the beginning until there's millions of PS3 connected.

On the other hand, I think hundred(s) of thousands of PS3's online could already make a good P2P, would it?

Good thing is, it can only get better

I don't know much about P2P but do you think this could hold true? Do you think the network would be more efficient than a server-powered network like XBOX Live? Does this seem like a great or a horrible idea?

 

[rabidrabbit]

I have NO idea

Edit: Ok, I have some idea that's based on dl'ing content from dedicated servers vs. P2P.. let's just say they've both performed well for me, sometimes one has been better sometimes other, generally the other

 

[NANOTEC]

Couldn't you already do P2P on existing consoles using Gamespy?

 

[maxmars]

P2P is ok when you have to share files, but I'm skeptical about using it for hosting game matches.

You don't have redundant data that you can get from this or that box -- leaving out bots, all data is unique, can only come from exactly one source (the player's machine) and needs to be echoed to every other machine that's in the game. Am I missing something?

 

[rabidrabbit]

Are most Microsoft xbox "Live" games still P2P?
At least in the beginning I remember there being much bickering because online games did not use MS set up servers, but required plaers to host their own games (is that P2P technically, isn't?).
Did they later set up servers, or are some xbox360 games still hosted by players?

 

[Titanio]

Are most Microsoft xbox "Live" games still P2P?

Yes, or perhaps more specifically, players host games themselves, and others connect to them.

This article incorrectly makes the assumption that P2P would be somehow unique to Sony. There'll be servers of course for different aspects of the service (DLC etc.), but actual games will be hosted by players themselves in most cases I'm sure. Things like video chat would probably be P2P, sharing data between your remote PSP and your PS3 would be P2P etc.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Should we revise some old news:

Los Angeles 09 May 2002 Butterfly.net Inc. and IBM have deployed the first-ever custom commercial grid for the on-line video gaming market. The Butterfly Grid could enable on-line video game providers to support a massive number of players within the same game by allocating computing resources to the most populated areas and most popular games.


Butterfly.net, a development studio and infrastructure provider to the on-line video game market, will demonstrate the Butterfly Grid system to members of the video gaming industry at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2002 show beginning May 21 in Los Angeles.

The Grid was built by Butterfly.net over the last two years using IBM e-business infrastructure technology that distributes the processing of video game interaction across a network of server farms, enabling Butterfly.net to support a massive number of video gamers playing simultaneously over the Internet. The Grid is a secure system built on customised software operating on the private network of Butterfly.net.

Video game providers can access the Grid to support their on-line products by including the Butterfly Grid client software libraries in the games they distribute. These software libraries, along with sample code for connecting mobile devices, PCs and video game consoles to the Grid, are available for download.

The Butterfly Grid is powered by rack-mounted Linux-based IBM eServer xSeries systems hosted by IBM and running on internal fiber-optic networks for optimal use of computing and communications resources. The grid design offers the potential to support over one million simultaneous players from each facility in a 24/7 environment with automatic fail over capability.
http://www.hoise.com/primeur/02/articles/monthly/AE-PR-06-02-23.html

Now, if we replace the "IBM eServer xSeries systems" with "STI "Cell" based IBM BladeCenter Servers", would that still be somewhat relevant news?

Edit: Would such "Grids" of Cell supercomputers be overkill just for PS3 games and downloadable content though?
On the other hand, would the bandwidth taken by gamers be insignificant enough, that it would be possible to "lease" the needed bandwidth to gamers from those supercomputer Grids? Maybe for exchange of money, or even for exchange of the idle processing time of their PS3's?
It would be cool if your PS3, when you're not playing, would run a seti@home type application, but instead of trying to find extraterrestial life it would search for Bin Laden... sti@home!!! (search for terrorists and intruders@home).
It would have sweet irony, first the terrorists buy those PS2 to guide missiles, now a PS3 would be used to find them!!!

 

[EndR]

Okey.. this sounds very much like the existing PS2 online (which imho sucks greatly).

Centralstation is buggy, slow and has an awful UI. The connections between player is often laggy and getting disconnected is something that isn´t surprising..

I don´t mind paying for XboxLive, the service is robust, pretty safe and it´s all under one single umbrella.

Besides.. "free stuff is usually worth what you payed for it"..

 

[one]

For implementation hints, check out these network related patents submitted by SCEA...
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20634

P2P is ok when you have to share files, but I'm skeptical about using it for hosting game matches.

A patent like this suggests there was an attempt to use it for a game.

 

[c0_re]

OK their online stratagy should start with an updated vocab, I havn't heard "cyberspace" in about 10 years.

 

[rabidrabbit]

It is in quotations "Cyber Space", not Cyber Space.

The quotes add that slight bit of irony to that sentence that changes the tone and aim somewhat.

 

[Danalys]

well you could split the game world up in to packets. with enough players each packet is backed up with multiple players sharing the same packet. as some one enters an area they download the apropriate packet. the difficulty is in updating packets and proliferating the new data. especially when new data is coming from many sources. but this is the same as with any online game. you could think of it as dynamically shifting between different hosts with hosts hosting over lapping game areas.

 

[pc999]

On the other hand, I think hundred(s) of thousands of PS3's online could already make a good P2P, would it?

So it may be bad in the first 2-3 hours after the console begin to sell .

 

[BlueTsunami]

So it may be bad in the first 2-3 hours after the console begin to sell .

As some already stated, a p2p network (for gaming) wouldn't be unique to Sony. I wonder how this will work exactly and if p2p encompases everything (from gaming to file sharing).

 

[maxmars]

A patent like this suggests there was an attempt to use it for a game.

Ah yes that algo seems aimed at a p2p network for gaming, nice find.

I still think it is less ideal than using servers, because you are relying (if I have understood it correctly -- I only read the abstract) on point-to-point connections between the machines participating in the match, which means that the quality of the virtual network is dependant on all of the participants' connections quality and bandwidth at once (upload bandwidth may be the most critical factor).

This is versus a configuration where only your connection to the server matters, you only have to upload your own information to it, and usually those servers reside in datacenters where there is a lot of bandwidth.

If, instead, the connection exploits also machines that are not playing, then I don't know how it could work, because I don't plan to keep my console on the net (or even turned on, for what matters) if I'm not playing.

I'm very curious about it, anyone knows more?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Another concern is if a 'local' server gets switched off in the middle of a transfer, and an alternative will need to be found and the datastream picked up. That could add some very unpredictable lag I'd have thought. You won't notice in file distribution, but in online gaming you probably would. And with millions of users creating millions of nodes, these'll be getting disconnected all the time.

 

[Sis]

Interesting that everyone takes the P2P communication to mean some P2P topology. I assumed two things about this slide from E3: A) It was put together by a PR person with minimal understanding of online gaming and B) P2P communication was about the communication part, such as chatting. You throw in the term "secure" to give it a nice buzz word feeling.

Seriously, this slide was one of the most ambiguous slides at E3. Therefore, I predict this thread will spiral into 13 pages of two points of view. Side1: The PS3 network will be leverage the CELL networking capabilities allowing for limitless possibilities. And it will be free. Side2: Sony has no online strategy.

 

[Bobbler]

Another concern is if a 'local' server gets switched off in the middle of a transfer, and an alternative will need to be found and the datastream picked up. That could add some very unpredictable lag I'd have thought. You won't notice in file distribution, but in online gaming you probably would. And with millions of users creating millions of nodes, these'll be getting disconnected all the time.

Wouldn't that 'local' server issue be a problem in XbLive as well? It seems like its one of those issues you can't really get around when you allow games to be hosted by players. It doesn't seem like a big problem, really, as players will generally not randomly turn off their console if they want to play. Also I would think the net code would be setup so that when the "server" is killed the remaining players can 'judge' who will be the next server (some PC games do this, not sure if any XBLive games do it).

I wouldn't think it would be a problem, at least not one that the online gaming space hasn't already seen for ages. Unless, maybe I'm not understanding your concern?