Latency is the biggest issue when it comes to competitive gaming. For the casual market it's fine. But for the hardcore competitive players, it won't be popular. It is also impossible for a up and coming player to get to a high level of technicality when it comes to gaming. It's just not possible even with the slightest bit of latency.
New tech could make consoles obsolete
11–20 of 37 posts
Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete
#12I don't see how this can work... yet.
Right now, even with broadband internet connections, players consistently experience game-ruining latency, and that is sending magnitudes less information.
I seriously doubt that OnLive could work in the U.S.; the broadband infrastructure just isn't there yet. Korea and Japan, on the other hand? Sign me up!
Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete
#13Could, but won't. I woulnd't want to subject myself to the lag inherent in sending commands from my controller to a remote server and then recieving live video back to my screen again. Multiplayer would simply not work.
Even if it worked, here in Canada most ISPs have a monthly bandwidth limit (usually around 20-30GB, which is ridiculously low), so it would be really expensive for the end user.
Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete
#14While I think latency will still be an issue to some degree, it's probably not nearly to the level people are imagining due to current experience since this is quite different.
With current gaming systems, everyone's computer/console is rendering a version of the game with all known info. As a player acts, that info is sent to the server and distributed to other participants. If one user is experiencing (or intentionally causing) latency with this exchange of data, there can be what amounts to a "collision" in the state of the game. These problems are solved in various ways (i.e. jumping locations) that affect game play.
In this system, there is one central computer that is managing all happenings in the game and rendering out a unique view for each player. There will be no "collisions" of conflicting information because there are not multiple entities creating and modifying game actions.
I imagine any lag would primarily be experienced as your character responding to your actions in a delayed manner or a drop of video signal. Both would definitely inhibit game play, but they should ONLY be apparent to the user experiencing the lag. A lagged user would just be a sitting duck for any other player, but not change the game play for anyone else. THAT would be a huge improvement.
Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete
#15Isn't the major point of this that it makes piracy impossible? I think that if there is no benefit (or even a small detriment) to the game experience, industry will still embrace this. As I understand it, piracy is essentially the reason PC gaming is dead now.
But then you will have other game companies release console based games that perform better and people will flock to those. I think this is a failure out of the gate; we'll see.
Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete
#16One thought I had as mainly a non-gamer is on the costs. Since this is being done in the cloud, it'll cost a bit of money to keep a game running - a company can't simply sell you the game, it now has to pay a bit for each hour you play. As a game gets older, it becomes less attractive for a company to support it.
Of course, I assume that the monthly subscription fees could cover it, or perhaps a pay-per-drink model, but I wonder what will happen to the up-front costs.
Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete
#17Here's a hands-on impression
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/57855
The bottom line: the compression algorithm needs some work, and latency, even with GDC's optimal setup, is noticeable.
Sounds like the service is still a few years ahead of its time.
Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete
#18I don't see how this can work... yet. Right now, even with broadband internet connections, players consistently experience game-ruining latency, and that is sending magnitudes less information. I seriously doubt that OnLive could work in the U.S.; the broadband infrastructure just isn't there yet. Korea and Japan, on the other hand? Sign me up!
Latency and bandwidth are fundamentally distinct. In particular, if all the players in a game are on the same OnLive server, then there's no synchronization issue between systems as there usually is, only a latency issue from the renderer to your screen.
Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete
#19Here's a hands-on impression http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/57855 The bottom line: the compression algorithm needs some work, and latency, even with GDC's optimal setup, is noticeable. Sounds like the service is still a few years ahead of its time.
It might be more than a few years ahead of its time... it might be physically impossible.
At the theoretical speed of light, once around the equator is 2 frames of lag for a 30 FPS game (which most console games are these days).
Back when there was the whole graphics card benchmark wars going on, driver writers were buffering commands for two or three extra frames to prevent pipeline stalls. This would allow the game to achieve a higher frame rate, but introduced as little as 30 ms of input lag that hardcore players complained about.
Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete
#20Could latency be worked around akin to how VNC handles your mouse movements? I.e., it moves your mouse on the screen immediately and then lets the actual mouse on the remote computer catch up. (I think)