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New tech could make consoles obsolete

videogames.yahoo.com

31–37 of 37 posts

Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete

#31
post #7

Isn'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.

> PC gaming is dead.

Yeah billions of dollars dead.

from 2007: "The biggest gaming platform last year was the PC. Why? Online revenue alone exceeded 7 billion USD in 2007. As well, DFC predicts total PC gaming revenue to top 19 billion by 2013"

from 2008 14% plummet in PC game sales, cause why, cause of MMO's and Steam we buy online and not retail. http://www.examiner.com/x-892-PC-Game-Examiner~y2009m1d19-PC...

Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete

#32
post #17

Here'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…

Ignoring the fact that the worst case is halfway around the equator (though real world routes could be less direct), when you want to reduce latency you want to have data centers as near to your customers as possible. In that case, 10 to 15 ms round-trip time to many customers is feasible with current tech and infrastructure. That's about one frame at 60fps.

So it's certainly physically possible.

Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete

#33

"OnLive will supply players with a small set-top box, not much bigger than a Nintendo DS, which will plug into your TV and your home broadband connection." You mean like a console?... "OnLive also includes some features you might associate more with your DVR than with a gaming console, including a Replay feature that lets you save the last ten seconds of your gameplay, and send it to your friends." Only the last 10 s…

My major problem with this console is that the price difference between "a box that can feed the TV with a screen off the network and cope with all the associated problems thereof" and "a traditional console" is not likely to be wide enough to make the inevitable disadvantages worth it.

Cloud mania appears to have obscured the fact that personal computing power continues to grow. We are currently in a momentary I/O bobble that will resolve itself in a year or two with solid state drives (which, by their fast pace of development, seem eager to catch up to all the other components of the computer), leaving only multicore to deal with, which putting this sort of thing in the cloud can hardly ignore either.

By the time this thing comes out, the box + one year of service will almost certainly cost more than an XBox 360, and will probably be going head-to-head with the "Playstation 4" or the "XBox 720" with what is now the current gen readily available for $50. The PS4/XBox360 will probably be bragging about pushing 120Hz of 1080P with surround sound.

My minor complaint is that this just won't work on a consumer grade network, full stop. It will take years to make the deals with Comcast and everyone to get the necessary QoS that this would take. Nobody is streaming video out in real time over the internet. "Real time" here doesn't mean "real time minus two seconds" or "streaming a video while permitting a 5 minute pre-buffer", "real time" means a solid, uninterrupted stream of data with no more than a handful of frames of latency, where the slightest network bobble means your game freezes solid.

Fat chance.

Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete

#34
post #14

While 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 intention…

You've got it backwards with lag. With local rendering power, minor lag can be magicked away as the local machine applies prediction algorithms to make a decent guess as to what the game state will be in the next .25 seconds. With this system, every minor lag blip for more than one frame, which I will be generous and assume will be 30fps and thus 33ms (rather than 60fps) will manifest as total game freeze, because every minor lag blip is logically equivalent to walking up to your real-life XBox and just disconnecting the video cable, assuming a TV that would then hold the previous frame instead of dropping the picture.

There's no way in hell this thing is going to play FPSs. Think "Bejeweled". With no animations, or very choppy ones.

It's a terrible, terrible design suited solely for extracting investment money from credulous investors. If you are a credulous investor doing due diligence on this product and you've encountered this message, if they're promising anything other than casual, graphically-unimpressive games, this is your cue to run.

Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete

#35
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latency is mostly a solved problem though when it comes to high speed connections though. Early when cable was released in my area there was high burst rates but bad latency - so back then I went with a dsl connection that had lower band width but better latency. These days though the latency is low enough on the cable connection in my area that I can play FPS perfectly fine. From the article it sounds like the were…

Latency is not a solved problem. Lag problems in Warcraft 3 games are very common.

They're common in all games. Even if the ISPs got their act together (no sign of that) the stuff on the consumer's end is still a problem. Lots of ISPs distribute modems with significant problems. Lots of companies (Linksys, Belkin, and DLink come to mind as offenders) sell wifi boxes that are not only pathetically slow, but come with absurd defaults that make them even slower (Think 150ms+ ping on the wlan).

Not to mention the huge variety of brokenness that happens with PCs, which they're going to have to deal with (they have a client for Windows/OS X as well as the set top box).

To be honest, I would be amazed if latency didn't kill this project. Or turn it into a puzzle game platform.

Re: New tech could make consoles obsolete

#37
post #7

Isn'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.

> PC gaming is dead. Yeah billions of dollars dead. from 2007: "The biggest gaming platform last year was the PC. Why? Online revenue alone exceeded 7 billion USD in 2007. As well, DFC predicts total PC gaming revenue to top 19 billion by 2013" from 2008 14% plummet in PC game sales, cause why, cause of MMO's and Steam we buy online and not retail. http://www.examiner.com/x-892-PC-Game-Examiner~y2009m1d19-PC...

Interesting. I know that there is lots of activity in certain sectors of PC gaming based on a subscription model where piracy is also basically impossible. (World of Warcraft, for example).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23800152/

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