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Comments: 136 +- Games: OnLive CEO Provides Details On Cloud Gaming on Wednesday September 30, @01:11AM
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Soulskill
on Wednesday September 30, @01:11AM
from the attack-of-the-jittering-packets dept.
from the attack-of-the-jittering-packets dept.
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technology
eldavojohn writes "OnLive is a new cloud gaming service that is in beta testing. While it might sound like nothing more than corporate buzzwords creeping over into the gaming world, a new video reveals how the CEO claims his service will work. Perlman explains OnLive's solution to the video game compression problem and talks about the '80 ms latency budget.' It's pretty interesting to listen to him figure out this budget and where the 'costs' come from. (Video only.) Now, this all hinges on the 'microconsole,' which — as he reveals at the beginning of the video — is so cheap they plan to give it away. We may also see it incorporated with TVs and other electronic devices. He goes on to talk about perceptual science and dealing with packet irregularities on the internet."
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Even if someone doesn't care what the world thinks
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Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)
Does it run on Linux? I mean I know this question is often used in jest, but I'm serious.
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Does it run on Linux? I mean I know this question is often used in jest, but I'm serious.
If it does then next year will truly be the year of Linux on the desktop
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Having to swap between Linux and Windows between getting games working and playing games just made me resent Linux for being too much like my day job. I don't come home to fix my OS; I come home to use it, and that's where Windows has the upper hand (at least as a gaming OS).
This service, if it runs on Linux, will make Ballmer quite literally shit himself.
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Oh noes, Have you tried WINE lately? I haven't tried it with anything cutting edge, but it surprised me by Just Working for the older (~San Andreas era) Windows games that I've tried it with.
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Yes. Did you RTFA?
New here? No-one reads articles on slashdot. Welcome to the "summary crowd".
Oh yes (Score:5, Insightful)
"is so cheap they plan to give it away"
Hey Perlman (if that is your real name): the dot-com bubble called. They want their failed business strategy back. Subsidise the hardware, sure, but don't give it away. That's just asking for financial disaster. Your business is risky enough as it is.
Re:Oh yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Shhh ... shut up. They might hear you.
I DO want a free box with Ethernet, wireless, HDMI, surround audio, USB (for wired controllers) and maybe Bluetooth (for the wireless ones) and with a CPU wih enough oomph to decode HD streamed video. If we manage to port XBMC on this ... :)
Parent
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a CPU wih enough oomph to decode HD streamed video
If they decode video in the CPU, they're doing it wrong.
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If they decode video in the CPU, they're doing it wrong.
Using hardware decoders is non-trivial. You can't just call one library and have access to accelerated video on old nvidia, new nvidia, old ati, new ati, and intel at the same time. By targeting the CPU itself they reach the maximum number of subscribers, including those with shitty integrated video which can't really accelerate anything.
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Using hardware decoders is non-trivial.
It's pretty trivial if you have control over the hardware. This particular thread is about the 'free' hardware they intend to distribute.
The microconsole is bound to contain a cheap, low powered CPU, and a mass market decoder chip.
Re:Oh yes (Score:5, Funny)
the dot-com bubble called. They want their failed business strategy back. Subsidise the hardware, sure, but don't give it away.
My mobile phone company must be crying into their balance sheet.
Parent
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Phone companies don't give away phones. You buy them as part of a contract. If that's what OnLive is doing, fine, but then they shouldn't say that the hardware is so cheap they can "give it away".
The razor-and-razorblades model doesn't work if you give away the razors for free.
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Phone companies don't give away phones. You buy them as part of a contract. If that's what OnLive is doing, fine, but then they shouldn't say that the hardware is so cheap they can "give it away".
Semantics. Plenty of marketing will express it as an airtime contract with a "free phone".
OnLive is the razor. The games are the razorblades, and you won't get those for free.
Re:Oh yes (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Why not give it away? It's probably cheaper than the average cable TV box. Their real expenses are server-side, and need to be paid by gathering a large customer base. There's little to be gained by deterring potential customers by overcharging for a piece-of-crap streaming box.
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"is so cheap they plan to give it away"
Hey Perlman (if that is your real name): the dot-com bubble called. They want their failed business strategy back. Subsidise the hardware, sure, but don't give it away. That's just asking for financial disaster. Your business is risky enough as it is.
They're not really giving anything away. The hardware will be 'free', but you'll be paying a hefty subscription.
This isn't like the dot-com bubble's business model. This is like the cellphone business model.
Anyhow this isn't the problem with the concept. The problem is they think games at 80ms lag are fun. That's 80ms of input lag, that is, between moving the mouse and seeing it move, or clicking a button and seeing a shot - not just for other player's actions. 80ms sounds horrible to me.
Wait... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Informative)
Your memory's faulty. The Phantom was essentially Steam or Xbox 360's version of Live before the infrastructure existed to support such a thing. It was still supposed to be a client-side games console. Server-side rendering is a different animal. A ridiculous animal, mind you, but a different animal none the less.
Parent
What's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Cablevision offers 100Mbps for $99/mo in the US. Comcast offers 50Mbps for $99/mo as well.
Comcast has more customers than there are people in Korea. They will achieve 80% DOCSIS 3 coverage by the end of 2009. Delivering "100Mbps" is as simple as updating a configuration file. The problem is that the contention ratio would be horrible.
Guess what, though? The contention ratio is
Don't do it man! (Score:4, Funny)
Gaming on Weed might sounds like fun with all them clouds but the reality is you'll wake up in your mid 30s, broke, with no life and wish you hadn't. Besides everyone knows your reaction time is better when you're sober.
We already have clouds gaming...MMORPGs (Score:4, Insightful)
Servers that scale: check. Resources brought online as needed: check. Software as a service: Check.
And that's what make MMORPGs SUCK in my book. I can't play on the train (unless I spend a lot on wireless broadband - it ain't cheap in Aus). I have to rely on servers being up. I don't have time for any of that. If I get an hour to play a game, it needs to be available then and there whenever and whereever I get a chance to play.
If I want online chat I'll socialise with real world friends and family. I even have a couple of backups (mobile phone and land line). If you think I'm a luddite keep in mind I was on Skype and MSN with my mother 2 nights ago (after going round and fixing the security on her wireless network). I know there are people who love these games - even to the point of neglecting "real" life, but I just can't get into a system where my pleasure is at some company's control. I don't want to play a game against a freakishly good 12 year old. I might be interested in a game against a real world friend but I don't want something that saps my time and requires friends interested in the same niche as me.
By all means diversify but can we please keep traditional on a cd/dvd games that don't require a cloud, or even a network?
Re:We already have clouds gaming...MMORPGs (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:We already have clouds gaming...MMORPGs (Score:4, Insightful)
Hi, server, it's Rogerborg - I'm back online. Yeah, the thing is, while I was playing offline, I won the game, got all the loot and hit level infinity. Be a good chap and update the world state, would you?
What, you don't believe me? Dude, would my client lie to you? Seriously, don't be so paranoid.
Parent
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Sounds exactly like Diablo and it's multiplayer/open option.. it was diluted with hacks and cloning and such..
Re:We already have clouds gaming...MMORPGs (Score:4, Insightful)
Servers that scale: check. Resources brought online as needed: check. Software as a service: Check.
And that's what make MMORPGs SUCK in my book.
Yet MMORPGs are a massive success. They fit in with the desires of millions, you're just not one of those millions.
I don't buy makeup. I don't boldly announce that the makeup industry can't possibly make money.
Parent
Cloud Banking (Score:2)
... rhymes with Cloud Wanking.
The allure of ***Cloud*** (insert fireworks) surprises and doesn't surprise me. Seems like any tech concept you can put in simple allegorical terms that can be understood by the technically illiterate investors (and tech journalists at Wired) is a surefire recipe for success. Here... let me try:
"Mountain(TM) Computing! The Problem: computing resources are spread too thin across the enterprise. Solution: With Mountain(TM) computing we marshal them for access at the peak. Intel a
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The cost-benefit analysis (Score:2)
For those with short attention spans, the product is supposed to provide games by server-side rendering. The essential question is: on aggregate, is it cheaper for them to buy the game-rendering hardware and set up the network infrastructure and add their margin, than for the end user to simply go out and buy a games console outright? If 20% of their users want to play Crysis 2, and 80% want to play Peggle, the company needs to buy enough heavy-duty hardware for all of those people to play Crysis 2, and sti
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If 20% of their users want to play Crysis 2, and 80% want to play Peggle, the company needs to buy enough heavy-duty hardware for all of those people to play Crysis 2, and still offer the service at a price which will please people who want Peggle. I'm not sure that the maths will work.
Er, no they don't.
What's more, if 100% of their customers want to play Crysis 2, half on weekends, half on weekdays, then they only need to buy enough heavy-duty hardware for half the capacity. When a home console isn't being played, that's potential computing power being wasted.
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Until the next public holiday, when 100% of their customers try to play and either half of them can't, or all of them have a sucky experience. Still, at least that'll cause their paying customer base to reduce to the level that they can support, so I guess it's a self-solving problem.
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Until the next public holiday, when 100% of their customers try to play and either half of them can't, or all of them have a sucky experience.
It's up to them as service providers to work out the right scale. It will likely *never* be necessary to have enough grunt for every subscriber to be playing a top-end game simultanously.
In your example of a public holiday, for instance - OK, some people will spend the day playing Crysis when they would normally be working. Others will go to see friends/family and not play games at all. Things even out.
Yes, they'll need to predict peaks and provide for them. That's no different to any other service.
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You don't need monstruosities unless you are deeply in love with diminishing returns.
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It's even less... My quad core with a Radeon 4850 and 4 GB of memory won't go over 270W at full load, playing at 1920x1200 and highest settings. On idle, it's 167w... And this is with a bad power supply, a 460w with less than 75% power efficiency.
As for parent poster, I agree... Crysis and other games would most likely be rendered at maximum 720p and low to medium settings, because any better quality would just be lost on the compression and people won't notice it. 4:3 will probably be rendered at 1280x1024
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Newsflash: most people would consider your 8800GT, Athlon X2 3800 with 4GB RAM a very high level machine.
Then there's all the people with laptops that have lots of CPU, lots of RAM, and a crummy graphics card.
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I see this as being piped to a widescreen 720p TV at best, 17" monitor at 1280x1024 maybe.
OnLive does 'SD' or 'HD'. 'HD' is 720p. I'm guessing that SD is 640x480.
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[citation needed]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
probably because gaming is saturated in Korea. There are PC-rooms everywhere. I can walk to about a dozen in less than 10 minutes. They're very cheap, and people in Korea are social gamers. They don't stay home and game. They go out and do it with their friends. Also Korean PC games are free. Only microtransactions for vanity things, and the system requirements are often quite low on most of them which means you don't need an expensive PC even if you wanted to game at home. A lot of home users use wireless
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Yup.
Even a lot of western games don't get big here, because they cost money. Koreans are all too happy to enjoy their free games.
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Mostly, yes, but as a counterpoint: Navy Field [navyfield.com] a WWII naval combat game. The technology is stone age - bitmaps, DirectX6, TCP - and it's poorly supported and run, but it just won't lie down and die.
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Not all. I don't play the MMOs, my Korean isn't good enough, but I have a very infrequently updated blog where I walk people through how to sign up and play various games that don't require much Korean. There are some there that I enjoy. FPS, and MMOs lend themselves best to the whole vanity stuff. You can't break into the RTS market with a bomb because of Star Craft. I've found 1 or 2 Korean made RTS out there, but they're not currently running, they seem to be down for revamping. There is a decent scorche
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Re:Oh! (Score:5, Insightful)
You want to roll out in a market you're familiar with first (your home market), and during that time, you can have people do research on other markets and line up all your local people and resources.
You don't want to just jump into an unfamiliar market right away, that leads to problems.
Parent
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Wednesday, September 23, 2009
How to Deliver Online Gaming, Minus the Lag
OnLive CEO Steve Perlman explains how his cloud videogame service deals with real network conditions.
By Erica Naone
This March, a company called OnLive promised a gaming technology that seemed almost too good to be true. The company said it could deliver graphics-heavy video games over the Internet to any computer or to a miniconsole hooked to a television. This includes games such as the first-person shooter Crysis, which is normally be
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Warner Brothers are probably getting in there so that they can keep getting a cut of the money, even if people aren't playing their franchise games.
AT&T are probably in there because they can make a killing through the extra bandwidth people will need!
Other than that I've not heard of them (perhaps they're big in the US and not outside, or maybe they're some "behind the scenes" names who are big really but most people have just heard of the sub-companies).
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I dont see this working and scaling in any shape or form without special treatment from big providers. Hell, even youtube likes to slow down at some times of day, and youtube uses less bandwidth and crappiest resolution.