Tencent is Betting There's a Future For Retro Games in the Cloud (cnbc.com) 79
While tech giants like Microsoft and Google are building cloud gaming platforms for the latest blockbuster titles, one start-up is taking a different approach. From a report: London-based firm Antstream says it wants to bring a streaming experience to retro gaming enthusiasts. The company has developed a cloud gaming service that gives players access to a library of over 2,000 classic video games. It's a model that CEO Steve Cottam sees going global. And to bolster that ambition, the company has raised its first significant round of funding, led by the Chinese tech giant Tencent and backed by British venture firm Hambro Perks. For Antstream, the project is about resurrecting an experience long buried in old devices like the Commodore 64 and the Amiga. Cottam told CNBC in an interview that the idea for the company stemmed from what he's been seeing elsewhere in the entertainment industry. "You've got Spotify and Apple for your music, while in movies you've got Netflix and Amazon," he said. "It's so easy to find that content, but games just got lost because of all these different formats, and they didn't work on modern devices."
And when they lose the rights to say EA? EPIC? ETC (Score:4, Interesting)
And when they lose the rights to say EA? EPIC? ETC?
It's like Netflix where they can lose rights to some content and then it gets pulled.
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And when they lose the rights to say EA? EPIC? ETC?
It's like Netflix where they can lose rights to some content and then it gets pulled.
I don't think so, Tencent will do it better.
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I don't think so, Tencent will do it better.
No they won't. Just look at the latest snafu with Epic and them removing games from peoples accounts.
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So, exactly like netflix then?
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Maybe they will work like Console Classix does: they own copies of the games, and if all the copies of a game are busy, you have to wait for one to be available?
Re: And when they lose the rights to say EA? EPIC? (Score:1)
Will the number of licenses work by some rule of averages? They purchase and own the 'mineral rights' to large ageing landfills, and thus have rights to an estimated number of gamecarts buried in said landfills?
Re: steam (Score:2)
I believe "cloud gaming" usually refers to streaming games. Games you don't install, but play interactively in something like a YouTube video.
Store vs Stream (Score:2)
Steam is an online game *Store*.
You go to steam, pay money for *a* game, and get a copy of the game that you can download *locally* and play *on your computer whenever you want*.
(Or SteamLink to run on *your* computer and play on *your* TV).
The bits are located on a device that you own.
It's similar to Google Play Store, Apple App Store, etc.
In theory, the day Steam goes bust, you still have your local copy (though it might be DRM locked, but Steam promises to unlock them before going bust).
Antstream is a ga
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May I introduce you to the software program DOSBox. It doesn't take a lot of computing power, but it can be very accurate - and slowed down to match the speed of the older systems. Yes, you can run games with Tandy graphics and sound. Windows 95 sort of works OK but Windows 98 is still buggy last I checked.
OUYA... (Score:3)
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How well did that work out for OUYA?
Ouya was a good idea, hampered by bad hardware and incompetent management. The hardware heat throttled, so that was just crap out of the box. But moreover, they wasted time doing the same things over and over while not doing the things people were actually asking for. I took mine back right away because it would refuse to scale to display resolution. It would only do 1080i/p, 720p, or 640x480 VGA fallback, in spite of the fact that the Tegra 3 has a scaler in it which is basically free-to-use (in that it do
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I bought an Ouya specifically because I thought it was a great idea. I wanted something to play simple games on, and to run Kodi on. If they had done a better job, I would have kept it, and I'd probably still be using it today.
The plan (Score:2)
Full mame would be better then other paid emulato (Score:2)
Full mame would be better then other paid emulators That some how cut out alot of the cool stuff in mame.
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and that is why any paid pinball emulator will suck.
The free one came 1st as well.
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They seem to be looking at games that were popular in the European market and currently a little under-served by commercial services. For example, there aren't many legal options for Amiga or Commodore 64 games, especially European ones.
One of the guys involved used to work for Traveller's Tails and has some good (and not so good) games from the 16 and 32 bit eras to his name. He has a YouTube channel called GameHut with some occasionally decent tech videos.
In theory it could be good, but will probably be k
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For example, there aren't many legal options for Amiga or Commodore 64 games, especially European ones.
Yeah but how and where are they going to get the rights to all these games where the companies have been dead for decades? It's technically abandonware so can they just monetise it? I don't think it's that simple. Plus that's mixed in with ones that are still 'active' for want of a better word. It's ok and you can get away with it for the most part on an individual level but every site offering roms and emulators always gets trouble, now these guys want to scale that up.
MAME? (Score:2)
Lag (Score:5, Interesting)
Any retro game streaming service will be ruined by lag. Retro games need near instant responses, they are not like modern games that are designed to account for HDMI lag, LCD lag, controller lag and network lag.
To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, Street Fighter 2 reacts to button presses in 1 frame, or 16ms. Street Fighter V is designed for modern systems and network play, and reacts in 8 frames, or 128ms. That relatively huge amount of lag is there to mask any network latency and make sure every player is on an equal footing.
Streaming is going to introduce a constantly varying amount of lag, in both directions (your inputs and then the video image back), plus decoding overhead, and HDMI / LCD lag. It will feel like a bad emulator.
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It will feel like a bad emulator.
Yeah, and that's before even considering how they're going to run the game itself, which may in fact involve a bad emulator.
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Retro cloud will download the game into your locked down box and emulate it, duh. Don't be a fucking moron.
Agreed. There will be a local copy of the game for emulation. N64, Dreamcast, GameCube and older use peanuts of memory compared to the bloated mazes of today. The experience will boil down to really two factors: 1) the emulator -- which I will guess will change between console game and 2) the game pad -- unless we're talking WebGL with a keyboard, which would kind of suck.
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Lockdowns are for convicts.
I will pass on this one.
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All input peripherals have some amount of inherent delay. Wireless peripherals are not necessarily laggy. http://www.teyah.net/sticklag/... [teyah.net]
Lag compensation (Score:2)
This actually works well to compensate for lag although it introduces computational expense. A Pi 4 can do it for many 8 and 16-bit games so it might not be too bad.
https://www.libretro.com/index... [libretro.com]
Tencent? But why play for the Chinese Army? (Score:3)
Sadly True (Score:3)
but fuck that noise, I will be handling my own retro gaming for myself. There is a reason why retro gaming has an underground community because time and again it has been shown that practically all gaming companies will not support their products past a certain point. Not only that, they will not even spend the time, money, or effort to make them playable after their imposed expiration.
IP law needs an overhaul so bad that its almost a more important issue than anything else right now. And I am not just talking about gaming. Scientific Research, Legal Affairs, Culture, Financial, Medical Information, very important things are often locked behind IP protection schemes.
Retro Gaming and the gaming industry is just a microcosm of part of the problem.
Archive.org does this (Score:3)
Cloud (Score:2)
Archive.org plays games by running an emulator compiled to javascript/webasm locally in your browser and fetching the rom from their servers.
It's basically like having a ROM fileserver and running MAME locally, except with more trendy web technology buzzwords.
Antstream is running the games on their cloud.
You're basically paying a monthly to access a Let's Play Youtube channel, except you're the one holding the controller.
Licensed (Score:2)
Antstream has negotiated licensing deals for these ROMs.
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right, and it's free.
ok, tencent is a bunch of stuff like network play, achievements, leaderboards etc.
but a lot of these things are available in emulators as well.
the point of cloud gaming is that you don't need to have a $2000 pc to enjoy the latest game in the highest settings, but retro games run fine on a low end android phone! so, basically everybody can play them anyway. who is going to pay for this service?
RetroArch for the win (Score:2)
with the exception of a few platforms, most retro games play rather well on RetroArch depending on the hardware. On the Pi3+ I had success with quite a number of games but not the N64. I have heard that the Pi4 with the option of 4gig ram has a significant improvement in that arena. Im sure RetroArch on an i7 is probably substantially easier. Valve also recently released their beta for SteamLink that will run on a Pi3 using debian stretch based distributions. Unless your trying to play a rather recent 'ret
Appeal (Score:2)
I cannot see the appeal to streaming a cloud version of the game.
Gamerhut's (part of the project) agruments:
- this one is 100% legal, Antstream does secure the necessary licenses, unlike ROMs downloaded from the web.
- require not even setting up a raspberry pi, just running an app on your tablet (much easier to setup for Random Joe Sixpack)
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ok, except for MAME roms, I have a super easy solution for retro game roms. I go buy old games at yard sales for pennies. Shit that game stop wont carry. I dont even care if the media is trashed. I just need the jacket to prove I _own_ that game. So for a quarter I grab an old SNES, PS1, PS2 game and despite not having a console anymore, I just grab the corresponding rom and play it. I think thats a lot cheaper than paying a monthly fee for membership. I dont retro-game daily. Its more like a 'found myself
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1. Owning the physical game doesn't make owning the ROM legal. That is a common misconception and you're wasting your money.
It sort of does. If there's no DRM and you use your own ROM dumper it's legal. If you just download the ROM, the burden of proof is really on the other party that you didn't use the ROM dumper.
I don't trust Tencent (Score:1)
As far as I could throw them. They are an arm of the Chinese government.
But at what price? (Score:1)
Playstation classic / Raspberry Pi 4 + 128 GB MicroSD/USB-drive + maybe OTG-adapter for PSXC = $50.
Will this be $10 / month? ...
MAME? (Score:2)
But these are RETRO games. (Score:2)
Hey! interesting ... oh wait ... nevermind. (Score:2)
Tencent is Betting There's a Future For Retro Games ...
OK. You have my attention. It'd be nice to be able to pull some of the old games I remember on old platforms. They were easy to get into fast. Take care of the licensing, make them easier to select and maybe build in a snapshot function so I can "save" at any time so I don't have to worry about interruptions.
... in the Cloud
I've been looking at some of the retro atari, C64 & intellivision systems though. Limited selection of titles and no supported way to grow the library, but th