For the record, I will never EVER feel like I own a paid file on a computer, or a game on a hard drive. Little XBLA games are one thing, but I would never pay $60 for a game unless I could put it on my shelf, or bring it to my friends house.
aglaglaglaglaglaglaglaglaglaglaglaglag unstable internet connection bandwith speed controlled (strangled) by the ip-operator lots of people in the same neighbourhood (adsl-station etc.) running onlive or other high bandwith intensive net-apps/downloads/video net congestion bandwith capw bandwith competition within the household/neighbourhood etc. etc.
lag is a big issue. being just a little bit into street fighter, i know that every 0.1 sec counts and can sometimes determin whether you block an attack or not. though me and a friend praise the fact we can now play each other online at sfiv when he is at uni, id still rather have him sat next to me.
and as a few people have already mentioned, alot of people like to have a box on their shelf. gaming clearly has an element of collectability attached to it and i think that most people will be put off as to how unreliable this method of gaming could potentially be.
though having said that, the benefits are clearly worth implementing someway.
Just think for a second, our connections (subscription limitations) are just not good enough for something like this. We all use Youtube and we know how great that quality is, and even then it needs to play precached data, something games can't do offcourse.
I'm putting myself down for a april fools joke, I could be wrong but then again whats the fun if your only right.
It's not just broadband connections that need to improve for this service to really kick off but useage limits. A 40Gb download limit is going to get sucked up very quickly by what is basically a high quality video stream.
If it ever hit the UK then I'd probably give it a try but until then colour me sceptical
this requires the world to have internet that wouldnt EVER go down, i perfer physical cd's then internet streams a noble invention its sucess would dethrone all consoles in one fell swoop something i see as impossible
It's a very interesting concept, and one that I think is definitely viable, but just not right now. I think the 80ms window is something that probably would only work in an ideal test environment, so in a real life situation the delay will likely be higher than that. And what about when the connection gets interupted? If your internet goes out for a day because of whatever reason (which still happens quite frequently to people), and your gaming relies on a system that needs you to be connected all the time, then you're pretty much screwed--no gaming.
I definitely like the idea, but I think they're just a bit too far ahead of their time. But who knows, maybe I'll be proven wrong and internet speed and reliabilaty will improve my leaps and bounds in the next two years. Certainly wouldn't be the first time something in the world of computing makes huges strides in a very short time period.
As it stands, this is possible but not viable for a million and one reasons. It's nothing more than an R&D thing that might come to fruition in 10 - 20 years, if they're lucky.
This is impossible, just sayin it, how the hell are you gonna have progress in games when you have to rely on a company to take a hit in providing the computer power. Can you imagine what a bunch of servers running all the Call of Duty 4 games or All the Halo games being played would look like and not just that, the single player too? Yes for FPS the lag would be something we are used to but its already hard enough to get HD video streams goin from Netflix, what makes anyone think anyone would ever have enough computer power to run all these games and provide an HD feed. This is nice thought and all but online is not going to overtake the experience of having a home console.
I smell phantom. Latency isn't the only problem I see, but licensing, bandwidth restrictions, and public interest. How many mainstream people play any of the games available from their cable companies? Aren't internet providers bitchin' about congestion, throttling consumers, and threatening ceiling caps? Netflix offers some movies for streaming, but the number is about 10-15% of their total library because that requires additional licences with that film companies. This is an interesting idea, but so is a self-buttering toaster. Neither are likely to see actual production.
As some posters have already touched upon, this thing hinges on Internet access. I live in rural Manitoba, the lag is already through the roof - how is it going to work for me, or anyone living in areas with little to no stable Internet access? The technology needs to improve before this can be marketed to a mass audience.
Also, by the way Jeff puts it, it sounds like you'd subscribe to OnLive, and thenbuy the games on top of that, much like Xbox Live and XBLA. The 360 also plays games that I can put on my shelf, though, and I don't feel like paying for another monthly service. Just my two cents.
No, no, no! I think streaming videos and music is quite enough for me. I live in Sweden so Internet is rather good here but I don't think the US or the rest of the world is ready for this and what about the children in Africa?!
Well, ok, Africa is a bad example but what about the people who don't use Internet?
Though this could be some cool exclusive thing that is available to those who can and want to use it but this will not and cannot defeat the physical console - no way!
For a company it's not really a good business strategy to move into the cloud. Would they need to still have a console? Then what would the developers say when the company asks them to develop games for both platforms?
I think everything comes down to Ockham's Razor in that the simplest solution to this problem will be the most suitable and therefore if this is simpler then it will be used but I highly doubt it..
Streaming Hi-Def game play just doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Video quality is really important to me, and I just can't see this being high quality.
I didn't real all the comments so if I'm repeating someone I apologize.
One thing Jeff didn't really emphasize is that the gear you're using on your end is pretty much irrelevant. You cold be using an old PC, or a Mac, or that mini-console pictured. Maybe even a Netbook.
I still don't believe the system will work as well as they claim. At least not now.
He didn't emphasise it? The title alone states that much. Still, while the tech is possible and legit companies invest in such, I think this one in particular is very iffy, trying to launch a phantom-esque platform alongside this, instead of simply offer it as a service for existing platforms. Bad choice to relate it to hardware, and go to the trouble of manufacturing such, imo. For now.
Sounds cool but personally I like having a physical copy of the game in hand... Also, I don't like the idea of having to sign into a server every time I want to play a game even if it is going to be single player.
Sounds like a good idea but I find the argument that this is a great step forward kinda backward when I hear the argument "It's natural to go this way, physical media is numbered." I just don't see an assortment of ones and zeros in some server somewhere providing the same ease of mind you get from a hard, solid copy of the game. Questions like "Will I still be able to bring games to friend's houses to play?" may sound small but theres a large portion of gamers who play multiplayer this way rather than over the internet (me being one of them).
Then there comes the problem of alienating your user base. Young gamers who don't have credit cards and lenient parents to pay for "those dangerous games" over a now "identity protection worry filled" internet with their cards will now be unable to purchase your games. Games like Gears of War may do fine but games based on child properties may suffer. We might find that a small loss but game companies that get a considerable amount of revenue from these games will have to keep that in mind. Of course, there are solutions that come to my mind, but at what point does it become to much of a hassle to go forward with this plan?
"Net speeds will increase with time, heck if the states just advances to half the speeds of ANY other nation... well let's just say america is a tad behind on net connection speeds."
Up until two months ago I was on a 512kb connection, now I've managed to upgrade it to 10mb. I live in the UK, by the way.
The concept sounds nice, but I'd rather have a big-ass hard drive to store all those games on, download speeds need to be much faster before streaming could work properly.
Sorry for posting twice but what I think needs to happen is internet being something so common place that it can be put in the same bracket as, say, having electricity running through your house. I don't think we're anywhere near that level of penetration in worldwide households because its still seen as some level of a commodity.
I mean does this mean games will cost more if they require more bandwidth?
And also, a much larger problem, what if the internet goes laggy, then your single player experience is ruined. And what if your internet stops working for some reason?
Id rather have it the way it is, thats way I dont need to be constantly connected to play, and the internet wont get in the way of the sinlgeplayer.
it looks interesting. Like when PlayStation came out with CD based games. I was skeptical about the technology since there were some issues as loading times and disk scratches that cartridges did not have. But I'm skeptical too of this. Seems really cool though if it works
Before I even read the article, just looking at that thing made me uneasy. This is one of those things that must either be pursued relentlessly or not at all, because if it isn't perfect, I'd rather stick with consoles and retail game discs. You can keeps your fancy internets.
Online gaming should still work because theortically the games are running on the same server thus there should be no lag between them almost like a lan, and you will all have about the same amount of video latency, so online gaming should work better, if its done that way, but who knows.
This is going to be the basis of the Playstation 4. All Sony console based games will be downloaded. Backwards compatibility will be removed from the playstation 4.
This is coming way too early. What about bandwidth caps? Do they have an answer for that? Or is it just compressed to hell and back? Color me skeptical.
3 paragraphs of your opinion Jeff on where this is going? Really? Have you even tried it yet? Why be a hater until you try it? I look at the upside of being able to play all my games(Console or PC) from my PC and never having to upgrade my PC or GPU again! I think that far outweighs any gripes about latency. If you are just playing a one player only game, you wouldn't have to worry about the network thing either. Stop being a negative Nancy man. Are you hungover today?
You dont really own these downloadable games, it's like a rental for a long time. It's not like you have a N64 with an Ocarina of Time cartrige that you can play wenever you want. I bought Braid, Castle Crashers, Bionic Comando and Samurai Shodown, but my old 360 died and when I put the hard drive on the new one It would only play those games if I was on Live. That made me so pissed cos only then I realised they didn't sell me an actual copy of the game, what they did was make me pay to play the game in certain conditions. Thats not purchase, thats rental. Besides, internet is not perfect, and cheap for everybody in every country that people play games.
"Think Guitar Hero on this thing (I don't even play that, but it's an awesome example). Even a mere milisecond delay, which will be impossible to achieve in practice, would fuck your game up in a big way."
You do realize what a millisecond is, right? 'Cause one thousandth of second ain't gonna fuck your game up."
um actually it will specially in any fast paced game.Milliseconds mean every thing in fast video games, fps, rythem games...ect milliseconds is the difference between a win and a lose."
There is no game that's so fast paced a millisecond will matter. I don't think you know how short a millisecond is...
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