Gaikai

[Qbah]

I just stumbled on this a few minutes ago. It's game streaming technology starting shortly. Everything is streamed to your browser, so nothing fancy is needed. Looks absolutely wicked They show a few games already running (WoW, Eve, NFS, LEGO game, Mario Kart 64 emulated and something else).

I wonder what the monthly fee will be on this? Or perhaps they will figure some other fee system? Ohh and apparently EU was chosen as the first testing place - gonna look around a bit now and see if I can sign up for a beta or something

EDIT: Signups here.

 

[Zenoth]

I know it will sound far-fetched, but if such technology becomes widespread over the world then who in their right mind would go and buy a top-end PC and just top-end hardware in general for a "gaming PC" if they can just spend a few hundreds for something very basic, perhaps everything integrated expect for the CPU, which would be "low-end" maybe, and still being able to play the most recent and "demanding" games at acceptable frames-rate and in-game settings from their browser?

Without even having to install anything on top of that, people would even be able to save money and buy lesser capacity hard-drivers since much less space would be necessary, no extra software to "make the game work", no DRM, nothing bloating the poor thing, just a browser, the web-site, you click and you play, it has much more in common with console gaming than anything I've seen since on-line gaming and keyboards were made available for certain consoles (or poor man's PCs if you will). I think I might be thinking a little too far, maybe nothing will happen and maybe they will fail à-la Bleemcast!, but just imagine if it works and turn that out into popularity, new trend and standardization.

I can already hear NVIDIA, AMD and Intel raging and crying about the potential of such technology. It's just great, and that's just a first glimpse, that technology will be much better in a few years if it does survive long enough, the streaming speed, the game settings, etc, everything can be better. I am quite impressed, just by the potential.

 

[Qbah]

I could imagine a scenario like that, Zenoth. All gamers would need is a low latency high bandwidth network connection and a regular PC. Though there are advantages of a PC game - modding mostly Also, it's easier to imagine something like that substituting console gaming.

 

[Zenoth]

Originally posted by: Qbah
I could imagine a scenario like that, Zenoth. All gamers would need is a low latency high bandwidth network connection and a regular PC. Though there are advantages of a PC game - modding mostly Also, it's easier to imagine something like that substituting console gaming.

Indeed, very good point about modding, if there's one thing it might affect faster than expected I believe is indeed console gaming, rather than PC gaming as if might seem at first glance... unless console manufacturers plan on integrating web browsers in future consoles to "absorb the shock", if a shock it may be.

 

[paperfist]

Beyond amazing!

Can't wait to hear how much that baby is gonna set me back

So what's with Star Wars? He exited out of that kinda quick...

 

[coloumb]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
I know it will sound far-fetched, but if such technology becomes widespread over the world then who in their right mind would go and buy a top-end PC and just top-end hardware in general for a "gaming PC" if they can just spend a few hundreds for something very basic, perhaps everything integrated expect for the CPU, which would be "low-end" maybe, and still being able to play the most recent and "demanding" games at acceptable frames-rate and in-game settings from their browser?

Without even having to install anything on top of that, people would even be able to save money and buy lesser capacity hard-drivers since much less space would be necessary, no extra software to "make the game work", no DRM, nothing bloating the poor thing, just a browser, the web-site, you click and you play, it has much more in common with console gaming than anything I've seen since on-line gaming and keyboards were made available for certain consoles (or poor man's PCs if you will). I think I might be thinking a little too far, maybe nothing will happen and maybe they will fail à-la Bleemcast!, but just imagine if it works and turn that out into popularity, new trend and standardization.

I can already hear NVIDIA, AMD and Intel raging and crying about the potential of such technology. It's just great, and that's just a first glimpse, that technology will be much better in a few years if it does survive long enough, the streaming speed, the game settings, etc, everything can be better. I am quite impressed, just by the potential.

isnt' this what $199.00 xbox console already does? The future is 'cloud computing
[remote servers]. Look at what's already available - google office docs, remote storage back up, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if the network computer finally becomes a reality.

The only thing holding this back are the broadband companies. I for one would be first in line for this type of technology pending it would have a subscription service model similar to gamefly - $15.00 a month so I can play an unlimited # of games. No more having to worry about scratched dvd's, drm's, or wasting $50.00 on a crappy game.

 

[Albatross]

started by the guy at Shiny entertainment..still remember Earthworm Jim :laugh:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...Perry_(game_developer)

 

[Markbnj]

It's amazing that they have that experience in Firefox with no plugins. Technology like this will ultimately drive a server-based streaming subscription model for games. Hard to see it going any other way. I'm sort of surprised they hung all those big retail games out there in a promo video when they obviously don't have any agreements, and their model is so disruptive to the publisher's business models (well, not Blizzard).

 

[JoshGuru7]

OnLive is the other service set to launch that made the initial headline splashes about using cloud computing for gaming.

I remain extremely skeptical of both services because I can't see how they can avoid having the latency affect input lag. Even 50ms latency would be intolerable input lag for me if I was trying to aim w/ mouse and keyboard controls.

 

[mwmorph]

Looks good, but there's 2 issues. 1 is power, this is fixable with more technology. The Gaikai demo showed WoW and NFS Pro Street running at what looks like minimum settings. Not very pretty, but fixable.

2nd is latency. This is going to be big. Imagine a 100ms server for say TF2, now add another 100ms for this service and of course input+processing lag and latency can easily creep up to annoying levels(250+ms). There's nothing you can do about that, that's just physics. Electric signals can only travel at only a fraction the speed of light and the only way to fix this is to have servers everywhere.

edit:
Looks like onlive already fixed problem 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...5UJHbY&feature=related

Crysis looks very good.

 

[pontifex]

Why do I have a hard time believing this is real?

 

[novasatori]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
I can already hear NVIDIA, AMD and Intel raging and crying about the potential of such technology. It's just great, and that's just a first glimpse, that technology will be much better in a few years if it does survive long enough, the streaming speed, the game settings, etc, everything can be better. I am quite impressed, just by the potential.

I think one thing to keep in mind is someone has to provide all the compute (CPU & Graphical) power for the data centers people will be using to stream said games.

 

[dguy6789]

It's pretty crazy really. What if the entire user base wanted to play Crysis at the same time? They would have to have as many computers running in their data center as they had customers. I don't think that's going to happen.

 

[Piuc2020]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
I can already hear NVIDIA, AMD and Intel raging and crying about the potential of such technology. It's just great, and that's just a first glimpse, that technology will be much better in a few years if it does survive long enough, the streaming speed, the game settings, etc, everything can be better. I am quite impressed, just by the potential.

Not really, I mean, it's simple physics, if all the energy spent running the game on the client's computers is now transferred to the servers then NVIDIA, AMD, Intel etc will still sell buttloads of units to Gaikai or OnLive or whatever so they can support their servers.

People often forget that the providers of this service still have to actually run the games in their computers.

That aside, the performance will never beat a game run on a local computer so most will not migrate to these kind of streaming services, the resolution is low, the latency will be palpable and it's just not as liberal as having the game on your own computer with the possibility of adding your own mods, tweaking game config files to increase performance or change certain stuff and generally just messing around.

I like the idea as a concept, it just doesn't have the potential to bring down client-side rendering. NVIDIA, AMD and Intel have absolutely no reason to worry, especially since they'll still get tons of sales from the providers of this services.

 

[KMFJD]

Useless tech, with bandwidth caps, slow ass internet, only a limited market if it ever really works.

 

[Doppel]

Four years later, time to bump. Sony has picked up Gaikai.

I still have a hard time believing this will NOT suck. Let's look at remote play with the vita, for example. It seems that when it works perfectly it's pretty good, but latency is still a bit noticeable, and in many cases it has enough latency to look frustrating. That's over wi-fi.

How in God's green earth is a cloud based system not going to suck? It inevitably has more latency, it inevitably has stricter bandwidth limitations.

Perhaps in the way distant future, but it doesn't seem to me now that consumer networking is to the point it needs to be to make this technology worth anything. I suppose if its servers were installed right at an ISP location the latency issue could be suitable, but that's not going to be the case.

 

[Stringjam]

All you have to do is some math on the input lag and you'll see why this is a joke.

PC gamers won't even use a wireless mouse because they "sense" lag...how much more willing are they going to be to wait 100ms for input reactions?

Cloud-rendering is only going to work for the most casual of gamers, and it will probably even annoy them. On-Live was big enough proof of that.

 

[clok1966]

Sony actually picked them up over a year ago (didn't they, maybe it was just "we are going to". Net speed will increase,if ever to a point where this is Great, who knows, but with all tech, you gotta start someplace ON-LIVE was not as bad as some say (nor as good as one would hope) it was so-so. There are so many uses for this tech (ask MS they where playing that card with the ONE and the cloud, how it will add more AI etc to games) some might actually add to games, only time will tell. Much like motion controls, eye toys, Kinect, its only as good as how they implement it.
Right now, I doubt it will make any more difference then all those I just mentioned.. nitch product for very few "good" games.. oh tons of shitware.. but really good games? it will take time. But if they don't invest and try, it wont be anything.

 

[gothamhunter]

Four years later, time to bump. Sony has picked up Gaikai.

I still have a hard time believing this will NOT suck. Let's look at remote play with the vita, for example. It seems that when it works perfectly it's pretty good, but latency is still a bit noticeable, and in many cases it has enough latency to look frustrating. That's over wi-fi.

How in God's green earth is a cloud based system not going to suck? It inevitably has more latency, it inevitably has stricter bandwidth limitations.

Perhaps in the way distant future, but it doesn't seem to me now that consumer networking is to the point it needs to be to make this technology worth anything. I suppose if its servers were installed right at an ISP location the latency issue could be suitable, but that's not going to be the case.

On the bolded - I've used remote play for God of War Saga and it was barely noticeable for me.

 

[JujuFish]

Four years later, time to bump. Sony has picked up Gaikai.

Almost a year and a half ago.

 

[pontifex]

i thought there was already a service like this? Can't think of the name now though.

 

[DaveSimmons]

i thought there was already a service like this? Can't think of the name now though.

OnLive - been there and gone.

This will not replace a high-end PC until everyone has Google Fiber since OnLive only offered medium-quality 1280 x720, vs. the 1900 x 1200 high/ultra quality I get with my 2-year old gaming PC.

Latency would be fine for strategy games and non-FPS RPGs (JRPGs, X-Com, ...) but with shooters you'd be dying more.

 

[frozentundra123456]

OnLive is the other service set to launch that made the initial headline splashes about using cloud computing for gaming.

I remain extremely skeptical of both services because I can't see how they can avoid having the latency affect input lag. Even 50ms latency would be intolerable input lag for me if I was trying to aim w/ mouse and keyboard controls.

I agree. It is a great concept, but I don't know when/if it can be realized. The problem I see is latency as you mentioned, but also bandwidth restrictions by internet providers. Yu would also need a semi decent PC to play games that were not available on the service.

It would be great though to be able to just sign in to an account from a computer anywhere and play your games. Actually kind of like Steam, but without the need for powerful hardware on the host computer.

 

[aigomorla]

steaming low cpu / gpu games is possible.

however streaming 1080p games at FXAA is impossible.

Do you know how difficult it would be to setup virtual clients for everyone on the same class as a tradiational gaming class rig?

 

[Qbah]

Whoa...

I tried On-Live a bit back in the day (a few of their "demos" - timed full games) and it was alright, I guess... nothing I would seriously use to play my games on a regular basis though.

On the PS4 it will be used to enable PS3 backwards compatibility though, meaning 720p and low/medium details fits perfectly fine...

Curious how it works out in the end I wouldn't put a cross on it just yet.