Nvidia rolls out game streaming on a GTX 1080 cloud for $2.50 an hour

[ZGR]

I really liked OnLive! For Android when it was around. Artifacting was apparent, but input lag on an Xbox 360 controller was hardly noticeable.

I played a large portion of Assassin's Creed II on my Asus Transformer with an Xbox controller via OnLive's streaming service and was very impressed with it.

That said, it had a far more consumer friendly business model than what NV is offering. You simply paid once for the game, (was $5) and got to play as much as you wanted..... until OnLive went away.

This was 720p @ 30fps, a very easy combination to stream on poor internet.

I'd prefer to see something like that from NV; where a free version at a lower resolution and framerate existed. $2.50 per hour is quite a lot for gaming and it would definitely spoil some of the fun.

Even better, NV should offer this service free to SHIELD/SHIELD Tablet K1 users.
Streaming locally is still a better option, but I would buy a SHIELD if I could stream my favorite games on the go without a weird subscription model; or at least give a year for free.

 

[casiofx]

Isn't there another service called liquidsky that only charges 10 dollars per month? Only beta atm but some dude ran far cry primal 1080p ultra settings getting around 30fps. Pretty good if you just run at lower settings. And miles cheaper

 

[HurleyBird]

I think this is a live test model. I don't think anyone at Nvidia really knows how it would do or be received by the masses, so this may only be a test roll-out.

It shouldn't take a genius to figure out that the pricing structure is a no-go. Either some of the people in charge at Nvidia are really delusional, or they never meant for this to succeed in the first place.

 

[bystander36]

Isn't there another service called liquidsky that only charges 10 dollars per month? Only beta atm but some dude ran far cry primal 1080p ultra settings getting around 30fps. Pretty good if you just run at lower settings. And miles cheaper

Those services don't give you sole access to a GTX 1080 or 1060, which would degrade performance or quality. Then again, if bandwidth issues exist, it might not matter, as you wouldn't be able to transfer all the power back to the user anyway.

 

[Keysplayr]

It shouldn't take a genius to figure out that the pricing structure is a no-go. Either some of the people in charge at Nvidia are really delusional, or they never meant for this to succeed in the first place.

Nobody says it does take a genius. don't know why you thought so. It could be just a live test model to figure it out.

 

[BFG10K]

This is overpriced garbage and the next step in the lunacy that is the push for cloud.

But I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised given we now have cloud hairbrushes. That’s right folks, hairbrushes now need an internet connection.

It also obviously needs to somehow authenticate you own the games you’re playing. Just wait until someone hacks it and gets access to your Steam/Uplay/Origin details. Then it’ll be “we’re sorry for the inconvenience, here’s 5 free hours, k thx bai!”

 

[zinfamous]

This is overpriced garbage and the next step in the lunacy that is the push for cloud.

But I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised given we now have cloud hairbrushes. That’s right folks, hairbrushes now need an internet connection.

It also obviously needs to somehow authenticate you own the games you’re playing. Just wait until someone hacks it and gets access to your Steam/Uplay/Origin details. Then it’ll be “we’re sorry for the inconvenience, here’s 5 free hours, k thx bai!”

I guess one way to look at it is nVidia looking to diversify their options. Right now, they just make GPUs. that's it. They don't do anything else. They make chips for various sectors, yeah, but they just make GPUs. This allows them to leverage the product that they already make (I'm guessing RMA'd, unsold, poorly binned whatever GPUs) towards an entirely different sector: service. Turning junk sitting in their warehouse into a dedicated revenue stream that didn't previously exist.

It's like Coke taking their decades-long RO water supply, bottling it as-is, calling it "Dasani," and selling it for more than their actual sugar-acid drink that is their product. Talk about a scheme!

I can see where this idea comes from, but aside from the price being so blatantly wrong, there are the inherent service issues that I would think detract from any kind of visual improvement.

 

[dark zero]

Sorry nVIDIA, but you are not SNK to deliver such expensive gaming experience... they were the only ones to deliver godlike games with high prices.

They'd need to have data centers in every city hooked right in to ISPs just to combat internet lag. Maybe the 2.50 an hour is to pay Comcast its carriage peerage fees

If that so, that would make sense. Also, seems that is US only service. I wonder if Japan or Korea would have even cheaper options. The internet service is better there.

 

[3DVagabond]

If people are dumb enough to fall for this it'll mean that nVidia won't even release new gaming cards. I hope people aren't this stupid.

 

[ShintaiDK]

MS, Sony, Amazon etc is investing a lot in cloud gaming. Its going to be part of the future for sure.

And I think people should look at this as a test.

When we pass 2020, I wouldn't be surprised is cloud gaming was quite common.

Since OnLive a lot of datacenters have been constructed and a lot of infrastructure rolled out. Amazon for example is actually huge in gaming, just server side.

 

[PPB]

Well, wake us up when it is 2020.

Meanwhile it will be a garbage solution with lots of inherent motion sickness inducing delays and imput lag.

Sent from my XT1040 using Tapatalk

 

[Borealis7]

while i support the idea, i don't like the implementation. i don't think we are ready for this, but thats where we're headed not only in games, but in all software.
in the future every device would be a "thin client" to a beefy server.

 

[ConsoleLover]

Even if there was very little lag, if you game on a 1080 for $25 for 10 hours, that would mean to finish a game like say the Witcher 3, which can go on for as long as 100 hours, you'd need to spend $250, so essentially a new GTX 1060 6gb.

Lets say you pay for the 1060, so $25 for 20 hours and you play a shorter game, lets say a game that has a 18 hour campaign, that means you'll need to pay $25 to finish a 18 hour campaign, This is the biggest bullshit I've ever heard and seen, and I'm not even calculating the amount you pay for the games, which would be an additional $50 or $60 if its a newer game.

Unless you are super rich, yet an idiot still and you'd rather pay Nvidia $400 for 16 hours of gameplay on a 1060, instead of actually paying $650 and getting a 1080 or paying $250 and getting a GTX 1060.

 

[zinfamous]

Even if there was very little lag, if you game on a 1080 for $25 for 10 hours, that would mean to finish a game like say the Witcher 3, which can go on for as long as 100 hours, you'd need to spend $250, so essentially a new GTX 1060 6gb.
.

100hours? I think I spent about 212 hours on my first playthrough before finishing.

 

[DamZe]

Lol! Love the "nVIdia is testing" theory being thrown around here, then be my guest let them test this overpriced audacity on you. I for one am not about to pay top dollar to be some big corporation's guinea pig.

 

[Yakk]

Lol! Love the "nVIdia is testing" theory being thrown around here, then be my gues let them test this overpriced audacity on you, I for one am not about to pay top dollar to be some big corporation's guinea pig.

Lol... multi-national corporations do not do any market studies, focus groups, cost evaluations, marketing plans, supply chain management, internal deployment budgets & structure..etc...

I guess nvidia just flipped a coin and improvising going by some comments...

 

[OatisCampbell]

Lol... multi-national corporations do not do any market studies, focus groups, cost evaluations, marketing plans, supply chain management, internal deployment budgets & structure..etc...

I guess nvidia just flipped a coin and improvising going by some comments...

You are probably right, and it makes some sense.

If you tell a lot of people "You can buy a $600 video card or you can pay $25 for 10 hours of gaming" a lot of them would say "Jeepers, gimme the $25!".

Doesn't matter that in 240 hours of gaming they would have paid for the card and still had a card worth $400, they see the lower cost and say "I can afford that".

Same as credit cards, same as rent to own.

I use online software at my work, don't see this working for gaming.

 

[96Firebird]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I don't think gamers who frequent the VC&G section of AT forums are the target audience for such a product.

 

[bystander36]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I don't think gamers who frequent the VC&G section of AT forums are the target audience for such a product.

That's what I was thinking, but I'm not sure there will be much of an audience for this anyway. The only thing I can see this being good for, at the current cost, is maybe a demo program, before you go out and buy a GPU.

I think the idea of gaming off a specific GPU in the cloud is the wrong way to go with cloud gaming. They have the ability to use supercomputing and split up the load to deliver exactly 30 or 60 FPS to their users, rather than giving a specific GPU to a user, where needed usage is going to be inconsistent. Of course that would also mean the games that a service like this should provide would be built specifically for the cloud. As I write this, it makes me think MMO's would make good cloud games to get the ball rolling.

 

[Keysplayr]

Lol! Love the "nVIdia is testing" theory being thrown around here, then be my guest let them test this overpriced audacity on you. I for one am not about to pay top dollar to be some big corporation's guinea pig.

I love how people say they love things but don't really love them. LMAO.
Seriously though, I don't see this working at all. Maybe pay 25 bucks per month, that would be something and depends on the service one receives. But 2.50 per hour? Damn.... Pricey.

 

[happy medium]

Maybe pay 25 bucks per month, that would be something and depends on the service one receives. But 2.50 per hour? Damn.... Pricey.

I may try it just because I'm curious. $25? big deal. I spent like 85$ on Friday night drinking bears, shots and the cab ride home. That's why I have a job. $25? I'll work like 45 minutes overtime and make that up.

I'm not gonna say ahhhh it sucks, or might suck or could suck because this or that......I'll try it and form my own opinion. And if it sucks , I'll say it's not worth it.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I love how people say they love things but don't really love them. LMAO.
Seriously though, I don't see this working at all. Maybe pay 25 bucks per month, that would be something and depends on the service one receives. But 2.50 per hour? Damn.... Pricey.

For $25/month, you'd have no reason to buy/build your own pc ever again just rent from Nvidia.

 

[beginner99]

I would have done that to play Starcraft 2 back when I didn't have a gaming PC for a while. Of course, I haven't used their streaming service, so that could be a major deal breaker if it's not good.

Lo. playing Startcraft 2 over this streaming service will probably only serve to test how much frustration you can tolerate. Probably the worst game you can play over such a service. If you can't click extremely accurately with as little input lag as possible, good luck. No, that for sure won't be a fun experience.

Silly right now. But curious in say 10 years if this is a feasible business model.

I don't see it. Do you really think we magically get fiber connections in most places and removal of data caps? Think again. Even in 10 years fiber won't sever more than an optimistic 30% of users and even then their might be data limits. So streaming game videos will still be a no go and stupid idea. Also for normal online-gaming you don't need a fast connection. So to actually profit from this streaming service you will also pay an additional $50+ per month for faster internet and no or higher data caps. It's just a lot cheaper to buy the gaming PC yourself.

I
If you played 100 hours a year that would be $250 a year. That seems a lot cheaper than a gtx1080, and then a gtx1180 and then a gtx1280 every 18 months.

Only idiots or rich people upgrade from "flagship" to flagship. What is even cheaper is buying a 290(x) 2-3 yearos ago on sale for $250, mining with it so it actually made you money and you will still have better quality than compressed videos rendered on a GTX1080.

 

[fingerbob69]

For $25/month, you'd have no reason to buy/build your own pc ever again just rent from Nvidia.

Except you need to be able to connect to the net to access the service ...what are you using to do that?

And it has to be a game you already own ...what have you been playing that on already?

 

[Genx87]

I don't see it. Do you really think we magically get fiber connections in most places and removal of data caps? Think again. Even in 10 years fiber won't sever more than an optimistic 30% of users and even then their might be data limits. So streaming game videos will still be a no go and stupid idea. Also for normal online-gaming you don't need a fast connection. So to actually profit from this streaming service you will also pay an additional $50+ per month for faster internet and no or higher data caps. It's just a lot cheaper to buy the gaming PC yourself.

An equivalent bandwidth in many cities. My anecdotal evidence with Comcast in the Minneapolis area is the following.

2011 - 16Mbps
2012 - 25 Mbps
2013 - 50Mbps
2015 - 105Mbps

Before that I had Charter that started me out at 5Mbps in 2005 and by 2011 had me at 30Mbps.
And to get the kind of latency\performance I would expect Nvidia to have their equipment on site of the major ISPs like Netflix\Amazon do right now. I suspect if caps become a problem part of the "subscription" will include having the ISP ignore that traffic for cap calculations.

I dont see the network\infrastructure being he problem long term. That is a technology\engineering problem that can get sorted out over time. Remember 15-20 years ago the idea of streaming music and movies was crazy. We only had 1.5Mbps internet!