ECGC 2011: Goodbye Physical, and Hello Cloud!

[old_newbie]

[citation][nom]Diversian[/nom]If we watch the trends though, it's all about control and market share. [/citation]

Exactly. This has nothing to do "the future" and pioneering cloud technology. This has everything to do with control and revenue. Just watch, I predict gamers will be charged for:

- a monthly subscription fee
- a 'rental' fee for the receiver unit
- game title rental fee (new/poular titles more expensive than older)
- storage space fee for game save blocks
- additional/special game content fees

...etc. And when your subscription is up, you are left with nothing. There is no popping in the disc and playing thru that fun game one more time. So no thanks. I will keep my hardware and software ownership.

 

[Th-z]

Corrections for the last paragraph:
"We're more of a YouTube strategy whereas they're more of a Stream(Steam) strategy," he said, adding that there's enough room for both steaming(streaming) platforms to exist on the Internet.

 

[twile]

This guy is insane. One of the notable things which has not been increasing as predicted by Moore's 'Law' is internet bandwidth. Ten years ago I lived in rural New York, and I generally maxed out around 16 Mbps, now I live in Orlando and I max out around 24 Mbps. The speed increase has been very slow. Granted, they're different places, but that just highlights that bandwidth availability varies all over the country.

Now, movies in my Blu-ray collection generally look pretty good and the better ones range from 30-40 Mbps with some even higher--that encompasses 1080p video and FLAC audio with 5.1 to 7.1 channels. Let's assume we use a lower quality audio solution and use the extra bandwidth for video, and consider 40 Mbps to be a good target. That's almost double what I have now. In addition, the Blu-ray encoding is very slow (slower than real time,

 

[theroguex]

Steam is a great idea. But I would never buy new games on Steam. New games, to me, are physical media only and bought in game stores. I use Steam ONLY to buy old games that I can't get my hands on anymore because they are out of print. Also, I refuse to place my savegames on the Steam 'cloud.' I save locally, thankyouverymuch. And I make sure that I can play in offline mode should my internet fail or something else.

If I can't buy the game, install it on my machine, and play it whenever I want (internet or no), I will not buy it. What I see is a future of pure piracy on a scale we can't even imagine, if 'The Cloud' is to actually happen. And you know it's true - even if the game has to be sent down a pipe to your machine, you know pirates will find away to steal it. At that time, I may just give up gaming and stick with the old stuff I have.

 

[tigerwild]

i have a thought for any devs out there... take the concept of the xbox's kinect and implement it with dual lcd's where one shifts polarity based on where the 'user' is detected, so that the 3D effect 'follows' the user regardless of where 'the user' moves to. Of course there would be a limited range, but much better than say the 9 focal points of the 3DS.

Imagine it, your portable console is looking at you, while you are looking at it, and making sure that you see a stereo picture on the flat screen!

 

[greliu]

Well cloud computing won't work in the US because all the companies have monopolies here and place caps with low speeds and outrages prices. Internet infrastructure and pricing is one thing you guys got in Europe that I wish we had here in the States. Lucky sobs.

 

[Fokissed]

[citation][nom]K2N hater[/nom]AT&T would say cloud gaming is internet abuse.[/citation]
QFT. Internet in the US has a long way to go before "cloud" goes mainstream.

 

[dangolo]

holy GOD no one here knows anything about clouds. Not even David Perry, not even Nvidia's Tony Tamasi has it right.
*Before i get started, yes unless google gigabit saves us all, every ISP will try to get every possible dime out of this future. The only ISP not being super-dickish about it is Cox, but still i digress.

First - "Naturally that seemingly defines the future of Tegra..." anyone who has ever run a terminal server type (thin) application knows that there's almost NO processing for your Tegra to do since every pixel is pre-rendered ON THE CLOUD HARDWARE *THEN* sent to the client whether it be a cellphone or dumb $99 device. ANY processor today has the capability of putting 1080 pixels on-screen, and that's ENOUGH because your eyes aren't capable of seeing more than that unless you're over 6 feet away.

Second - Few pricing models have worked as well as Steam's. I expect most companies to mimic that. An external IM client that a)keeps in touch with ur gamer nerds, in-game or not. b)is the shopping ground for games you want, c) watch trailers, gameplay vids, even competitions.

Third - developers...if you tell them they only have to write code for ONE environment (read: cloud server os like eucalyptus/Cassandra or ESX), they will write the most mindblowing game you have ever seen, meet deadlines, and stability issues will disappear!

Lastly - I'm stunned i have to explain this on TH, have none of you watched a YouTube video of a Fraps'd video game running at 1080P??? It's really REALLY close as far as bandwidth and local hardware are concerned.

While i dont believe 'the cloud' is for everyone. The response time sending action commands back and forth from the cloud is a HUGE hurdle. Your current reaction time to something occurring on-screen is ~10ms, and we're accustomed to our computers following us in a lagless (read: rage-less) world. It's not a bandwidth problem, it's about LAG LAG LAG.
I also worry about "the powers that be". Do not underestimate them, they will get what they want and do what they want. They want your money forever and nothing else matters.
Piracy/Hacking/Leaking will never end, based entirely on my motto "There is always someone out there who knows the code better than you."
Bolting a GPU to a CPU is a stupid way to build a video game rendering cloud. A CUDA rendering farm with servers FULL of cuda cards is what someone with real knowledge would suggest using.
FarmVille is a gimmick. Its an addictive simple game that any tard can play while sitting at their desk at work. That's all. Good job capitalizing it though.
Local gaming desktops will thrive for a many more years i think, but I just couldn't go on with life unless i set some of this stuff straight.

 

[dangolo]

holy GOD no one here knows anything about clouds. Not even David Perry, not even Nvidia's Tony Tamasi has it right.
*Before i get started, yes unless google gigabit saves us all, every ISP will try to get every possible dime out of this future. The only ISP not being super-dickish about it is Cox, but still i digress.

First - "Naturally that seemingly defines the future of Tegra..." anyone who has ever run a terminal server type (thin) application knows that there's almost NO processing for your Tegra to do since every pixel is pre-rendered ON THE CLOUD HARDWARE *THEN* sent to the client whether it be a cellphone or dumb $99 device. ANY processor today has the capability of putting 1080 pixels on-screen, and that's ENOUGH because your eyes aren't capable of seeing more than that unless you're over 6 feet away.

Second - Few pricing models have worked as well as Steam's. I expect most companies to mimic that. An external IM client that a)keeps in touch with ur gamer nerds, in-game or not. b)is the shopping ground for games you want, c) watch trailers, gameplay vids, even competitions.

Third - developers...if you tell them they only have to write code for ONE environment (read: cloud server os like eucalyptus/Cassandra or ESX), they will write the most mindblowing game you have ever seen, meet deadlines, and stability issues will disappear!

Lastly - I'm stunned i have to explain this on TH, have none of you watched a YouTube video of a Fraps'd video game running at 1080P??? It's really REALLY close as far as bandwidth and local hardware are concerned.

While i dont believe 'the cloud' is for everyone. The response time sending action commands back and forth from the cloud is a HUGE hurdle. Your current reaction time to something occurring on-screen is ~10ms, and we're accustomed to our computers following us in a lagless (read: rage-less) world. It's not a bandwidth problem, it's about LAG LAG LAG.
I also worry about "the powers that be". Do not underestimate them, they will get what they want and do what they want. They want your money forever and nothing else matters.
Piracy/Hacking/Leaking will never end, based entirely on my motto "There is always someone out there who knows the code better than you."
Bolting a GPU to a CPU is a stupid way to build a video game rendering cloud. A CUDA rendering farm with servers FULL of cuda cards is what someone with real knowledge would suggest using.
FarmVille is a gimmick. Its an addictive simple game that any tard can play while sitting at their desk at work. That's all. Good job capitalizing it though.
Local gaming desktops will thrive for a many more years i think, but I just couldn't go on with life unless i set some of this stuff straight.

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]greliu[/nom]I think cloud gaming would only be useful for cellphones and maybe other types of handheld devices that could stream flash-player based games. So, in the end, cloud gaming is great for the "casual" gamer, but for those of us such as my self any many of you who don't like FB games, NO this doesn't work. However, the whole we are going to charge by usage on the internet isn't going to fly. Companies like M$ and Google would venture into the ISP arena, which would actually be great to create some competition. In the end, if other ISP's didn't come in and they wanted this "cloud" bs, the hardcore gaming scene would die and be replaced by games like farmvile, shoot me in the face when that happens! By the way, with all these negative things I see being said about the "cloud" can someone tell me why these companies are still pushing it?[/citation]

the cloud is great for certain applications, such as:
word: save documents locally and on the internet so you have a valid backup and can access documents else ware.
videos: again acces everywhere and backup
rendering: now a home user wont have a kind of render farm, but a cloud server could act like one, and probably render some video faster than your computer could, even taking into account a 100kb up and 500kb down connection. and it also wouldnt bog the pc down for hours while rendering either.

i will never think a cloud could be an os or a hdd replacement, just a supplement.

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]dangolo[/nom]holy GOD no one here knows anything about clouds. Not even David Perry, not even Nvidia's Tony Tamasi has it right.*Before i get started, yes unless google gigabit saves us all, every ISP will try to get every possible dime out of this future. The only ISP not being super-dickish about it is Cox, but still i digress.First - "Naturally that seemingly defines the future of Tegra..." anyone who has ever run a terminal server type (thin) application knows that there's almost NO processing for your Tegra to do since every pixel is pre-rendered ON THE CLOUD HARDWARE *THEN* sent to the client whether it be a cellphone or dumb $99 device. ANY processor today has the capability of putting 1080 pixels on-screen, and that's ENOUGH because your eyes aren't capable of seeing more than that unless you're over 6 feet away. Second - Few pricing models have worked as well as Steam's. I expect most companies to mimic that. An external IM client that a)keeps in touch with ur gamer nerds, in-game or not. b)is the shopping ground for games you want, c) watch trailers, gameplay vids, even competitions. Third - developers...if you tell them they only have to write code for ONE environment (read: cloud server os like eucalyptus/Cassandra or ESX), they will write the most mindblowing game you have ever seen, meet deadlines, and stability issues will disappear!Lastly - I'm stunned i have to explain this on TH, have none of you watched a YouTube video of a Fraps'd video game running at 1080P??? It's really REALLY close as far as bandwidth and local hardware are concerned.While i dont believe 'the cloud' is for everyone. The response time sending action commands back and forth from the cloud is a HUGE hurdle. Your current reaction time to something occurring on-screen is ~10ms, and we're accustomed to our computers following us in a lagless (read: rage-less) world. It's not a bandwidth problem, it's about LAG LAG LAG.I also worry about "the powers that be". Do not underestimate them, they will get what they want and do what they want. They want your money forever and nothing else matters.Piracy/Hacking/Leaking will never end, based entirely on my motto "There is always someone out there who knows the code better than you."Bolting a GPU to a CPU is a stupid way to build a video game rendering cloud. A CUDA rendering farm with servers FULL of cuda cards is what someone with real knowledge would suggest using. FarmVille is a gimmick. Its an addictive simple game that any tard can play while sitting at their desk at work. That's all. Good job capitalizing it though.Local gaming desktops will thrive for a many more years i think, but I just couldn't go on with life unless i set some of this stuff straight.[/citation]

first, lets get something straight, the 1080p thing, its unless you are closer than 6 feet, not further away, and thats also person to person.

now reaction time is also a bit off. it really depends on the type of game. in my peak i managed a response time of 2ms, it was tested somewhat, its more along the environment that you are playing. lets say you are playing an adventure game, like god of war, you will almost NEVER have problems with lag, in fact the game could compensate for the lag. now a raceing game, even in PEAK cloud services, like onlive, is unplayable due to lag, due to the little things you preseave and react to.

video on cloud servers is already compressed, allot, so if a developer only needed one version, they would probably half a$$ the textures, and probably lower the polly count too, because its easier, and no one would be able to see the difference. you are thinking the best case scenario, im looking at a realistic, the publisher will want the game out faster and the devs will still have a hard time keeping up.

 

[demonhorde665]

not to make a pun but this guy's ehad is up in teh bong water clouds , seriously the only reason these kind of indsutry types give these predictions is becasue the industry would love to move every thing to "cloud" it would allow tehm to rent you your games , let them contorl every aspect of teh game (bye bye modding) , allow them to charge you to play teh game every month or week , as well as compeltely trhow advertising into thier games that coudlk cahnge ona daily bases. basically it comes down to money companyes stand to make milions upon milions more with cloud gaming than what they ahve made off physical media of coruse you wont hear most dev';s point out the buisness side pluses , when they are trying to "pep talk" cloud gaming. but any oen in teh know or witha bit of comon sense , can see it really comes down to they want tos crew consumers hout of more money. that said , i'll never use any cloud style system. here are my reasons why

1. while it may booste teh game developing industry ten fold it wil destroy many jobs, competition, and even whole indsutries on the hardware side. cloud computing would spell nothing short of the death of nvidia as well as any partners that produce products based off thier board. some people would love to say oh no Amd woudl die frist , but really consider teh fact AMD makes products that arnt compeltely graphics related infact they only recently got into graphics , cloud computing would hardly kill them . Nividia on teh other hand , is a company almost compeletely geared towards graphics hardware , something that would become pointless in a cloud based gaming world. not to forget countless other companies that work with nivida. inshort cloud based gaming is bad for a far larger number of poeple compared to teh numbers it would benifit.


2. Multiplayer tunnel vission design. somethign that is already occuring on a pretty alrge scale , you need look no further than the PC to see this , amny games are geared towards multiplayer only or give a very sparse (and terrible ) solo game in favor of more rounded MP game (look at the CoD series). Bascially i think cloud gaming would make developers move more and more to genres that allow them to continueally "tax" outr pocket , this means more mmo's and games taht rely mostly on MP modes of play , now don't get me wrong i love MP gmaes , i'm a big fan ov TF 2 , l4d2 ,a nd NWN 2 allgames taht are mostly palyed online , but you can only saturate teh market with tehse kinds of games so much . great example is COD and battle field , i stoped carring about these series a few years back , i want sequels that are more than just a rehash job with better graphics. i think cloud computing would push companies to rehash more often than they already do .

3. internet speeds and crooked serice providers. with companies like comcast and verizion tlaking aobut down load caps , and general pricing of better connections in this country , i highly doubt i'll ever care to rely soley on the internet for my gaming , i certainly wont actively seek to put my self at the mercy of not only the game devs but also the even greedier service providers of broadband. i'd rather go with otu games in my life than compeltely relly on teh service providers whims.

4. because i really am paranoid. lets face it this reason brings us back to all the other reasons i listed , no i dotn trust devs wont ban me froma game i bought just cos i said soemthign on their forums they didn't like . no i don't trust them to be fair in thier pricing , and no i don't trust service providers to not try to rape me for every dime. remember thoguh the old mantra "just because i'm paranoid , it doesn't mean that they arn't out to get me".

5. it's just a damn terrible idea. it's like the idea of pissing on a snow cone and feeding it to your buddy. sure the idea sounds funny as hell , but in the end , your friend wil get sick and you'll likely wind up with a black eye or two. if teh game industry tries to force cloud gaming on consumers, we will get sick and their wallets will get a black eye.

 

[MattPenner]

I'm really surprised at a lot of the comments on here. I'm hard pressed to find a single optimistic one.

A good percentage of the arguments seem to be that "games" should be physical media that you can buy in a store and touch. That's the same argument music providers and purchasers were pushing 10 years ago. Now if you want to actually visit a store to browse and purchase a CD it's more because you're a purist or you want to take a walk in "simpler times". If I hear a song I like and actually want to buy it I don't think twice about going to my favorite online provider and downloading it to my phone. In fact I love the convenience, speed and knowing that that purchase is mine no matter what happens to my phone. There is no physical medium to break or lose.

Other arguments seem to think that bandwidth is too slow/inaccessible/expensive/capped/et and set in stone. Bandwidth will always get faster and more accessible. I know that right now there are arguments at the cost, ISP caps, geographical limitations, but these have always been the same issues in one form or another. ~15 years ago (I'm 34) I was downloading at 2400bps. 10 years ago ISPs were having wars as to which 56k bps technology was to be used. DSL and Cable then started fighting it out and the government was being lobbied as to whether telco companies should be allowed in the entertainment medium (because Internet was seen as serving video and other "TV killers") or whether cable companies should be allowed in the telecommunications medium (because Internet was seen as communication and "telco killers"). Meanwhile computers have been getting faster and mobile devices smaller/more capable. In the end, 10 years from now communication methods will be much faster and potentially very different, but I'm sure there will be similar "debates" going on.

Another set of arguments seem to be geared towards real games are only fit on consoles or high end desktops. I really don't know why the gaming genre constantly has to be fit into a small space. Already gaming is on a variety of platforms in variety of forms from simple little text games on old cell phones to Crysis II on a $4,000 gaming rig. The gaming platform as a whole is already incredibly broad and it won't be getting any smaller.

The real argument in this article is where are high-end games going. Again, I don't think it matters what one guy (who obviously wants to promote his company and that's what marketing is, don't be surprised or offended) thinks about where gaming is going.

In my personal opinion (because hopefully much of the above was objective ) I have no problem with another company attempting to push gaming into the cloud with an alternative publishing platform. If I don't like it I don't have to use it. No big deal.

However, the potential is actually quite amazing and simply mirrors what other industries have done (i.e. music purchases/distribution and now movie subscription/distribution). I'll just use the Microsoft XNA platform as an example. Potentially (not yet but potentially) the XNA platform can run on the XBOX, PC, Silverlight and a Windows Phone 7. If Microsoft can take this to the ultimate end then why can't I subscribe or purchase a game online and play it on my XBOX when I'm at home on my 50" LCD and play it on my laptop or enthusiast PC when I want, then play it online within my Silverlight hardware accelerated browser and finally pop in for a few minutes on my dual-core (or whatever in the future) WP7 phone? I purchased or subscribed to the game and have four platforms. I think the argument in the future would be "what do you mean you're going to sell me a game on a single DVD and not let me play it on any device I want?"

Right now if I buy a song I would expect to be able to play it on any of my devices in any location I'm at and it would infringe on my right as a customer to be told I can't play it on my phone and my stereo at home and in my car or on my computer at work. We only allow gaming companies to do this because the current technology doesn't allow me to move Crysis to my phone as easily as a song. Technology will one day make that available and I fully expect to be able to one day buy/subscribe to a game once and play it on any device I choose to because it's my game/subscription and my devices.

Heck, I expect that one day bandwidth will be fast enough and $500 PCs will be fast enough that I can travel to another country, take photos, go into an Internet cafe (or just use my phone), upload photos to my online account, retouch them and edit video, make them available to family and friends, and even play a WoW (or whatever) for a little bit all without having to carry around a laptop.

That's where I think we're going.

 

[phil kizer]

[citation][nom]tigerwild[/nom]i have a thought for any devs out there... take the concept of the xbox's kinect and implement it with dual lcd's where one shifts polarity based on where the 'user' is detected, so that the 3D effect 'follows' the user regardless of where 'the user' moves to. Of course there would be a limited range, but much better than say the 9 focal points of the 3DS. Imagine it, your portable console is looking at you, while you are looking at it, and making sure that you see a stereo picture on the flat screen![/citation]


With Steam, you can make a backup copy of each game and put them on a separate drive or burn them to DVDs to keep them. Save files are usually located in in the Steam folder near if not in the games as well. Recently I backed up NBA2K11 to a separate drive because I have the game heavily patched with cyberfaces, jerseys, sneakers, etc. so if I get a bad patch that crashes the game, I can dig in the backup and replace the bad file.

Steam is useful because think about if any of your physical games get scratched, cracked, lost, or stolen. You'll always have a backup online

 

[phil kizer]

I quoted the wrong person, my bad

 

[rjwest0004]

Wow. Its amazing that all of these reviewers bash cloud gaming, but not one of them claims to have even tried it. I personally use OnLive on occassion. I have played Batman:Arkham Asylum to completion on it, played about half or Alpha Protocol, and several hours worth of Borderlands: GOTY and Homefront. I do have a high-speed connection (25mbps), and very rarely have any issues with latency. All the games play a full resolution, and look great on my 42" TV with the OnLive micro-console, as well as my 17" low-end laptop.

Before bashing a service, I highly recommend testing it. You can sign up for OnLive for free and play demos for free before rushing out to buy the dic if you prefer. You can also "rent" games for about what you would pay for Blockbuster rentals, but you will actually be able to find the games on OnLive day-one, vs. having to wait for Blockbuster's 5 copies to be returned. Granted they don't have ALL the new games, but still, it is an option.

Try it first. If its not for you, its not for you. Personally, I dont LOVE it, but I do like it and will continue to use it.