I know we have one thread going on "Cloud Gaming" already, but, I wanted to have another conversation on the subject without breaking down the integrity of the topic and "generalness" of that thread. Here I'd like to talk about one thing,...
What will happen if it works like they say it will? What will happen to PC Gaming in particular?
So, let's assume for the sake of this discussion that it Does work like they say. You get top of the line gaming, awesome graphics, and No Lag. It uses limited bandwidth since it's basically just streaming a picture, and from now on you never have to buy a "Top of the Line" computer again. What's going to happen to the rest of the Gaming Industry and what will the affect be on PC Gaming? I have some general conclusions that I would like to share and get some feed-back on.
Firstly, if it truly runs smooth and looks good with no lag, people are going to flock to this en-mass. One connection will come with a controller that plugs into a PC or for those types of games or you can use your standard mouse and key board. Let's not forget this thing does PC games too!!! Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, etc etc, all here in working order playable as normal with your mouse and keyboard or a controller. You can get games the day they come out without needing a pre-order. No standing in line. No hours of downloading a huge game file and then installing it and hoping your system specs can handle it. It just works.
The first and most obvious effect this will have will be in the next 3 to 5 years as people who would normally be upgrading their PC's to handle the next generation of games Won't be doing this. Why go out and buy a $600 graphics card to run "Crysis 5" when OnLive can do it right on your monitor and it still looks perfect? The answer is most people won't unless the economy makes a drastic upturn. People are hesitant to spend large sums of money especially when given a cheaper option that works just as well. Graphics Card Manufacturers are going to be the first ones to start feeling the pinch followed closely by companies that make CPU's that go faster and faster in their war to stay competitive with one another. Manufacturers who make Monitors will still be golden because PC's will always need bigger and better screens, especially since the Cloud does movies too. It won't be long until "going out to the movies" will be a thing of the past. Movies will release at home the same day they do in a Box Office.
Believe it or not, aside from Military applications, it's the video game industry that has driven our progress in computers in the last 10 years or more. Business tries to take some of the credit, but come on let's face it, we don't need uber processors and graphics cards to do spreadsheets and graphs, we need them to pwn neewbs online.
As these companies loose money due to no new sales aside from when someone's computer breaks, the drive for better and faster hardware will dry up. The only one's who will need this hardware are the companies providing the services for use in their Cloud Servers. The average gamer who just wants to play is playing all the latest games through one of these services, they won't be buying a high end graphics card anymore. The same applies for consoles. Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, all will eventually start loosing money because people no longer need their hardware to play their games. It's done through the cloud and these companies are forced to license their games to the services to get them out to the players. Even the long standing Nintendo will eventually succumb as this system will catch on even in Japan. People won't buy a new Nintendo system just to play Mario and Zelda unless they are incredibly cheap as 90% of the other titles will all be on one Cloud Service or another. Nintendo too will be forced to adapt and either license all their games or make their own Cloud System to compete.
The next big hit will be to Video Game Stores. Vendors such as Gamestop, EB Games, assorted other toy stores. No one will be buying hard copies of games, period, because they won't have the hardware capable of running them. It will all be distributed online. For those few people who do still have computers capable of keeping up, they'll buy games through digital distributors or on special orders straight from the publisher.
Speaking of Digital Distributors, they get hit next.... (Pay Attention here, Brad, this is you)
For a while at first these systems will start doing better and better (seems to be happening now wouldn't you say?). As demand in stores go down demand in a virtual environment will go up because plenty of people will still want to pay for a copy of a program. Since stores won't carry what they need they are forced to go through Digital systems. These systems will see a drastic increase of business, but, Only for a Limited Time. As games and programs quickly surpass the running requirements of even the "tech savvy" home user, these people won't be able to run the latest and greatest games that are being made. Sadly in a catch 22, as the companies that make the graphics cards are now charging $2000 for a top of the line card, normal people won't be able to afford to keep a "state of the art" system on hand to play games. They too, in a short time (4 or 5 years tops), will be forced to go into the Cloud to keep gaming.
Digital Distribution systems at this point, Must Evolve, if they are going to stay competitive. They will either loose all their games to the Cloud Gaming Servers or they will Become Cloud Gaming Servers themselves. If Impulse and Steam want to remain independent of a system like OnLive they will have to offer the same types of services it does. As such I think that is the most likely evolution of those companies who will want to stay competitive and not be a part of OnLive or license their games to them. The example I give above about "Nintendo" is, I think, the most likely outcome. Nintendo, Sony, X-Box, EA Games, Ubisoft Games, Steam, Impulse, etc etc, all these game companies and services will all offer their own "Cloud Service" or they will be forced to lease their games for use on another companies service.
As we can see, if Cloud Gaming works like they say it does, if it's lag free and plays great, the world of Video Game Entertainment is in for a BIG change. This will have far reaching applications into the industry and could spell Doom for certain aspects of it, or at least how things are now. PC gaming will be particularly hard hit. People will still be playing games on PC, but you won't need a powerful system to do it in relative style. The parts companies and manufacturers will be hard hit early on. I think N'Vidia and ATI will divide up the industry by specializing in working with certain game companies to make their games. EA, Bioware, a few others will go with N'Vidia, the rest with ATI. The common man though won't be able to afford the new "Corporate Server Edition" graphics cards.
What about Piracy? Well, with nothing to copy, Piracy will die out. People won't have files to install from their favorite games, they won't have DvD's to install, all these things are kept on Corporate Servers and streamed to paying, subscribing, customers only.
The only way a "Pirate" will actually get his hands on a game is if he hacks a server somewhere and steals it. There won't be anything to copy and burn and put online. Companies don't care about Pirates, as I guess they shouldn't, but they should care about being able to sell the games they make and the hardware being made to run them on. If this takes off everyone will be forced to adapt or get the hell out of dodge. A lot of smaller companies won't make it through this and that's a fact. I don't think Stardock has much to worry about, Impulse or no Impulse, you make your money with Windows Applications and in the coming years that might be all that keeps you afloat if things go down like this. We have very interesting times ahead, my friends. Very interesting indeed.
Thoughts on the Future of the Industry if Cloud Gaming works?
Just like STO was a rousing success like you predicted, right? Haha, I kid, I kid.
But seriously. People buy DVDs of TV shows. TV and Radio are the same thing: you buy an expensive piece of equipment to be able to access a mostly free service (with cable coming later on in the TV's life, which is like buying a console and then a streaming service). You keep assuming that hardware costs will rise and make cloud gaming cheaper, but that will only happen if cloud gaming is a rousing success. As it stands right now, it's not. You're predicating entire parts of your argument on the fact that cloud gaming is successful. "Cloud gaming will succeed because it's success will make everything else unsuccessful."
All of your analogies are also flawed, because you have never pointed out a subscription service that has completely replaced an ownership model. Please name me one.
LoL, man, you're killing me here.
Ok, as for STO, I believe I said it has the most "Potential" to be a Huge success. I didn't take into account that Cryptic would ruin the game before it even got off the ground. If it would have been done "right" it would kill even WoW simply because there are more Star Trek fans world wide then WoW fans.
As for not pointing out a "subscription service that has replaced ownership", there aren't any Yet as this is a new business model. It will happen though if things progress as I state in the original post. This is a completely new business model and ultimately a new way of doing things. It will need to be proven to be a commercial success before people start using it to truly replace their expensive hardware.
I'll concede that this did devolve into a how it will work thread, but that was because I was responding to the comments about the graphics card manufacturers.
As to the other conversation about how this will affect game purchasing, there are really only two areas that will be drastically affected. Those are the market areas of gamers who delight in possession of physical things along side those that revel in LAN parties. Both of these two will be disenfranchised. As for stock purchases, I think this is going to do little to help you determine the right horse to race. It will still be all about the best game coming out and less about delivery.
The netflix example is probably the most accurate, and I think that should guide your purchases as much as any. You can see that redbox and blockbuster are surviving the streaming delivery, but they are losing market share.
Another model you might consider...is cable television. You can buy as much as you want, or you can get the basic necessities (this word is used for ironic value). This is the most likely end pay model for cloud service game companies...perhaps you should be wary of the purchase of such companies by Time Warner.
Bah, double post. Silly internet.
No need to apologize, the marketing for all of these services implies what you (and I until I read that article) thought. They wanted us to believe the tech was there so they could get a market share at time of launch...they will have some angry investors in about six months though.
Agreed. That article was New to Me as well. Kinda makes my whole post a Moot Point without the technology being there. It really makes me wonder why they'd even go ahead and launch this year if they can tell before it even begins that it isn't going to work right.
Still, we're not That Far off from really being able to do this. What's really needed is a better network. Either that or they'll need to figure out how to make this use next to no bandwidth at all.
If - and it's a big if - the input/output lag is removed, and as far as I can tell it'll require some pretty hefty internet speeds on both sides, then it could still function. If the service takes off, and it still might, then they can expand to the point of being able to use their income to change and upgrade their infrastructure.The reason I don't think it's really going to work is they're targetting the people who can't afford the latest and greatest in PC technology... but who'll need the fastest internet speeds available to actually use their service, unless they've magically solved the input/output lag. Prediction algorthyms could minimise this... but in games like Crysis, a split second delay is the difference between life and death.
This is true. It's also possible the people at OnLive are pulling a "Cryptic". They're going to launch, make wild promises they know they won't be able to keep, they'll use cheap tactics to rake in as much money as they can from the hopeful fanboys and the gullible, and then they'll shut down and the owners will go on a permanent lifetime vacation with their new found millions. After that it'll be a long long time until someone else tries to launch another "Cloud Gaming Service". It'll be like a MMO that's doomed to fail from launch.
Speaking of Crysis, I saw some footage from Crysis 2 today. The game's going to be amazing on PC. This will be the first game that's come out (coming out) since I built this system that I think might actually be able to give me a good stress test.
firstly, sorry for dragging up an old thread, but the topic interested me after reading thread and i had to post^^
This is the reason why I am reluctant to buy a Blu-Ray player and TV Shows or Movies on Blu-Rays. The problem is, that these kinds of things are not widely available via digital distribution yet, at least not legally. With Games it's a different story due to the excellent services of Steam and Impulse.
I support the ideology from Star Trek, where everything you want is available to you everywhere at any time (through LCARS), at least in principle.
Currently I am not looking forward to OnLive! nor am I completely against it. I am skeptical that something like this will change the world in the near future. And the far future will look different anyway, not just due to OnLive!, if at all.
// oh didn't realize how old this original post actually was
When Canned food made its foray into the modern world, people claimed it was the end of cooking - This is roughly the same.
There are some major advantages to the way Onlive works (Lesser computers playing high-end games to name one), and what will be interesting to see, is both the consumer reaction and then the distributor reaction, for if consumers are positive, Distributors must take not, and act accordingly.
Whether we want it or not, digital distribution is here to stay, and its doing very, very well - look at steam, or even Impulse for more on that note. As for the being online always mentality, thats the one major issue I have - Look at Ubisofts games, they are actually already demanding that their costumers are online constantly to play their games due to their security measures. Onlive is no different in that respect. Steam and impulse both have offline modes though.
All in all, I think the future of gaming *will* change, but not as much as some may think. there will be alternatives to onlive - its not going to be that solution or no games, and all things points towards indie developement gaining an even bigger part of the market than they have today, and this is DUE to digitial distrubition, which is a great great thing for creativity in gaming!
Onlive may fail or be a succes, but it will certainly not be the last of its kind - it will be one of MANY options we will have gamers in the future, so dont be scared - rejoice! We are entering exciting times!
I think it's unlikely since the servers will need the cards anyway, and probably one card per user. Cards will also have to be put in different farms in order to handle lag, so there will still be a lot of these made.
Graphics cards have mostly been driven by games but CAD, cinema and advertising (special effects, anime...), military simulations are also big clients for these. I doubt the industry will die. They would likely try to move more towards parallel processing (using GPU architectures for non graphic purposes) except intel and AMD don't have to do that so nVidia and ATI don't either.
I don't see this overtaking PC gaming any time soon.
Bandwidth is the biggest hurdle. I'm playing games at 1920x1080. At 32-bit color depth, 60fps, I'd need 4Gbps. Even assuming a compression rate of 5:1, we're looking at 800 Mbps. That's dedicated streaming bandwidth, not burst. For this, we need dedicated GbE to be a commonly available residential bandwidth option.
Internet infrastructure is currently growing at about 20%/year. Let's double that to 40% just for fun. This means that it doubles every two years.
Now most places, the best dedicated speeds you're looking at are around 10 Mbps. To get from there to 800 Mbps, will take thirteen years. (This is assuming the internet infrastructure doubles its growth rate.) Needless to say, this will require everyone to be connected to fiber-optic. You're not going to deliver GbE to people over copper. Given the rate companies are moving, that might take longer than thirteen years.
And the PC gaming industry isn't going to be standing still either. In thirteen years, we'll probably be playing on 4000x2000 screens delivered in 3D (i.e., double the fps). If you're wondering, that'd be 30 Gbps raw. (Actually, I suspect we'll be at that point in considerably less than thirteen years).
Sidebar: The speed of light isn't a problem. Light travels 300 km/ms. Assuming you live within 1500 km of a colocation facility (a pretty safe bet for most people), you could theoretically get a message to the server in 5 ms. What kills you is the routing - i.e., another infrastructure problem. You're not going to reduce the number of routers you hit, so the only thing to do there is to make the routers faster.
Moore's law will help you out some there, but if you're hitting a half-dozen routers and each is adding a millisecond or two to your time, that could get to the point where it's noticeable. And don't look now, but that piece of crap that your ISP gave you to connect with is most certainly the weakest link. You'll be wanting to replace it with some serious iron.
In all, I don't see cloud gaming posing a threat to conventional PC gaming for the next decade. MMORPG's, on the other hand, might be a different story. You already have lag built in, and some games *cough*WoW*cough* are deliberately built with low system requirements. 800x600 in 24-bit, let's say 30 fps, and forget lossless compression and assume the 10:1 that things like JPEG typically get. That's still 35 Mbit. As a dedicated line, that's still beyond a typical consumer's bandwidth, but possibly only two-three years out.
And all that to play WoW at low resolution
I think what it boils down to is: bandwidth is still horribly expensive compared to CPU cycles. And the more you invest in logic to decrease bandwidth costs, the more you end up having to spend in client-side hardware to handle the logic on the client end. Just use a PC.
But wait, you say, how can OnLive possibly work? Short answer: it doesn't. Longer answer - they make significant concessions in quality in order to deliver your graphics to you over their stated bandwidth (5 Mbps). Although I should note that users of the service are seeing it take 10-20 Mbps which may explain why things look a little better now. 20 Mbps is all very well and good until two people on the same cable segment decide to use OnLive at the same time... I assume they're figuring they'll deal with that once the service takes off.
This is an interesting article, albeit a year old: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gdc-why-onlive-cant-possibly-work-article
The video is illuminating as well. Looks like what we were getting five years ago.
Cloud computing is supposed to be the future. In fact it's been the future for a few years now. Not as many years as PC gaming has been dying, but it's beginning to pile up. We're still not there yet.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
