Horrible idea. What are you going to do, pay them to render your own games in low resolution for you? What if a new game comes out and 15 Million people are requesting renders of it simultaneously? I would love to see a server farm/internet backbone to handle all that traffic.

The only problem with OnLive is 480P and 720P are NOT good resolutions for playing on your average computer monitor. Sure, if you have a 480P or 720P Television, those resolutions are fine, and OnLive might offer a nice alternative to the XBox and PS3, but OnLive here is missing out on two key factors:

One, Wii users obviously aren't about the graphics, they're about the playability. Unless OnLive can license the Wii's game library (and controllers), its not going to be a big competitor there.

Two, lots of PC gamers like getting the latest and greatest hardware to play the best looking games on their PC. As stated before, 720P will NOT satisfy those customers. Sure, enthusiast PC gamers aren't the majority, but they seem to be enough to drive whole markets with enthusiast PCs, GPUs, CPUs, etc...

With america's broadband netowrk in the state that it's in, I dont see this working out for alot of people. For instance in my area, 1 meg download is the highest I can get, and I pay 70 a month for it. And another friend who pays for a 10meg cable connection cant game when he gets home, because the connection tanks when people hit the torrents and web surfing in his area.

says welcome to old news

streammygame.com

Well, look at QuakeLive, it is very playable and looks very good. I would think it would use similar technology.

its got potential but I'd rather my game be based off of my hardware rather then Ineternet service provider. You can't overclock your internet speed

Even if they are able to pull it, I would prefer a "private cloud" where we own the hardware and software so when you buy something, you actually own it and nobody can pull the plug on you (*cough* DRM *cough*). If a bunch of people decide to make a "cloud community", good for them, but it shouldn't be mandatory.

Problem is resolution, or if your 'net goes down.
I refuse to run any game in a rez lower than 1600 by 1200, and that only for games that don't support widescreen. (unless it's a really old game, like the original fallout)

LOL, I think that stream my game is even better

The only time I'd want cloud computing touching my gaming is when it would be a supplement to my pre-existing hardware. I'm not giving up my hardware so someone else can charge me a rate for computing power I could get for much cheaper.

One server to rule them all!

Agreed.
Cloud computing for my media-sure
Anything else = no thanks

So true. Well said! I see something like this happening for an RTS/RPG game but never a FPS game, esp. one with a reputation for high end hardware like Crysis.

Doubt it. Crysis is a uses different engine that is aimed at high end GPUs. The Quake engine has been out for years, and the hardware back then was pretty low compared to today.

so what would my fiber 16mbs render to lol 1080p

Oh gawd. Didn't you guys do this article in the past? Talking about cloud gaming, and how you could play Crysis on your cell phone?!?

Why on earth are you doing this again? The first article was stupid, and this one is just about as worthless. (Sorry, I know that sounds harsh).

I hope this cloud gaming never happens. Cloud other stuff fine. But gaming will be done in my own office, on my own system, with or without internet. And I will play at 1080p thank you very much. Not 480p (or worse) on my 22" HD monitor.

Let alone my freaking Palm Treo.... 320x320 FTW!!!

Oh just buy an XBOX 360 and hope it doesn't RRoD.

Of course you could demo this technology easily at a booth. With the server attached to your gaming PC by a 6ft Cat6 cable. But in the real world, give me a break. As was already stated by others above, the infrastructure in the United States is way, way behind for something like this to be effective.

Besides, I don't wish to play my FPS games with a full second or more lag between my clicking a button and it showing up on my screen.

I like the idea of "cloud gaming", but as long as I control it. To me the "over the internet" would just be icing on the cake. We could then build rigs that can make as much noise as they want, stuff them is a cold basement room and just have a nifty thin-client kind of device next to the TV/LCD monitor. You could have a relatively inexpensive laptop for school/work, but still play games on it when at home.

look, ima be an optimist and say this is possible. if they manage to open server farms close to home, and have subscription plans for a number of people, this seems VERY possible.. as long as the YEARLY bill doesn't go over $200, im promised a high speed spot for any game of my choice all year round with little to no downtime [my comp can have downtime too ya know], near 0 ping, than ill be on that so fast... happily too. i have a decent computer but if i can try so many games, id be on it in seconds...

i wonder how it would work for mmo's, or at all?

I'm thinking this is some smoke and mirrors... Demonstrating at GDC with a controlled network or even on a low ping ISP backbone connection is one thing, but how will this scale and how will the ISP's react to continuous 4-5Mb/Sec thruput.

I also seriously doubt they've solved the latency problem? If best case I'm 20ms from my client device to their host system, I'm really 40ms as upstream USB/input controller needed will be 20ms up and the images will be back down 20ms. Something is NOT adding up with these guys. If they have pulled this off and the latency is solely your ISP latency then kudo's, great for turn based games and internet video. I don't see this for any games that need real time input or near real time input.

Also they claim 1ms to encode and decode (outside of the ISP)... I call bollocks on this, the best studio level HW encoders and decoders add more latency than this. Remember the desktop side on a notebook or mac is SW DECODE... So how does this work then??

So is also the end of DRM? How is the service going to work , pay $10 a month and get to play any game on offer or pay per game?

It's great and terrible altogether.

Great because cheap systems can play games, but terrible due to the inevitable pricing structure. Yeah, you save in hardware, but you'll more than surpass that in monthly fees.

Speaking of monthly fees, am I the only person noticing that EVERYTHING is now a monthly charge? You can't just buy anything anymore, you have to lease it... ugh.

There is one thing that I do like about this, there is no target hardware for a game company to shoot for. So they can ramp up to pixar level graphics for their games. Who cares how much it taxes the cloud, that would no longer be their concern.

Latency however is something that needs to be explained better. Is that 1ms per frame? so 24frames = 24ms+client/server side response... the slightest hesitation could send the game into a slide show.

The cost of the servers + game license + bandwidth will be extreme, I can't imagine this service would be cheap either.

I really like the idea. It means no matter who you are, you can play games if that's what you want. But there are some obstacles still. You're limited to games they've made work. And let's face it - there are a lot of people playing a lot of games they haven't paid for. So overall cost might actually increase by use of this system. Many in the late teens and early twenties spend almost all their investment in hardware, and nothing in software. So unless the service can be provided cheap enough, I'm not sure those people would pay. But it could help bring down piracy if it does work ofc

I don't know about you but if I'm playing a game for a couple of hours and the network connection drops before I can make it to a save point because of some storm 2 states away. I'm gonna be pissed. At least having the console local prevents that.
But I do understand for developers it would be huge, make games for one platform no worries about distribution costs, hackers. It may help spur better/faster broadband.

I see to many inherent problems for this to be an alternative to consoles or gaming pc's. First of all the addive nature of gamers doesn't give way to shotty service. Regardless if it is a server issue or poor isp performance, their are too many uncontrolable variables to make this a viable gaming platform.

Also, I think that if the way of gaming were to go to server based rendering it would enevitably hurt gaming. Basically gaming would become a service, such as cable tv or satellite television. Game developers would have to develop games in a vacuum. They would be restricted to hardware located on the server. How often does cable and sattelite companies upgrade their equipment; what is the incentive? They already have the customers, why spend more cash to offer more value to customers that they already are receiving subscription fees from. They might upgrade their servers every 10 years, which is over 2 generations in the video game industry. Whether or not we like pricey consolse and pc's, they do make technology progress faster and enable developers to expand and create new realism to further the escape into a fantasy world for the gamer.

this sucks.......... its gonna ruin the fun of upgrading you computer with the best when you can just get a fin onlive. I was just gonna get an i7, but seeing it would only have like 2yrs of superiority, i don't know, it also ruins the console gaming culture as no ps3, wii, 360. And it would indirectly hurt companies like intel and amd, because when people see that you can do video just as fast as using someones server, there will be no need to make core i7's or new cpu's cpu architecture would be blown back to the stone age having an emphasis on power consumption.............