Nvidia Still Betting Big on Cloud Gaming

By Wolfgang Gruener
published

In a recent interview Phil Eisler, general manager of GeForce Grid Cloud Gaming at Nvidia, said that the setback at OnLive did not discourage Nvidia to back away from cloud gaming. He believes that there will be a comeback for the technology next year.

Eisler said that, while Nvidia supported OnLive, "think a lot of their problems were of their own doing." He conceded that "naysayers certainly had a field day with the demise of OnLive", but that would not change the way Nvidia thinks about cloud gaming as a future opportunity for the company. He said that Nvidia still sees "a lot of potential for the vision of cloud gaming", but they would not have done "some things the way that OnLive did".

As for the time frame when consumer cloud computing could get its next shot, Eisler said that he believes there will be "a lot" happening "next year". According to the executive, Nvidia is sampling products to its partners addressing this market segment, but he noted that much of the traction is not in the U.S., but is led by Asia. "We’ll see [consumer cloud gaming] gain momentum throughout next year," he said. "But if I look out five years, I think it could be a significant portion of the way people play games."

Even though Gaikai and OnLive have both dramatically changed since their inception, Eisler said that Nvidia will continue supporting the cloud gaming companies.

Read the full interview here.

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Wolfgang Gruener
25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • thecolorblue
    No thanks, not interested.
    I'll stick with my home desktop and hardware.
    Reply
  • spasmolytic46
    he noted that much of the traction is not in the U.S.

    Translation = The U.S. internet infrastructure is sub-par to the rest of the civilized world.
    Reply
  • underpatch
    I think the biggest problems with could gaming is not the tech. But when you give them money you don't get a product in return. So if the company goes down you loose everything you paid money for.

    Maybe if the "next gen" cloud gaming goes a 100% rental system. You pay only when you play. Or maybe get deep discounts when you buy a month block of play time. The moddle will only work if a customer can walk away from the product and any time. Also at no point spent the kind of money that would make one feel that you bought something. Hence you feel like you are owed something.
    Reply
  • hannibal
    Hmmm... really? So I would rent GPU power from the net. Maybe if I will get optical fibre connection with really good speed (and low cost). Maybe this is more usefull for consoles?
    Reply
  • maximus81
    The issue is alot of people don't have the connection to sustain a playable experience. Internet connections have not matured enough for this kind of bandwidth. I can never see my self use this service. I would rather install the game locally.
    Reply
  • Jerky_san
    Could always do like I did.. Make an ESXI box at home thats an All in One box.. its my storage, my gaming machine, my dev, machine, and everything else I could want. All for under 1,000.(not including hard drives for storage and GPU). It works incredibly well.
    Reply
  • viktorbkk
    Here is why Cloud Gaming will never ever gain traction:

    It is actually cheaper to render on location than render at a server and stream the data to the consumer. As time goes on, and hardware becomes cheaper and more power efficient, this reality will grow even bolder. Internet providers charge for increased bandwidth usage, because streaming gigabytes of data isn't free. It costs money and power.

    The only meaningful application that I can see for cloud gaming is services is things like demos on the fly etc. Streaming endless gigabytes to your PC will never be more efficient than buying a graphics card. And graphics cards will keep going down in price a lot faster than internet infrastructure.
    Reply
  • atikkur
    does this mean they will stop producing top end graphics card or the development in graphics card will be stagnant?

    cloud gaming could be applied for mobile device, but for home gaming entertainment,, locally is the better experience (bigger, crispier, faster, hassle free).
    Reply
  • shloader
    If there's a market for Cloud gaming in the OnLive sense then there would also always be a market for consoles in the current and suggested future market model. Not speaking to the merits of either but can anyone really imagine an something like OnLive displacing consoles in the living room or blow-out sales on Steam/Origin?
    Reply
  • ubercake
    I tried onLive and found it to be a few network speed generations away from being a real replacement to gaming as we know it. Imagine never having to upgrade your hardware to play the latest games? You'd just need a game controller/keyboard/mouse (whatever you use to game) and an internet-ready television with an onLive-like app running. I, personally, wouldn't mind banking my yearly hardware budget if this were really possible.

    If they can figure out how to get rid of the lag I experienced when playing multi-player basketball over onLive and allow higher graphics settings (don't see why the can't) over the connection, they'll have something very viable.

    The only way I can see a hardware company thinking this is a good thing is if the hardware company itself is looking to provide the services in the future using their hardware to render the imagery passed over the network making this type of gaming possible.
    Reply