# Cloud Gaming?



## Rodders (Jun 7, 2009)

I caught an article on BBC news this morning from E3 about something called cloud gaming. As i understood it, it was like Youtube for games. You have an account and you'd "rent" a game from the service provider. The game graphics etc are all handled by the provider and you are the streamed the game to play on line. 

Because this is all done on your account, you'd be able to access the game from any computer, anywhere and not load software onto your PC. It also wouldn't matter what spec your PC was as everything would be handled off site. Not sure how i feel about this as my games are also a part of my Star Wars collection. Theres also the fact that you'd never own the game, just rent it out online. 

In fact, with books and Music also becoming more and more available electronically are possessions becoming a thing of the past? What does anyone else thing of this?


----------



## Lenny (Jun 7, 2009)

It's a nice concept (there was one announced earlier this year, too... but there's been nothing else from it), but I think it's a few years ahead of its time - the only countries with the infrastructure in place to handle such a service are Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea.

To stream HD video over the internet (in this case, the actual game video) uses a lot of bandwidth. For a half hour, standard definition programme on BBC iPlayer, about 250mb of data is streamed. Make the box larger, and it increases to about 350mb (as the quality is increased). Make it a full HD programme, and you're looking at around 500mb for half an hour. Think about how much bandwidth would be needed for a game.

There's also the fact that HD video needs, at minimum, a connection of about 4Mbps to stream it properly.

The next thing to think about is communicating with the server that is doing the processing for you - how many servers react to inputs almost instantly? Sure, it's possible, as the Google Wave team has demonstrated, but for the speed you're talking about, some crazy voodoo magic wizardry is needed not only for the initial speed, but to keep it constant, and to keep it constantly accessible - when playing them on your own machine, your actions are almost instant (the moment you press the key, something happens on screen). We've all suffered lag in MMO games, but imagine it if you're playing a single-player, offline game. Say a racing game, or FPS, or My First Kitten. Do you want lag to cause your virtual kitten to die from starvation? Because I don't.

Those are my general feelings - the current state of technology is not good enough to allow something like cloud gaming.

Personally, like you, I'd much prefer to have physical copies of my games, too.

As for possession's becoming a thing of past... well, physical possessions slowly are (depending on the media), but they're turning into digital possessions, rather than disappearing completely.


----------



## Commonmind (Jun 7, 2009)

The service is call OnLive, and beyond the technical issues there are logistical problems to consider. Convincing publishers to pull out their embedded authentication, or removing their unique account creation components -- all anti-piracy measures -- is one of them. 

And although I agree, I do enjoy "owning" my games, I definitely prefer digital distribution to a physical product. Beyond the fact that it's far more practical now that I'm a family man, it's also extremely convenient, having a platform which delivers my content to me. Rather than finding all my game discs to reinstall after a reformat, I simply download Steam and Stardock, and install the titles from my lists which I play on a consistent basis.


----------



## Armadillo-002 (Jun 7, 2009)

An interesting question; unfortunately things like DVDs are more prone to being illegally copied & distributed. Take ADV for example they stopped distributing in the UK (I think) plainly because thoese that bought their goods illeaglly copied it. Hence why they shut shop in the UK and only release in USA. To ensure companies do not lose revenue they will start to stream them on their website (check funimation) as they upload some episodes. 

But I have to agree with what Lenny said; the technology to have a fully streamed viewing in HD is a long way from here. It kind of does feel funny not to have something you can hold physically. Books are a different matter.


----------



## weblegend (Jun 25, 2009)

cloud gaming...sounds very serious...


----------

