High End gaming rigs a thing of the past?

It's all reliant on your internet connection, just as the quality of streaming Netflix over your Blu-Ray player is reliant on internet connect and that service is a love it or hate it product.  Actually, OnLive looks to be a bit more refined in the technology than a Netflix type service, but still has the same base process to get the information to you.

It's all part of our future, no doubt.


Edited by EdH63 - 24 Mar 2009 at 9:21am

I say 3 years from now all games will be streamed but you will still need a nice PC to run your entertainment center. The system I just bought from DS will probably be my last because of onlive and services like it. Oh well DS you should try and offer the same service. Onlive is a computer company with massive servers (cloud computing service). IT IS THE FUTURE DS you have the tech to do the same thing. So I would think about it if I owned a company like DS because this is where the gaming buisness is going and DS could be on the ground floor. 

Edited by paraguy1 - 24 Mar 2009 at 6:45pm

We will dig into Onlive, thanks!

It sounds like an excellent idea, and for some games it'll work great. However, for first person shooters like Crysis it will never come close to matching a high-end gaming rig. There are way too many problems that will get in the way:

1) Maybe lower resolutions will play well, but I doubt resolutions like 1920 x 1200, or 2560 x 1600 will stream very well.

2) Network lag will make fast-paced games very difficult to play. Just imagine you press a button, and 30ms later the server receives the command. It renders a new frame (on a server running several other games mostly likely), and then it sends you back a new frame of compressed video, which might take 30ms. That means you'll see something like 60ms of input lag. People already complain about input lag with certain LCD displays. This game service will just make it worse.

3) The quality of your games will depend on the reliability of your Internet connection in a big way. I don't know about you, but that sounds a big bowl of headaches.

4) The video will be highly compressed to fit within the bandwidth restrictions. That will work for some games, but any games with highly detailed graphics will look pretty crappy. Just imagine playing a RTS game with a lot of text on the screen.

Don't get me wrong, I think this service could be huge, and quite fun. I'll probably be a customer one day. But no, it won't ever replace a high-end gaming rig. The guy with the gaming rig will mop the floor with any opponents playing from a streaming server.

Here is a followup article on the OP enjoy

It may or may not catch on we will have to see. I for one would never use it simply because I love hard copies of my software. Plus I often go back to old games and play. Age II comes to mind. I love networking with my family and I don't think this new tech will accommodate us. I like to collect games and display their boxes as do my kids. Sega channel did the same thing many years ago and although cool never really caught on here. I still buy DvD's even though netflix, video rental places, HBO, Showtime and others are available. The Dvr didn't replace buying the full package DVD nor will it. Bottom line I think many prefer hard copies to streaming and also many would prefer to pay fees to play. I really don't think the gaming community will wholely swing to streaming. That's my opinion and I am sticking to it.

Edited by Sodius - 25 Mar 2009 at 10:50am

same with cloud computing, as if I'm gonna store my stuff on ms's servers

Originally posted by DST4ME same with cloud computing, as if I'm gonna store my stuff on ms's servers

Exactly!

Meh, I signed up for the BETA but I did so with a seriously skeptical eye.

I just cannot imagine there being no input lag.

How do they deal with heavy traffic?

I also don't like the idea of buying a game I don't actually own. At least with something like Steam the game is physically on your HD. If for some reason they went under, I'm sure they could release access to what is on your system.

With something like this, how do you recover the games if the company goes belly up?

If they really do have a BETA and I get in I'll let you know what I think...

yea but thats for trial periods
so the traffic and demand wont be to high really