Streaming Games?

[ejai]

This product seems a bit interesting, I would prefer to have my own copy but some people might enjoy this idea.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7962180.stm

[rallynavvie]

OnLive is cloud computing for games. It isn't about owning a copy but opening up the user base to include people who don't want to drop hundreds of dollars for a console or a PC that can run games. Now you can simply do it with broadband access and some controllers for your TV. The graphics rendering, physics, and all the other processing gets done on the host side and streamed as a video image to your TV. The idea is interesting but I want to know the latency concerns back and forth.

I've been working with VMs and cloud apps for a couple years now at work and there are some fantastic applications for this sort of thing. For instance consumers who didn't want to drop hundreds of dollars on Photoshop could instead "rent" the application from a cloud, for a smaller fee, for enough time to finish their project and not require installation, system issues, or any other logistics while they're working on their project.

[yoda313]

I saw the ON LIVE deal on X Play.

What is the minimum broadband speed for this thing? I have a 384kpbs dsl connection. I can play on Xbox Live and talk while I"m online without serious lag.

What I want to know is this thing pipeline intensive? Would this be a 1mb and up minimum since your sending the entire game over the network and not just your bits and bites of where you are in the game? That would be a concern for me. The concept is interesting.

In my case I'd be trading local machine power constraints for network speed constraints. It's kind of swithcing one demand for another.

[rallynavvie]

You aren't sending game data, only video downstream and interface/input upstream. I'm not sure yet on the bandwidth requirements but I would think for latency-sensitive games (like anything not turn-based) you would want to have a lot of bandwidth available. My guess would be 3Mb down and 1Mb up at least, though I'm thinking it may be a bit more.