Tendo City

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/47080.html?type=

Heard of this? It's apparently the next step of online games, cloud computing style.

The basis of this is that mass producing disks full of copies of software a million times for expensive copies of the same hardware a million times is extremely inefficient. In an example of efficiency that would make the borg blush, they are setting up a system where the entirey of the game code is running on a server (right down to graphics and sound rendering) and the completed image and sound is all that's sent. As a result, this will be able to run on any barebones computer capable of an internet connection and displaying live video feeds. Further, they'll also be selling a very basic device for the TV that accomplishes the same barebones thing. All the device needs from a user is basic input. Basically, MS is cashing in on the growing "too poor to buy a fully fledged video game system" market.

I think it can be safely assumed that they'll be adding support for the service to the 360 no problem, heck there's no reason they couldn't add support for it to an update to the original XBox too and considering the market this is aimed at, they would do well to do just that. Since it's just a video feed, they could port the software relatively simply to the Wii or PS3, well "could" being the operative word, as I somehow doubt that either company would approve of something who's chief purpose is to cut in on their business model.

MS is saying they have solved lag like... forever, or something. There are certain physical realities that tell me this won't work as well as they claim, such as the speed of light and the fact that at any time a user could be on the other side of the planet using this system.

Anyway, even if they have truly resolved the lag issues, while I'm very impressed by the idea, I disagree with this notion that this will be the ultimate solution to all software everywhere. People in the cloud computing business keep touting how this is the future of software, every single aspect all being online with only a barebones user interface user-side. My question is, do we really WANT this, for everything?

E-mail is one thing, but I will add that I actually DO use an e-mail program whenever I'm on my own computer, namely because I want copies of everything ON my computer. The internet is not omnipresent just yet. In fact to drive this point home Cox sort of dropped the ball all night last night and didn't get around to fixing whatever was going on until early this morning. There are times when I just need something to be local.

Further, as an extention of this, something that is a purely single-user experience is something I want to have local anyway. I have no advantage at all in sending it "to the cloud". For example, why the heck would I actually WANT to play Chrono Trigger cloud style? All that adds is the risk of headaches.

Anyway, this also fails to address portable consoles, unless cloud computer's dreams are of a planetwide engulfing in a wireless network that always works all the time.

Sometimes I just want to have something I can plug in and it works without invoking the internet. I'm perfectly fine with mass produced information for each individual. I suppose I don't mind such inefficiency. Cloud computing may be the future of online gaming, but for single player games, and also for games with multiplayer modes on top of single player modes, I want to keep the local versions JUST for me to use when I want without anyone needing to know or me needing to depend on extra services needlessly.

Save the uber-cloud computer utopia for when we all finally do get linked into the collective conciousness and only one mind ever needs to worry about being bored.

You turn it on.

Grab the controller.

Your dashboard has CT next to WoW.

You open CT and there's the intro, then the menu with your save game files.

You open the first save game file and start playing.

Nothing scary about that but of course there's no way in hell it's going to be full resolution and never lag. They're talking to some companies (like the vague?) about hooking up directly with an ISP or even cable television providers (SOUND FAMILIAR?) and so yes, all you'd need is the controller. Some hotels already do this and it works quite well because its self contained, not global.

I'd love to see a service that lets me play a PC game (mmorpgs) on my TV without needing some 4000 dollar video card that can render actual atoms that search for and destroy Sara Conner. But... it's not going to look like it should, its going to look and sound like poo. Like comparing a DVD to a youtube video.

lazyfatbum Wrote:but of course there's no way in hell it's going to be full resolution and never lag.

I think it's very possible. Remote desktop runs like a champ on most pc's and never lags. The trick is to send udates of only the pixels that change which you'd be supperised how much bandwith that saves, it's the same principle used in compressing MPEG moves or JPEG images.

This is a very interesting idea, but how well is it going to hold up when millions of people log on at roughly the same time to play their games?

Great Rumbler Wrote:This is a very interesting idea, but how well is it going to hold up when millions of people log on at roughly the same time to play their games?

My main concern is how will GPU cycles be managed. There will have to be some pritty high end graphics card to render these streams, but rendering 100 sessions of 1080p brilliance seems damn near impossible with today's hardware.

Plus the bandwidth problems. We don't have enough bandwidth for many people to use things like this... even if you COULD get a fast enough connection for this (expensive!), in a lot of cases you'd just end up with your bandwidth capped and stuck... and you'd also need a very fast connection to run things at much of a resolution, I believe.

Yeah, 1.5MBps connection for SD resolution (480p), 5MBps for HD (720p). We're talking about an expensive connection here.

And yeah, the lag, limitations on what you could use (so you can't upgrade your own hardware anymore? As some people at GAF pointed out, what about hardware upgrades? Would you have to wait for them to upgrade their whole server bank before you can play a new game that requires it?), that having to be online for single-player games is annoying and not something people like, that it removes most all sense of actually owning anything, which is definitely part of having a game...

I know online games, etc, often don't have a physical box to own, but even so. Even there you often have the option of getting one, if it's a game being sold, and you expect online games to be, well, online.

Things like Steam requiring online verification before you can play single-player games, though... that's just annoying and not appreciated.

And for consoles, what about controllers, etc? You have to use their controllers, not something actually designed for the system? No thanks... And what about wanting to back up your files, or save files, to something else, like something you have instead of just on their servers?

This article's good too. Read it, it's quite good.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gdc-wh...rk-article

Even beyond all the technical issues though, I just don't like the idea much. I'm sure some people would be interested, but I do like actually having things, and being able to upgrade (and own) my own hardware, and all those things... I very highly doubt I'd be interested, for sure. Maybe for more casual gamers, though, or a supplement or something... if it actually works, that is.

etoven Wrote:I think it's very possible. Remote desktop runs like a champ on most pc's and never lags. The trick is to send udates of only the pixels that change which you'd be supperised how much bandwith that saves, it's the same principle used in compressing MPEG moves or JPEG images.

That's a good trick (and the basis of digital broadcasting), but I'm still worried about very basic lag issues, that is, the simple truth that it takes physical time for your signal to get there, and their signal to hit you. It's not an issue of bandwidth, but of latency.

What trick do you expect them to use to make my button input show up on the screen effectively instantly? Even in the average online game, the simple fact is they have to use cheats to allow that to work. These tricks just aren't possible with this system. What is generally done is to pre-calculate based on what's already available what's going to happen, and show that. Correct if something different happens (explaining things like your character suddenly jumping back). In this way, if you move or punch or shoot, it's displayed on your end in real time before it's actually sent. This works ONLY because you have a client on your end, the game itself, that is actually capable of these precalculations because it's doing all the code right before you in real time. Even assuming infinite bandwidth and processing speed, there's an absolute limit on how low latency can go. There's the nature of networking in general, with negotiating times and such, and there's of course the laws of physics. They'd practically have to have a server horde in every metro city to avoid light speed limitations.

If it's all done on their end, it can't use this trick at all. So, what do they have up their sleeves? Basically I'm very cautious about their claims.

Oh, and in the case of remote desktop, I agree that for what it needs to do, it does it well. However, I have to add that it has latency that, while just fine if all you are doing is dragging and dropping a file, is unacceptable if you are trying to headshot some guy strafing around in a courtyard.

ABF that digital imaging etoven mentioned should handle a lot of the bandwidth problems, but I agree about actually being able to own a copy of a game.

Steam has online verification, but after it's verified it's basically your's and you don't need to get online again. As long as you keep that hard drive around, you have that game. It's certainly more owned than this would be. I think it's possible they would allow you to download your saved games to your own data storage though. That shouldn't be a problem.

I'll add that Steam is working on a brand new DRM solution that really shifts the focus on how it should be handled, and would actually remove even online verification. The idea is "signituring" each executable with the full details of the owner, and that's it. No background monitering tools, no limits on which machines it can be installed on or how many times, no online verification, heck it's less intrusive than old security methods like needing a disk in the drive, inputting a serial code, or... I dunno looking up keywords in an instruction manual.

The way it's supposed to work is since every game executable is uniquelly tagged with this information, if anyone dares upload this to some site for download, it'll be instantly trackable to that person and they'll get arrested pretty dang quick. (Side note: While I get the downloading part on the part of pirates, I'll never get what that first legitimate customer's goals are in that initial upload, what they intend to get out of it, I mean I'd think it was good will except for the part that they are thieves. Honor among thieves? I dunno...) While it is true that the game is still out there on the dark waters of the interseas (and getting information out of the internet is like getting pee out of a pool), with a prosecution rate of nearly 100%, I doubt many will continue to do this. It's certainly far more effective to go after the ones distributing than nailing a few random confirmed downloaders here and there. Really though I want this to succeed so hard so every other company stops loading up their games with awkward annoying system resource hogging DRM solutions and I can just stick my game in and play.

Those are some good concerns developer side too.

When it comes right down to it, the basic issue for me is that I don't want to pay monthly fees to play my games, excepting certain online services where that's understandable. Further, I don't want whether or not I can still play my game subject to whether the service is still there. And, it's not just about if this service succeeds, there's the issue of contract renewals. If a company goes under and doesn't renew a contract, and those liscenses end up impossibly split across 7 entites by the end of it so no new contract would even be feasable (it's happened in the past), that game that I've been playing and would likely go back to again and again if I liked it disappears from the system. If I actually OWN the game, that's not a concern. I have it forever no matter how the liscenses change.

In the distant future, my way of thinking may well be a relic of older times as so many of these transhumanists going on about how cloud computing is humanity's next great step are claiming. Heck I hope we do get something in place that actually accounts for all these scenarios and guarentees my eternal playness of these games (without a fee if at all possible, but being transhumanists, this future would also use post scarcity ecomonics where money is meaningless and every job no one wants to do is done by robots). Until then, this is way way ahead of it's time and just not something I want to bother with. Come to think of it, even as a solution for those struggling to get by, it doesn't work too well. They tend to buy used N64s and a handful of games for $15 and use that for years at a time. A monthly fee would just be an unnecesarry financial drain.

Quote:Those are some good concerns developer side too.

Lots of them. It'd be pretty amazing if this is actually pulled off as it says.

Quote:When it comes right down to it, the basic issue for me is that I don't want to pay monthly fees to play my games, excepting certain online services where that's understandable.

I most definitely agree. I would add that I actually like to own things.

Quote:Further, I don't want whether or not I can still play my game subject to whether the service is still there.

A very good point...

Quote:And, it's not just about if this service succeeds, there's the issue of contract renewals.

Another good point, like with how on those video services sometimes some company makes the service remove all their games, right? I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, that'd definitely happen, no question. "Sorry, you can't play any Ubisoft games now, we're in contract negociations..."

The point about dead companies, etc, is also a good one. How would that work, exactly? Do you just lose those games? I quite agree about the advantages of actually owning things. This is the major downside of online-only games... when they go offline, unless the developers release server software or the users manage to figure out how to hack the game to make one work no one can play them anymore. :(

Still though, I think the technical and developer limitations are the biggest ones. They're saying they have pretty much the best way to compress and send this stuff ever, and that's a bold claim that's hard to believe... and bandwidth limits are also huge limitations on this for a great many people, even if they were interested. This could catch on, sometime, but it'll be a while, and the limitations are huge.

As that article said... by the time it's cost-effective to actually make data centers like that, couldn't the chips just be in just about anything, making such centers irrelevant? :)

Quote:In the distant future, my way of thinking may well be a relic of older times as so many of these transhumanists going on about how cloud computing is humanity's next great step are claiming. Heck I hope we do get something in place that actually accounts for all these scenarios and guarentees my eternal playness of these games (without a fee if at all possible, but being transhumanists, this future would also use post scarcity ecomonics where money is meaningless and every job no one wants to do is done by robots). Until then, this is way way ahead of it's time and just not something I want to bother with.

Yeah, who knows what will happen in the future... maybe 'actually wanting to own things' will go away sometime, replaced with just 'online access to it'. But I just don't see the advantage of not having the computer yourself. Why rely on a far-off networked system you don't own or really have control over in favor of your own machine? I just don't get that, and not just for "I want to own it" reasons. The "I want control over it" reasons are probably even more important.

But yeah, I just don't quite see the point. There may be a market for this though, who knows... if it works at all that is. We'll see.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/01/gdc09-...-to-be-sk/
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/02/gdc09-...continued/
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/02/gdc09-...ed-page-2/

Here's an interview that answers a number of questions. Unfortunatly, I don't like the answers and I thought up a new question.

Firstly, this guy indirectly confirms my fear that distance will have a major impact on lag times when talking about what fibreoptic networks would bring to the service.

Secondly, he in a single fell swoop not only confirms they aren't interested in putting classic games on the service, but that as time goes on they'll remove older games from the service. While a "purchase" option is apparently going to be offered, I have to ask what manner of purchase it is where they can just take it away from you at a later date. It would be more accurate to say it's a single payment rental.

He does explain a number of the physical solutions they're coming up with, which is interesting in a sense but they've already lost me.

They admit they haven't even considered how they'll handle downloadable content. It makes me wonder how they'll even handle custom user content. On modern games that have a full menu to activate and deactivate custom content, they'd at the very least need to set aside server space to allow users to upload home designed content, and from there set up the programs to load this special content as needed on their side. I suppose that could work to an extent, but there are "supported" mods and then really heavy modifications that go beyond a game's built in systems. It's hard to believe they'd have things in place to handle the more extreme full game conversion mods, or that they'd even care to bother.

This brings me to another issue. Will they make sure all their games are running at their very highest possible settings? I'm not just talking about just clicking on a game and clicking the "ultra graphics" button. There's plenty of extreme modifications that can be done in a game's configuration file that aren't in the options normally, which some people turn on at a future date when computer hardware has reached a point that it can support those changes. Will they be slowly updating those config files, or at least allow us to mess with them?

These issues can be pretty complicated when you're actually the user on your own machine trying to max out your settings as best you can.

Anyway, that vague feeling of not really liking the idea of supporting it is becoming more concrete over time.

Quote:Secondly, he in a single fell swoop not only confirms they aren't interested in putting classic games on the service, but that as time goes on they'll remove older games from the service. While a "purchase" option is apparently going to be offered, I have to ask what manner of purchase it is where they can just take it away from you at a later date. It would be more accurate to say it's a single payment rental.

Where's he say this?

Quote:They admit they haven't even considered how they'll handle downloadable content. It makes me wonder how they'll even handle custom user content. On modern games that have a full menu to activate and deactivate custom content, they'd at the very least need to set aside server space to allow users to upload home designed content, and from there set up the programs to load this special content as needed on their side. I suppose that could work to an extent, but there are "supported" mods and then really heavy modifications that go beyond a game's built in systems. It's hard to believe they'd have things in place to handle the more extreme full game conversion mods, or that they'd even care to bother.

This and that other one above, if true, would most definitely kill any remaining shreds of interest I may have had, for sure. There are likely people out there interested even so... but I'm most certainly not one of them.

Quote:This brings me to another issue. Will they make sure all their games are running at their very highest possible settings? I'm not just talking about just clicking on a game and clicking the "ultra graphics" button. There's plenty of extreme modifications that can be done in a game's configuration file that aren't in the options normally, which some people turn on at a future date when computer hardware has reached a point that it can support those changes. Will they be slowly updating those config files, or at least allow us to mess with them?

Hopefully they won't go for the Mac-style "you can't access that stuff" model, but who knows...

It's a two page article. I posted a link to the second page up above.