Is this the really the future if gaming?
This is the multi-million dollar question that Onlive and Gaikai
are trying to provide the answer to. Will gamers or even casual PC users gladly
give up their own hardware, consoles, and PC’s at home for a cloud solution,
the answer is probably yes, but not in the near future, but it’s probably
inevitable, at least to some degree.
In my opinion, the technology and concept of cloud gaming is
in its initial development phase, and not quite ready for prime time. ISP’s are
not happy giving their subscribers unlimited Internet anymore and many have
imposed data caps. They won’t come out and say it, but this is an attempt for
the cable companies to stop or discourage consumers from leaving their pricey
cable packages for Internet TV options, or just plain greed in some cases. This will not help online gaming solutions like
Gaikai or Onlive as they eat up bandwith quickly. If they partner with these
cable companies that could alleviate the ISP data costs, and though I have
heard rumors of it, I haven’t yet heard proof this is the case.
Graphic limitations and latency vs. convenience
Cloud gaming seems to be stuck at 720p for now as the
bandwith required for true 1080p is huge, and the backend processing is much
heavier. When I have played games on Onlive, it plays like a mid level PC with
stripped down graphic options. Unfortunately, playing a game like Deus Ex:
Human Revolution on Onlive doesn’t look as good as playing on your own mid
level PC at home, at least at the moment.
The resolution is stuck at 720p, the textures are not as sharp, and the
streaming artifacts are there, though minor. Latency seems noticeable when
playing a first person shooter or quick action style game, the controls just
don’t feel as tight. Gaikai seems to have slightly less latency, though that
might be because of my location to the server or my ISP, and the graphics seem
sharper to me. Where Onlive shines is the interface, I absolutely love it. When
you log into Onlive and get to the menu screen, you have multiple choices. My
favorite is the Arena, where you can watch other gamers play games live.
Microsoft wanted to try something like this when they released the Xbox 360,
they had plans for it with the Project Gotham series, but it never panned
out. When you start a game on Onlive it
just starts running, and that is impressive. Once you load the client, going in
and out of games is very quick, it amazed me the first time I played a game on
the service. Gaikai doesn’t use that type of client (yet), it’s a website that
install a java based client as you run the game, and plays in your web browser
window. It doesn’t load as fast as onlive as you are loading each game
separately. I played the Mass Effect 3 and Bulletstorm demos on Gaikai. I
didn’t feel hardly any latency with ME3, but it was very noticeable in
Bulletstorm which is a fast paced shooter.
The question is one of convenience; will gamers accept
something of lower quality than the more expensive solution of owning your own
hardware? As a musician, it’s easy to say to just take a look at the MP3. Many
music lovers listen to their favorite music on 128 or 192 Kbits and are
perfectly happy with them. I personally use 320 Kbit MP3’s on any music site
that will allow them, some will only allow 192 or lower unfortunately.
Most people don’t want to download a 50mb or higher wav file
for a song still, even though the quality is better. However, MP3’s don’t have
latency, and if every MP3 file started with a 3 to 5 sec pause before the song
starts, I think the average listener would be very irritated.
I think that eventually Onlive, Gaikai, Evolve, and maybe
PSN and XBL will be on everyone’s cable box, TV, or internet device. That
option will be there and people will use it, but this will take time, and until
super fast fiber networking is available in every home, it’s going to be a slow
process.
The merging of the cloud and home products.
This is what I think could be really interesting, especially
for the upcoming next generation consoles that we all know are coming but haven’t
been announced (I’m not including the Wii-u, from the specs rumored so far, it’s
going to be more like our current generation in performance)
What if we could merge local hardware with cloud
hardware? What if you could make a game
like Mass Effect where the level was on the local machine, but the backgrounds
are in the cloud? Instead of painted or pre-rendered backgrounds with sparse geometry
in front, you could have a Blade runner type of cityscape complete with
advertisements geared to you while you’re playing the game? Using ME3 as an
example, when you are on the citadel and looking out beyond the place your
character is standing, you currently see a beautiful rendered background mixed
with geometry that fades in detail is it goes. Instead, you could have the
cloud render or stream a video of an immense city with advertisements geared
towards the player. If you didn’t have the connection to stream, you would
still have that background as before. It would be the best of both worlds.
Instead of a high end machine rendering everything, it would
only have to render the parts that would be affected by high latency. Even if
the game is at 1080p, the background image wouldn’t necessarily have to be.
I haven't heard anything regarding merging the technology, but it seems to me the way to go, at least initially.
Gaming might eventually go completely cloud, but this would be a great way to start the transition.
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