Comments on: Why your next game console ought to be Watson

By: Matthew Bryant

Matthew Bryant — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 02:06:01 +0000

Let’s all pretend for a second that cloud gaming doesn’t have to go through servers provided by the developer. Let’s pretend that the console is limiting number of plays in online games instead of the servers on the developer’s end. No offense, but this article is based on ignorance. Cloud gaming isn’t about to take over the future anytime soon. Especially when you think about online games. The information has to travel through the internet, to the cloud service, and then they have to send it to the game server. You’re likely looking at twice the amount of lag at the least (assuming the cloud service has very good upload and download bandwidth, and doesn’t have any traffic issues in between it’s destination), and even on a great connection that’s going to push you to around 200-400 ms of lag. You start getting beyond that and many games become unplayable online. It’s not feasible anytime soon. Maybe in the future when internet latency becomes more standardized and less of a concern, but until that happens cloud gaming is a pipe dream.

Furthermore, cloud gaming is an incredibly ignorant term. The true meaning of cloud is a lot of data stored in one location, making it simple and easy for individuals and corporations to have access to many things from one source. Unfortunately, nowadays cloud just means anything on the internet. Cloud storage, cloud gaming… No, that’s not what cloud means. Stop misusing the word. -.-

By: Ben Barreth

Ben Barreth — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:59:08 +0000

Yeah we have Google Fiber in Kansas City and the Google Fiber Space even has an OnLive dongle plugged into an internet TV as one of the demo’s their showcasing. There’s no lag of course and the games look beautiful, but to the author’s point, nothing radical or groundbreaking that truly exploits the cloud.

What we need is a bunch of crazy game devs to move to KC and build the future of gaming on Google Fiber. Anyone?

By: Vincent Buyssens

Vincent Buyssens — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 10:13:23 +0000

I only see this becoming a reality once the majority of the market has access to Google Fiber (or something akin to that)

By: Gary Lauder

Gary Lauder — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 03:30:41 +0000

As we discussed previously, OnLive would be an ideal delivery mechanism for such games…esp. via Ouya! One small step towards the Holodeck.

-GML

By: jjj

jjj — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 19:39:59 +0000

The problem is cost, the cost of creating a game for a small market and the cost of running the game (power).I’m sure plenty are itching for some ray tracing games but the cost of running that is problematic.
The big opportunity now are connected TVs ,that’s clearly cloud gaming’s in.When the market grows enough it might afford to have dedicated apps.Saying apps because it doesn’t have to be just gaming on the hardware, it could be VR,weather it is a 3D photorealistic world or just a store.
Bandwidth is not that much of a problem and latency can be low enough for everybody except hardcore gamers in areas with decent infrastructure and game severs close enough (plus there might be some software tricks possible -account for the latency).A bigger problem,in the US (and not so much elsewhere) are data caps ,you just can’t do much streaming of any media games or not.
For dedicated software it might be easier to start with stores and VR.For stores trying clothing items on an accurate avatar might be cost effective and for VR there might be a market in anything sex related where people might be willing to way enough for relatively short sessions.