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PCs vs. Consoles vs. no longer matters.
Jimmy_Scythe
Member CommonPosts: 3,586
Before we begin, Check this out. You might also want to look at this and this.
I recently had a revelation about where the entire computing industry is going. Because of this revelation, I now see that our little tribal rivalries over PCs vs. consoles or Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux, just aren't going to mean a damn thing within the next couple of years. You see, it's all going on the web. It's all going subscription, item-shop and advertising based. You will no longer pay for games. You will pay only for access.
I used to laugh at this idea. But now I understand that there are many cross platform solutions for delivering games over the web. Computers are fast enough now that you can make Nintendo 64 level 3D graphics with just the Flash player. Unity runs on Windows and Mac, although not on Linux but that's really just a matter of time. And there's even a way that the Blender Game Engine can be turned into a Firefox plugin that will run BGE files on any platform. Hell, even Java has some good stuff to offer developers, as anyone who has played Minecraft or Runescape knows. We already save emails and documents on the cloud, why not save games too?
consoles and PCs will give way to cheap, stateless net devices. Cell phone companies will up their offerings of broadband internet over 3G connections while lowering the price. And only a small number of us will have anything even remotely resembling the computers of today to play emulators on.
I'm thinking that the future looks a little like OpenPandora without Linux. Of course you'll cable box will probably have some kind of web front end so you can play games on your HDTV....
Comments
Maybe in 20 years, but not in the next few years.
The next decade won't be that different. In two decades though? Sure.
I'm not going to look it up, but what is the transfer bandwidth of my computers memory or hard drive vs. an internet connection? In my opinion 'cloud' computing is largely just a scam being foisted on the public by greedy corporate interests who are looking to nickel and dime us every single time we want to run a simple program. And I plan on opting out.
Get in line behind me.
Get in line behind me.
And me.
I couldn't agree more with the two posters quoted.
As for the OP, no way this happens in the next couple years.
I think the biggest reason is money. There are a lot of players involved in your scenario and they'll all want more than their fair slice of the pie. The biggest current example of the impasse that may occur in your scenario is the one between MS and Funcom with porting access of AoC to Xbox 360. Of course that is only one facet to contend with in your example, but a small sample of what has to be overcome to make your "vision" a reality.
Greed will keep what you propose from happening anytime soon.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
cloud computing would have been maybe a good idea if it wasnt from microsoft or all those corp.only 2 technologie are coming out from microsoft that were of note and only one wasnt even noticed by most of microsoft crew
1 is dx11 this will be huge in all game way simpler for dev then the nighmare that was dx10
2 donnybrook technique,this one isnt very known by anybody but let me tell you this donnybrooks technique is the futur for the next 5 years
you thot you knew mmo
lol when dx 11+doonybrooks are known and applied to huge mmo,imagine lord of the ring big epic fight at the end of second movie
these techno make that battle doable ,wich right now couldnt happen even in wow.
imagine the vanilla wow content ,where player went to do world raid to kill the dragon ,horde could come and kill you
today it couldnt be done too many player ,with donnybrooks and dx11 you would see those again but instead of 50 fighter it would be probably 1000 vs 1000
insane hell yes ,these 2 technology are the futur of mmo gaming for the next 5 years
i took the watered down version since the msr version is a bit too technical
http://on10.net/Search/Default.aspx?Term=donnybrooks&Type=site
Well I prefer most of the game in PC
I think you are behind the times have a look at this http://www.onlive.com/ CLOUD gaming has been around for a while now, Its on the verge of being rolled out in my oppinion.
Welcome to the future of gaming!
Personally, I see more of a merging of the two communities in near future. SOE is all set to launch FreeRealms to the PS3 platform and possibly the PSP platform as well. And, their two upcoming titles, DCUO & The Agency, were toted as PS3 and PC playable at Fan Faire last June.
We're certainly looking at interesting changes in the gaming industry over the next few years regardless of how it progresses.
Now.. If I could just get porn on my PS3 I'd be all set!
DX11 isn't going to be a requirement on games for a long while. Exclusive DX10+ isn't even on anything but a handful of games. The problem is that a lot of people are resisting upgrading to vista/windows 7, and the game developers know this. So until Microsoft decides to backport DX10/11 to XP, developers will be hesitant to lock out a large portion of potential customers, even if development is a bit more of a PITA.
I love both consoles and PC's however one thing I strongly believe in is if a developer is making an MMO it either needs to be PC only or Console only, why? Because Console MMO's are obviously less complicated than what a PC MMO can be... so in the end the PC users get a rather poor game.
No developers should make games geared towards both consoles unless it's a PC version being changed to a Console version. I have bad experiences with some games that were ported to PC from console and the game simply didn't translate well.
Full Sail University - Game Design
LOL @ CLOUD gaming, the very idea that it would viable at these net speeds is ludicrous. Cloud is designed for old people so they don't have to worry about all that "techy" stuff.
Wrong.... and wrong.
All that's really required is a virtual machine browser plug-in and cloud computing is real. Hell, you can make the CryEngine 3 into a browser plug-in if you want.
You aren't streaming the game in real time from the server. You're just loading the game content from the web. Once it's on your machine, it runs just like any other game.
Oh... In case you're wondering, the access time of a DVD drive is roughly the same as the average broadband internet connection.
The only problem right now is standards. The web runs on standards so one virtual machine will have to rule them all. Right now it's Flash, but Unity is everything that Shockwave should have been. Java has a 3D demo scene that shows off how much better it is in the 3D graphics department than Shockwave or even Instant Action and Quake Live.
Browser games aren't just crappy remakes of NES games anymore. The winds are changing. And you better believe that both Apple, with their iPhone, and Google, with ChromeOS, are going to be throwing some serious money behind this kind of gaming. Even if they don't build their own VMs, they'll still dump assloads of cash into games for the VMs that are already in common usage.
Wrong.... and wrong.
All that's really required is a virtual machine browser plug-in and cloud computing is real. Hell, you can make the CryEngine 3 into a browser plug-in if you want.
For it to be cloud gaming you'd have to cloud do all the computation on the game. This is what OnLive tries to accomplish. This is what is directly impossible for at least some years till the net is more mature. That is the opinion of anyone who actually knows something about the technology behind the internet.
I've seen their demos. The lag is visible to the naked eye on their controlled demos. How does that scale to millions of users on the same time?
You aren't streaming the game in real time from the server. You're just loading the game content from the web. Once it's on your machine, it runs just like any other game.
Then you do the computation and that means it's not really cloud gaming, but just a browser game like all else. We've had those for years. Like Quake Live
Oh... In case you're wondering, the access time of a DVD drive is roughly the same as the average broadband internet connection.
But there doesn't exist any games today that run of the DVD. Almost all games have their entire content on the hard drive, and the load screens are there to load the content into the RAM and VRAM. So the access time you'll want to compare to is that RAM access time, which is less than a 1 ms. The rule of thumb is from user input there goes around 8-10 ms till you see the result on the screen. With Cloud Computation, you'll have to register input locally, send it to the cloud, the cloud will decide server, send input to server, server computes and compresses resulting image, send back, resulting images processed by client. If your latency towards the server is around 50 ms, we are EASILY around 80-100 ms for all input. That's INSANELY high.
The only problem right now is standards. The web runs on standards so one virtual machine will have to rule them all. Right now it's Flash, but Unity is everything that Shockwave should have been. Java has a 3D demo scene that shows off how much better it is in the 3D graphics department than Shockwave or even Instant Action and Quake Live.
Fine and dandy, but virtual machines, and Control containers are unefficient as hell. Graphics quality of browser are like 7-8 years behind regular games.
Browser games aren't just crappy remakes of NES games anymore. The winds are changing. And you better believe that both Apple, with their iPhone, and Google, with ChromeOS, are going to be throwing some serious money behind this kind of gaming. Even if they don't build their own VMs, they'll still dump assloads of cash into games for the VMs that are already in common usage.
Wrong.... and wrong.
All that's really required is a virtual machine browser plug-in and cloud computing is real. Hell, you can make the CryEngine 3 into a browser plug-in if you want.
For it to be cloud gaming you'd have to cloud do all the computation on the game. This is what OnLive tries to accomplish. This is what is directly impossible for at least some years till the net is more mature. That is the opinion of anyone who actually knows something about the technology behind the internet.
I've seen their demos. The lag is visible to the naked eye on their controlled demos. How does that scale to millions of users on the same time?
What's funny is that this thread isn't really about cloud computing or cloud gaming. Most people just assumed that since I was talking about browser games that I must be talking about cloud computing.
But from what I've seen of cloud computing, I think you're a bit confused. When I use Google Docs, all the word processing, spread sheet and power point stuff is actually calculated on my computer within my browser. Only the documents themselves stay on the cloud and I have the option to download and store those files on my own media if I wish. Google even offers a browser plug-in called Google Gears that lets you run Google Docs offline and store on your own computer.
It's the same set up with cloud gaming. You download a level at a time, run it on your computer and the save game goes to the cloud.
You aren't streaming the game in real time from the server. You're just loading the game content from the web. Once it's on your machine, it runs just like any other game.
Then you do the computation and that means it's not really cloud gaming, but just a browser game like all else. We've had those for years. Like Quake Live
See above.
Oh... In case you're wondering, the access time of a DVD drive is roughly the same as the average broadband internet connection.
But there doesn't exist any games today that run of the DVD. Almost all games have their entire content on the hard drive, and the load screens are there to load the content into the RAM and VRAM. So the access time you'll want to compare to is that RAM access time, which is less than a 1 ms. The rule of thumb is from user input there goes around 8-10 ms till you see the result on the screen. With Cloud Computation, you'll have to register input locally, send it to the cloud, the cloud will decide server, send input to server, server computes and compresses resulting image, send back, resulting images processed by client. If your latency the server is around 50 ms, we are EASILY around 80-100 ms for all input. That's INSANELY high.
Most console games do run from the DVD with the save games going to the hard drive. The exception to this patching and downloadable content. I can technically run any 360 game without patching and never install a thing to the system hard drive. Same thing for what I'm talking about.
And again, see above for why your definition of cloud gaming is wrong.
The only problem right now is standards. The web runs on standards so one virtual machine will have to rule them all. Right now it's Flash, but Unity is everything that Shockwave should have been. Java has a 3D demo scene that shows off how much better it is in the 3D graphics department than Shockwave or even Instant Action and Quake Live.
Fine and dandy, but virtual machines, and Control containers are unefficient as hell. Graphics quality of browser are like 7-8 years behind regular games.
You didn't play Crane Wars or Velociraptor Safari, did you? I'm also guessing that you didn't check out the 3D Java demos that I linked to. If you had, you would have noticed little things like per pixel shaders and 60 fps on average. That's even more impressive for the Java demos since they were made in 1998!!! The gap has been closing and now it's not uncommon to see web games that look like they came off of an original XBox. Go check out Fallen Empires: Legion at Instant Action if you don't believe me.
Browser games aren't just crappy remakes of NES games anymore. The winds are changing. And you better believe that both Apple, with their iPhone, and Google, with ChromeOS, are going to be throwing some serious money behind this kind of gaming. Even if they don't build their own VMs, they'll still dump assloads of cash into games for the VMs that are already in common usage.
Ultimately, if all gaming is going to be launchable from a web page or an iPhone app, then what does it matter if you're running Windows or Mac or Linux? If You can run the same games on your PC that you can run on a console, who gives a shit what hardware you're using.
Don't forget that as we grow up, get jobs, get married and have kids, we have less and less time to devote to games. Smaller, shorter, easy access games are going to be the order of the day. The landscape of this industry is about to change drastically.
I disagree. Growing up, getting jobs and getting married and even having kids does not necessarily mean less time to devote to games. I definitely don't think that it means that less in-depth shorter games are going to be what most people want. The landscape of the industry is changing.... it is broadening. What we have is the first time ever that multiple generations have grown up with video games. I love MMORPGs. I grew up with the Nintendo, Sega etc. My 13 year old son loves MMORPGs, my husband has his xbox360, and the kids have their xbox360. We haven't lost our desire to keep up with the latest games, regardless of jobs, and kids. Instead now the gaming industry has multi generational pull. You know what loses out? TV
I'm not saying there isn't a place for short easy access gaming, or just about any type of game you can think of. You need games to play in the bathroom or in line on your cell phone, games for longer waits in waiting rooms for apts. Games for different moods and games for when you are sitting down to play for the next few hours. There is room for every type.
Just my two cents.
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Unity is a very good game engine. I am currently using to work on an unannounced project (all I will say is that it is not an MMO). It isn't a web development platform though it's for you standard .exe launching games.