On the 17th of June a new service will go live allowing poeple to play high end games on any PC or TV in the world with any kind of computer. Imagine playing a full HD game on your 6 year old PC. Imagine playing the latest version of Halo on your PC without having to buy the console.
This technological wizardry might change how video games are played in the future and even maybe cut down on piracy. The OnLive streaming game service takes console and PC games, renders them server-side, and then streams it to your MAC or PC. This service costs 15 US dollars a month.
Here comes the bad news. Since we live in Malta I highly doubt that we can use this service. One reason would because of bandwidth limitations of the connections . However, I think the biggest problem would be the latency issues. For the ones that understand what I just said here is a quick explanation.
The game is being played on a machine somewhere in the world (most likely USA), the video feed of the game is then being sent to you through the net, like a youtube video. You view the video feed and play the game on your own computer. Your controller movements are sent to the computer playing the game. This data takes time to travel across the net. This time delay would ruin your gaming experience. Hence this service will probably not work in Malta unless the servers are moved closer or just set up here. Maybe they get an office in SmartCity Malta.
From what I have read about the service it seems that the service is working well in USA.
Looks like even video games are moving into the cloud. Save games would be stored on their servers, and multiplayer should be easier. Your game would be available to you anywhere in the world where you have internet access.
#1 by Etienne Pellicano on March 13, 2010 - 11:59 am
great idea! it would be awesome if we will have this technology in malta!
#2 by Malcolm Micallef on March 13, 2010 - 2:13 pm
yeah we might never need to buy another computer or console ever again to play latest games around. Just register for this service and then the set box for the television and you are set for life :S
very exciting tech
#3 by Dave Marsh on March 13, 2010 - 2:32 pm
A magazine I bought recently had an article on this. They’re setting up two servers in the EU, one in the East and one in the West
The biggest problem I see is the ping also. Even if they set up the two servers, Malta’s still going to suffer from latency and those sort of problems.
#4 by Malcolm Micallef on March 13, 2010 - 3:24 pm
it might actually work in Malta. The ping to EU countries has improved and if the ping remains below 100ms I think we might not notice the lag between the controls and the video feed.
Malcolm Micallef getting you the latest stuff since 2 months ago
#5 by Patrick Cachia Marsh on March 13, 2010 - 3:33 pm
I don’t see how this would be a problem. Internet speeds are improving. You’re basically doing little more than streaming a picture from there to your pc. And youtube streams pretty damn fast. Okay so your end has to send signals too, but still. Technology is improving. PS ejja naghmlu bicca LAN guys!
#6 by Malcolm Micallef on March 13, 2010 - 5:01 pm
you saw at the LAN what happened when your ping went up 150ms. Now imagine that your ping has to stay constantly below 100ms while managing to transfer megabytes of data.
finally there one more issue they have. On youtube you can pause the clip and wait for the video to buffer. There no way you can do this for this service.
The final issue they have is the internet is made to transfer data but the order you send the data isn’t always the order the data is received and also data packets can be dropped (for the gamers out there this is what causes the CONNECTION INTERRUPTED errors)