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[sonycowboy]

Just a little futuristic talk here. I wonder how long until this happens? And it will happen (in some fashion). And we all know capiltalism rules all, so how could capitalism shape how this plays out? The biggest factor, IMO, is how long it will take for sufficient bandwidth to be available to support this concept. Probably some time in the 201x timeframe I'd think. 10-12 years?

Premise
--------------------------
We're getting to a point where we can receive HD quality broadcasts over the air (or through wiring). 1080p content streamed into our homes (soon). As bandwidth gets faster and faster, it would seem to be getting to the point where individual 1080p content can be sent realtime to your very set. If you could just allow for a trivial amount of data to be sent back (user input), you've basically reached a point where a game can be transmitted realtime from a server and all you have to have on your side is a TV and a controller.

Right now, consoles are VERY EXPENSIVE to make and everybody that wants to play a game has to buy one. For the PS2, that's approximately ~$16.2 Billion that gamers spent(sales of ~90M @ average cost of $180). If you add up the other systems, that's probably closer to ~$25-30 Billion dollars by the time this generation is over. It seems stupid to be having hundreds of millions of people buy limited technology, when if the CPU capability was centralized, the technology would be almost limitless.

Imagine that Sony and Microsoft could simply keep upgrading massive server farms located throughout the world. Certainly it couldn't cost more than that.

Implications
------------------------
1) Nobody has to buy a console. You just buy access (like Cable TV, Cell phone plans, or Xbox Live) to play the games. Publishers pay the "network" to provide the servers and the access.

2) Nobody has to buy games. They're ALL stored on the server ALL the time. Certainly some games might charge a premium, but the monthly plans should take care of most of that.

3) Your system NEVER gets outdated. The servers are allowed to be upgraded whenever techonology allows.

4) There's not cheating. You don't have access to the code or the software at all. All you do is send user input over the network and the images are sent back to you.

5) There's no LAG. Everybody is on the same server (or connected servers), so their network connection can't slow your game down. Certainly their connection itself could lag, but it would only mean their image suffers, not your game.

6) Publishers could set up "stations" and become like Network TV. You subscribe to the "EA" network to get access to their content. Smaller publishers are like syndicated shows and have to be "picked" up by a given station.

Requirements / Obstacles
--------------------
1) Incredibly fast bandwidth. You have to allow for millions of people to have their own 1080p signal to be sent over the network. Will such bandwidth EVER be available???? And what if resolutions need to go higher? bandwidth costs just went up.

2) A new style of TV that can accept this input.

Just a line of reasoning I've thought about recently for some crazy reason, that I haven't been able to get out of my head.

BTW, it's also the reason why I think the concept of computers will be obsolete in the not too distant future. I know the whole Thin Client concept hasn't really taken hold yet, but it seems so obvious.

 

[Jive Turkey]

Interesting ideas there. Only one I'm not terribly keen about is:

1) Nobody has to buy a console. You just buy access (like Cable TV, Cell phone plans, or Xbox Live) to play the games. Publishers pay the "network" to provide the servers and the access.

I like buying games and having a physical copy of it without requiring a subscription. A big problem with MMOs for me too. The fact that not only must you play online but need to pay to play a game you already purchased isn't fun.

 

[WrathOfOtaibah]

1) Not everyone is going to have broadband
2) This will be costly. Gamers will get penalized for it
3) Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo will never agree to become a consortium. Therefore, each one would have to offer their own devices, completely defeating the whole premise of your idea.

 

[bitwise]

god that would suck when your cable goes out.

 

[MoxManiac]

Retailers will never tolerate such a system.

 

[Die Squirrel Die]

Wait are you saying that the actually technology running the game wouldn't be on the playerside but the serverside? That wouldn't work at all.

 

[..pakbeka..]

I think retailers would become irrelevant, not consoles

 

[Tarazet]

This makes me think of the Sega Channel.

 

[Ponn]

Couple more generations and everything will be handhelds, no more consoles period.

 

[terrene]

Sorry, but consoles are becoming more, not less relevant. Gaming has left the arcades and moved into the home for good.

If anything, you should be asking: when will PCs become irrelevant? Consoles sure seem to be picking up features fast.

 

[Odysseus]

3) Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo will never agree to become a consortium. Therefore, each one would have to offer their own devices, completely defeating the whole premise of your idea.

Nintendo wouldn't, don't know about Sony, but Microsoft would do it tomorrow. Just go a google search for interviews with J. Allard where he talks about the future... he's on record as saying he sees the hardware industry being like DVDs; you can buy a DVD player from 50 different manufacturers and they all spin the same disc. He doesn't think games should be any different.

 

[Mr_Furious]

bad idea(s)

 

[Die Squirrel Die]

Couple more generations and everything will be handhelds, no more consoles period.

What I think he's trying to say is that people won't buy any hardware at all. But just plug their TV into a connection that will connect to a huge super console that runs the game and sends the data back to the players TV. Any controller inputs are sent back to superserver, which then takes them into account and relays their effect on the gameplay back to the players TV.

Which is frankly one of the dumbest, most unworkable things I've ever heard. It is just wrong on so many levels.

 

[kaching]

1) Nobody has to buy a console. You just buy access (like Cable TV, Cell phone plans, or Xbox Live) to play the games. Publishers pay the "network" to provide the servers and the access.

2) Nobody has to buy games. They're ALL stored on the server ALL the time. Certainly some games might charge a premium, but the monthly plans should take care of most of that.

If the main reason for tossing around this possible approach is to save the consumer a buck, I doubt that a subscription-based service will accomplish that for most people. Fees would likely be monthly and if the scale of the service is on the order of what Cable/Satellite TV offers now, I would expect the fees to be in a similar range - total those fees over the lifespan of the average console and would it really be much different than paying the cost of console hardware plus a library of games? In fact, many may end up paying more just to maintain service availability over the course of a few years because they may only buy a small library of games under the current clientside model.

 

[DDayton]

See, a system like this would be WORSE for the companies... right now, the consumer (at the very least) subsidizes the cost of the gaming hardware. If all the gaming hardware is on the company's side, they pay the full brunt of the costs. Why would they want to do that?

 

[rastex]

Imagine that Sony and Microsoft could simply keep upgrading massive server farms located throughout the world.

I think this is the fundamental flaw in your reasoning, because the way computers/consoles are setup, this is exactly what they are. What is a "server"? What's a "client"? Essentially Sony and MS have MILLIONS of computers that the consumer pays for that they can use their processing power. So to have equivalent processing power Sony and MS would have to spend ridiculous amounts of money themselves, of course you could say that they're essentially doing this by subsidizing the hardware, but over time they do start making a profit on the H/W.

I'd say the real bottleneck isn't the bandwidth, but instead the pure processing power. There's a VERY large difference between pre-recorded content and interactive content simply by for interactive content every person's perspective is unique and thus will require it's own rendering process (in the computing form).

 

[Hitokage]

*tries his best to come up with a reply that's not overtly insulting...*

Look, there's still going to be transmission of data between your house and the central server, and that takes TIME. While you eliminate latency between clients, you're just giving everyone latency between themselves and their input and video screen. There's no fucking point. At least with a local system you can compensate with path prediction and other things while your end waits for information.

 

[rastex]

Look, there's still going to be transmission of data between your house and the central server, and that takes TIME. While you eliminate latency between clients, you're just giving everyone latency between themselves and their input and video screen. There's no fucking point. At least with a local system you can compensate with path prediction and other things while your end waits for information.

Well this isn't that big of an issue because TV is 29.97 and so I think the premise of this technology in that it's similar to TV would be that it's 30FPS or maybe even 60FPS (it'd be 30 though). I mean with new networking technologies, a dedicated backbone network, and parallelizing the processing of data with the transmission of data (a simple loop probably won't work anymore) the issue of latency will be minimized severely.

 

[byproduct]

Even if such a system were possible (and one day maybe it will be who knows what advances and discoveries will be made) I am hoping and praying for a massive global backlash against subscription services so we can go back to actually owning something outright and paying for it *just once* again. Having subscriptions to multiple services is ****ed - you never get to a position where you can scale back your income and keep what you have.

 

[The Abominable Snowman]

If MS is successful, you will see PCs and consoles merge, and consoles will be capable of playing all games pretty much. hat's their goal. Either upgrade your PC to play all the latest games (PC and console) or get one of those newfangled uniconsoles.

Handhelds won't be converging though, but that sector will explode as they pick up new features and cheaper prices, and begin to step on the feet of other portable entertainment devices like portable DVD players and MP3 players and so forth. In the end, the ultimate portable gaming device will be the cell phone, I am betting you. Powerful Cell phones with decent control, hard drives and NICE screens and form factor are already on the way, if not here already in Europe (Or Japan, both light years beyond the US in Cell Phones).

 

[Timbuktu]

Even if it happens in the US, by that time there will be demand from markets like China and India for actual hardware. And lets say that the technology is all there to make it work, I still don't think it would work politically, no one would want to yield so much power to the cooperations, or those who control the massive servers. PCs and consoles won't disappear. Why on earth would we want all the processing power in the world in one place? Governments would never allow that, I don't think, unless they're the ones who controls the massive servers, and who would want that to happen?

 

[sonycowboy]

I think this is the fundamental flaw in your reasoning, because the way computers/consoles are setup, this is exactly what they are. What is a "server"? What's a "client"? Essentially Sony and MS have MILLIONS of computers that the consumer pays for that they can use their processing power. So to have equivalent processing power Sony and MS would have to spend ridiculous amounts of money themselves, of course you could say that they're essentially doing this by subsidizing the hardware, but over time they do start making a profit on the H/W.

I'd say the real bottleneck isn't the bandwidth, but instead the pure processing power. There's a VERY large difference between pre-recorded content and interactive content simply by for interactive content every person's perspective is unique and thus will require it's own rendering process (in the computing form).

But at any given time how many of those hundred million plus consoles are actually on? 1 million , 5 million?

The servers would NEVER be off and could always run at 100% of computing capacity. And if 300,000 people are running the EXACT same code, don't you think a computer could be more efficient that simply treating them all as independant processes?

 

[Nerevar]

that is insane. Even well-designed web apps do a lot of processing on the client side. There's much more computer potential in increases in distributed computing than in getting rid of consoles entirely. This isn't happening - period.

 

[The Faceless Master]

the main obstacle is the speed of light... not fast enough to transfer data even if you have a big enough pipe... speed that bad boy up or find something that's faster and usable for data transfer and maybe it can happen...

 

[Die Squirrel Die]

But at any given time how many of those hundred million plus consoles are actually on? 1 million , 5 million?

The servers would NEVER be off and could always run at 100% of computing capacity. And if 300,000 people are running the EXACT same code, don't you think a computer could be more efficient that simply treating them all as independant processes?

But 300,000 people wouldn't be running the EXACT same code. There'd be similarities yes but not the EXACT same code, assuming they all wanted to play the same game at the same time. Things would change depending on what each individual was doing. So even if everyone started at the same point, very quickly there'd be a divergence as some people raced ahead while some take their time exploring, some people die and have to go back to the checkpoint and start again. So you'd still have to have individual hardware setups for every person.

As people have said it would make no sense for the console manufacturers because they would have to receive very high subscription costs to cover the cost of running your console for you, as well as the cost of the game development, network upkeep etc.

Face it, it was a dumb idea, the consequences of which you have not properly considered.

NEXT.

 

[KingJ2002]

my guess is that after this upcoming generation (or the generation after that) we will see console technology be licensed to manufacturers like samsung, toshiba, etc... and nintendo will be like the "apple" of the gaming industry.

After that... maybe we will be able to play games streaming from a service provider... of course monthly payments will come into play.

 

[Shogmaster]

Just a little futuristic talk here. I wonder how long until this happens? And it will happen (in some fashion). And we all know capiltalism rules all, so how could capitalism shape how this plays out? The biggest factor, IMO, is how long it will take for sufficient bandwidth to be available to support this concept. Probably some time in the 201x timeframe I'd think. 10-12 years?

Premise
--------------------------
We're getting to a point where we can receive HD quality broadcasts over the air (or through wiring). 1080p content streamed into our homes (soon). As bandwidth gets faster and faster, it would seem to be getting to the point where individual 1080p content can be sent realtime to your very set. If you could just allow for a trivial amount of data to be sent back (user input), you've basically reached a point where a game can be transmitted realtime from a server and all you have to have on your side is a TV and a controller.

Right now, consoles are VERY EXPENSIVE to make and everybody that wants to play a game has to buy one. For the PS2, that's approximately ~$16.2 Billion that gamers spent(sales of ~90M @ average cost of $180). If you add up the other systems, that's probably closer to ~$25-30 Billion dollars by the time this generation is over. It seems stupid to be having hundreds of millions of people buy limited technology, when if the CPU capability was centralized, the technology would be almost limitless.

Imagine that Sony and Microsoft could simply keep upgrading massive server farms located throughout the world. Certainly it couldn't cost more than that.

Implications
------------------------
1) Nobody has to buy a console. You just buy access (like Cable TV, Cell phone plans, or Xbox Live) to play the games. Publishers pay the "network" to provide the servers and the access.

2) Nobody has to buy games. They're ALL stored on the server ALL the time. Certainly some games might charge a premium, but the monthly plans should take care of most of that.

3) Your system NEVER gets outdated. The servers are allowed to be upgraded whenever techonology allows.

4) There's not cheating. You don't have access to the code or the software at all. All you do is send user input over the network and the images are sent back to you.

5) There's no LAG. Everybody is on the same server (or connected servers), so their network connection can't slow your game down. Certainly their connection itself could lag, but it would only mean their image suffers, not your game.

6) Publishers could set up "stations" and become like Network TV. You subscribe to the "EA" network to get access to their content. Smaller publishers are like syndicated shows and have to be "picked" up by a given station.

Requirements / Obstacles
--------------------
1) Incredibly fast bandwidth. You have to allow for millions of people to have their own 1080p signal to be sent over the network. Will such bandwidth EVER be available???? And what if resolutions need to go higher? bandwidth costs just went up.

2) A new style of TV that can accept this input.

Just a line of reasoning I've thought about recently for some crazy reason, that I haven't been able to get out of my head.

BTW, it's also the reason why I think the concept of computers will be obsolete in the not too distant future. I know the whole Thin Client concept hasn't really taken hold yet, but it seems so obvious.

Larry Ellison called. He wants his dilusional personal obsession back.

 

[LakeEarth]

I think these aren't just good ideas, but eventualities in about 40-50 years when fibre optic cable has been spread out well around the world (I hope at least). There are some details to be worked out (I don't like the subscription idea), but I can totally see something like this happening, or at least being 'attempted', but not until we're old farts that can't even hold the controllers anymore.

Or maybe my brain is re-enacting what other brains went through when people imagined flying cars.

 

[aaaaa0]

Larry Ellison called. He wants his dilusional personal obsession back.

WELCOME TO TEH FUTURD!!!!!11!!

More seriously, even Carmack suggested maybe some sort of dumb-terminal centralized processing type of thing might be possible in the distant future, but I don't think it will happen any time soon. There are just a lot of problems with latency and bandwidth that will be hard to overcome.

Plus I like having my own CPU, thank you very much.

 

[Tellaerin]

I think these aren't just good ideas, but eventualities in about 40-50 years when fibre optic cable has been spread out well around the world (I hope at least). There are some details to be worked out (I don't like the subscription idea), but I can totally see something like this happening, or at least being 'attempted', but not until we're old farts that can't even hold the controllers anymore.

Heh, I actually see the opposite happening. I imagine computing networks becoming increasingly decentralized as fiber optic networks become ubiquitous, with more and more 'smart' devices connecting to form a vast distributed computing network. Some of the early talk about Cell seemed to imply a future like that... the possibilities seem interesting.

 

[Shogmaster]

Plus I like having my own CPU, thank you very much.

Abso-fucking-lutely! *Hi fives aaaaa0*

 

[LakeEarth]

Heh, I actually see the opposite happening. I imagine computing networks becoming increasingly decentralized as fiber optic networks become ubiquitous, with more and more 'smart' devices connecting to form a vast distributed computing network. Some of the early talk about Cell seemed to imply a future like that... the possibilities seem interesting.

Hey... yeah that makes sense. Well yeah what I said kinda doesn't make sense now that I think of it. My knowledge of communications amass to some crappy "intro to the internet" course I took for an easy A. :lol

 

[MrSingh]

Captain Lightspeed approves of this highly wonderful idea.

Captain Lightspeed love you very long time when you break the speed of light on a regular basis.

 

[The Faceless Master]

Captain Lightspeed approves of this highly wonderful idea.

Captain Lightspeed love you very long time when you break the speed of light on a regular basis.

thank god i'm not the only one that realizes the #1 obstacle

edit: oops, did i say god, i meant darwin...

 

[ChennehCis]

Not only are there bandwidth issues as mentioned by most people, but most consumers in my opinion really prefer something tangible like a DVD over a streamed copy. (Especially collectors, seeing as if this were somehow implemented, there would be nothing to physically collect as the server has it all the time)