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Just saw this video demo on massively, I am so surprised it worked so well, doesnt seems to be any lag either, the funny thing is as the guy said, there is privacy involved as no code is transfer :)
 
ooooo lag dependent this could be another major source of annoyance for company/educational firewalls :)
 
My first reaction was wow.
My second reaction was, Mario Kart what? Does Nintendo know they are using an emulator?
My last reaction was, how do they bill for this, if you pay £30/month for usage, how does that pay the game publisher? Surely they prefer £30 per game, rather than 50p/month. That especially goes for Photoshop, surely they can't charge usage fees equivalent to £500-600?
 
It stands a better chance of working than the ones that stream it from your home PC, atleast now download speed will be the bottleneck instead of their upload on the host pc.
 
That is pretty damn impressive... can't wait for the day I don't have to shell out for £400 graphics cards every other year. Although saying that, I imagine whilst publishers and developers are creaming themselves over this, graphics card companies are going to have them shot.

My last reaction was, how do they bill for this, if you pay £30/month for usage, how does that pay the game publisher? Surely they prefer £30 per game, rather than 50p/month. That especially goes for Photoshop, surely they can't charge usage fees equivalent to £500-600?

I imagine it would work along the lines of Steam does now, minus the downloading part. Probably then with the service itself having a separate subscription.

edit--

Infact, thinking about this, should it ever take off it would probably be the greatest thing to ever happen for gaming... first of all, consoles wouldn't need to exist, all you need so a computer with a web browser to play anything, developers will only ever need to develop for handful of systems these providers are using and secondly developers would no longer have to worry about scalability in their games or having to make their target graphic level for a mid-range PC of yesteryear ... aslong as the providers have the latest cutting edge hardware that is all the games would ever need to be developed for... I am starting to think maybe freezing myself Cartmen style to wait until this is in full swing is a good idea :o
 
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It'll still have to be developed on a multitude of devices as, no doubt, there would be competitors in this field rather than just one.

People would still want to play it on there PC as well.

What about offline? The single players on there (such as Spore / Mariokart / etc) all have offline functionality.

Can this be played in full screen resolutions?

It's a start. But leaves a lot of things unanswered.



M.
 
Its impressive, but....

Modding games will be out the window, which to me modding is one of the best things about PC gaming, tweaking stuff, making new models, textures, maps etc. Obviously graphics/performance tweaks won't be needed if it's streaming from a powerful server but the rest, how will they accomodate that? I would guess if this takes off then Devs will close out modding altogether, so we are stuck with the base game.
 
OnLive looks better than this, I mean I don't know about all of features Gaikai has, but after watching that vid OnLive just seems to be much more robust.

Anyway, the same old concerns apply to this, mainly input lag. Judging by the Mario Kart and whatever that other racing game was, it doesn't look like he can react in time, regardless of his excuses. 800 miles on a non fibre connection just seem too much for racing games.

Its impressive, but....

Modding games will be out the window, which to me modding is one of the best things about PC gaming, tweaking stuff, making new models, textures, maps etc. Obviously graphics/performance tweaks won't be needed if it's streaming from a powerful server but the rest, how will they accomodate that? I would guess if this takes off then Devs will close out modding altogether, so we are stuck with the base game.
We had this in the OnLive thread, it's important to remember this does not replace PC gaming, it's a suplement.

It'll still have to be developed on a multitude of devices as, no doubt, there would be competitors in this field rather than just one.

People would still want to play it on there PC as well.

What about offline? The single players on there (such as Spore / Mariokart / etc) all have offline functionality.
It is just a streaming video, it can be used on virtually anything that can stream video.

He played a number of offline games in that vid, it doesn't matter if you play on or off.
 
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Excellent, looks like it works well. This would be IDEAL in Korea or japan where the average net speed is something like 14meg and you can get much higher. We just need to catch up =[ But saying that, I'll never stop tinkering with my PC, its half the fun running a gaming system (or half the pain?)
 
It is just a streaming video, it can be used on virtually anything that can stream video.

He played a number of offline games in that vid, it doesn't matter if you play on or off.

Not if you're offline it can't be played. Still needs a net connection of some kind. Of course through Virgin TV, etc. maybe possible.



M.
 
Not if you're offline it can't be played. Still needs a net connection of some kind. Of course through Virgin TV, etc. maybe possible.



M.
Oh well yes, you need a connection. You said those games have offline functionality, that's why I picked up on it.

Anyway, if you feel GaiKai has a lot of questions unanswered, read up on OnLive. It's the same kind of service and has been under the microscope for a while now.
 
We had this in the OnLive thread, it's important to remember this does not replace PC gaming, it's a suplement.

But nobody will pay twice for the same game, one to play at home and one for browser play.
Unless you can input your licence key from the retail copy into this service, it will be quite expensive for "some fun at lunch time".

Plus the infrastructure would have to be huge. If 200 people logged on, the company would need 200 seperate high spec PCs to allow everyone in. If 500 people decide to come on, they need 500 PCs. If this take off worldwide, they would need an infrastructure of say 50,000 high spec PCs, so initial outlay would be $50 million just for the PCs :eek:
Otherwise if they limit number of PCs available, people will get wuite annoyed having payed, not being able to play.

This is why the simple browser games make more sense, because each server can run multiple users simultaneously.
 
But nobody will pay twice for the same game, one to play at home and one for browser play.
Unless you can input your licence key from the retail copy into this service, it will be quite expensive for "some fun at lunch time".

Plus the infrastructure would have to be huge. If 200 people logged on, the company would need 200 separate high spec PCs to allow everyone in. If 500 people decide to come on, they need 500 PCs. If this take off worldwide, they would need an infrastructure of say 50,000 high spec PCs, so initial outlay would be $50 million just for the PCs :eek:
Otherwise if they limit number of PCs available, people will get wuite annoyed having payed, not being able to play.

This is why the simple browser games make more sense, because each server can run multiple users simultaneously.
A valid point, and one of the other concerns that makes this whole venture seem dangerous. However, it's not as cut and dry as 'one PC to a user' (I'm talking about OnLive here). Depending on what game the box is dedicated to, it can handle multiple users at the same time. While it's still a significant investment, OnLive seem confident they can handle demand. "Cut off" points may be inevitable though (Lyon speculates).

Paying for a game twice will ruin this whole thing for me personally though, but I do like the idea that all my mac friends may be able to play with me.
 
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