Gaming via remote control to make gaming PCs pointless?

Brian Ambrozy 25 Mar, 2009 at 3:28pm ET Article published in Gaming

Even grandma can use it

Perhaps you’ve heard of an old technology called VNC, or Remote Desktop, or PC Anywhere. These are all remote control technologies that have been around for years; you sit at a keyboard and mouse somewhere, and when you move the mouse or type, the signals are sent over a network to a computer elsewhere. The computer, in turn, sends constant screenshots of itself back to you, so it is as if you are sitting at that computer even though you’re in a room in another part of the building, or the world.

The problem with VNC has always been lag. It takes time for your computer to say “I moved the mouse up one pixel”, send that across various network links to the other machine, for the other machine to process it, and then send back an entire re-draw of the screen with the mouse cursor now moved one pixel up. Through compression technologies and other advances in processing and network speed, the process has been made pretty seamless over the years, but there is still a slight feeling of “oddness”— you can still tell you’re not sitting at that actual computer. Over an internal network link (you’re in the same building) it is really good, but over the internet, performance is still sketchy, even in 2009.

Therefore it is with skepticism that we read the news all over the web today about a new company called OnLive who is making big claims about being able to provide this service for PC gaming. Yes, they fully intend to deliver remote control gaming to end users for the fraction of a cost of buying a decent gaming PC and software to go with it. You get a controller, a little box to hook up to a display and a network, and then you pay to play any of the top games that are out. Apparently OnLive has the hardware to push these games in real time over an internet link.

There are limits; high speed remote gaming can only occur over exceptionally low-latency links. They are rolling out datacenters in urban American markets and are saying that gamers “within 1000 miles” of those datacenters will be able to have the full OnLive experience. Tentative figures state that 480p gaming can only occur with 1.5mb connections and 720p gaming requires 5mb. Pricing and subscription model have not been revealed yet. Beta testing begins this summer.

Comments

25 Mar 2009 ~ 4:36pm BlackHawk *sneeze*Phantom*sneeze*

Sorry, allergic to BS.
25 Mar 2009 ~ 5:23pm Snarkasm Well, this can go one of two ways. Either we get our net neutrality and unlimited bandwidth back (along with massive bandwidth boosts) to make this viable, or we keep buying and installing our games as always. I personally have doubts that they can deliver me a 1680x1050 image with the effects and image quality to which I've grown accustomed.
25 Mar 2009 ~ 5:27pm chrisWhite I think the people most likely to buy into this are going to be the ones who would just go and buy a Xbox or a PS3. Maybe down the line we'll see this become real but I'm skeptical of it taking off right now.
26 Mar 2009 ~ 7:16am FelixDeSouze I can't personally see it working!! I mean, the amount of people (if the service is fully up and running) that will be connecting (slow downs in net speed) and also the amount of games that will be running on their servers will be immense!! Also as mentioned the quality will not be too good.

I don't think this will get very far as there are far too many factors that go against it.

I mean common, giants like Microsoft have server crashes the same day as a big game is released and that's only people connecting to the server and the server not actually running 10,000 copies of the game itself.
26 Mar 2009 ~ 9:43am Thrax AAA titles with the back-end hardware requirements of an MMO, and the bandwidth requirements of streaming HD? Er, right. Death by operating costs.
27 Mar 2009 ~ 3:39am Mochan I'll be happy when this nonsense dies out and we get back to playing out of our boxes.

This idea, which builds on the philosophy of Sun tycoon Scott McNealy, is doomed to failure. It's just too... stupid. I just don't think the technology is in place in households around America, much less the world, to make it work.

The concept has some nice marketing blurb going on but the reality is this service, if it gets initial hype and success, will soon succumb to a mob of angry subscribers throwing civil suit after civil suit.