Cloud Gaming Returns [Jan 04, 2018, 11:30 am ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
The Verge has details from French technologists the Blade Group on their
efforts at making streaming PC games from the cloud more viable. This has
arguably failed to live up to the hype that surrounded the initial introduction
of the idea of playing on a remote computer using a lower-powered device as a
front-end after several companies worked on ironing out latency issues. Blade's
take on this involves each user having a computer dedicated to their sessions,
and they are now expanding trials of the service to the U.S. starting in
California. This will not be cheap, as this ends up running between $420 and
$600 per year, and their preliminary hands-on experience with the beta does not
necessarily suggest this is worth it. Word is:
I was able to give Shadow a brief test in The Verge offices in New York City — two and a half thousand miles away from Blade’s California data center — on Blade’s dedicated box, a Mac, and an Android phone (with a Bluetooth controller). While the experience was occasionally jittery between our office Wi-Fi and the less than optimal test conditions, playing Rise of the Tomb Raider on an Android phone was still a pretty impressive experience. But we’ll have to wait to see how it handles under intended conditions before we make any final judgements.
Blade has only sold a few thousand devices in France, largely due to the speed at which it can scale up, since each user needs a dedicated machine in an at least somewhat local data center for the service to work well. The model may come under strain on the larger scale (in terms of both users and geography) that Blade is seeking in the United States.
Aside from the service’s very limited availability, there’s also the price. Giving users dedicated machines is a costly venture, and Blade subscriptions aren’t exactly cheap, running at $34.95/month for a one-year subscription, $39.95/month for three months, or $49.95/month without any long term commitments. Subscribers are looking at what basically amounts to renting a high-end gaming PC for between $420 to $600 per year, and that’s before you factor in the cost of games, which you’ll have to buy and install on your cloud machine just like you would on any other PC.
SpectralMeat wrote on Jan 5, 2018, 09:30:
That's the part I don't understand either. Who is the target audience for this?
The same target audience DRM was for - big business, they are trying to develop a system where the game is entirely locked down and streamed to you from servers. See EA's ceo during the conference call to Deutsche bank.
They are trying to never have software controlled by the gamer. Most people already have given up way too much control buying server locked games and windows 10 anyway. Basically they already have stolen the software we pay for by reprogramming it to obey the corporations and it will get worse.
Everyone is trying to undo the freedom for computer users for profits.
yes nvidia did this, yes it works amazing, no they were not able to monetize it super well, no no one will ever do it as well as nvidia
StingingVelvet wrote on Jan 4, 2018, 18:41:That's the part I don't understand either. Who is the target audience for this?
Even if the experience were damn near perfect I don't know who their audience would be. The costs are higher than maintaining a gaming PC. Isn't one of the first rules of business asking yourself who your product is for? Who is this for? Gamers who don't want to maintain a gaming PC already have consoles.
Steam: SpectralMeat
Even if the experience were damn near perfect I don't know who their audience would be. The costs are higher than maintaining a gaming PC. Isn't one of the first rules of business asking yourself who your product is for? Who is this for? Gamers who don't want to maintain a gaming PC already have consoles.
They thought they could do this at work and it was an abject failure. You would think that someone would get the message of what a bad idea this is.
Anyone here remember GameTap? It was a great service before it was sold, then sold again, then sold again and put out of business.
You had an excellent selection of retro games, old PC games, and even some new stuff mixed in.
I think I paid about 5$ a month and used it a lot. I know I could just download the old retro games but GameTap made it so much easier.
All the games I could play for one low monthly price. I signed up for the Origin "all you can eat" game service a couple months ago and it just hasn't done it for me. The older games are there so perhaps I need to take another look.
You had an excellent selection of retro games, old PC games, and even some new stuff mixed in.
I think I paid about 5$ a month and used it a lot. I know I could just download the old retro games but GameTap made it so much easier.
All the games I could play for one low monthly price. I signed up for the Origin "all you can eat" game service a couple months ago and it just hasn't done it for me. The older games are there so perhaps I need to take another look.
aka_STEVE wrote on Jan 4, 2018, 14:33:
...brought to you by Robertsspaceindustries virtual gaming consoles.
OH FFS DO NOT GIVE THE MAN IDEAS
That's just what we need.
Equity wrote on Jan 4, 2018, 14:01:
I was the Product Manger of just such a product. We were to be hosted in the head-ends of cable providers; literally as close as you could get without being in the home. The latency and quality was still not great and the economics simply didn't work out for anyone: us, the provider or the consumer.
Thank you for being honest about it.
SpectralMeat wrote on Jan 4, 2018, 10:42:
If it fails the first couple of times, just try it again.
I am sure it will be successful this time
Well eventually the infrastructure will be there to make it viable. Probably not yet though, except in a few urban markets.
My thought is that this will successfully first be implemented by someone like EA. It shuts down a lot of cheating, since the client doesn't reside locally.
And yeah, $50 per month is a deal breaker for most.
RIP RedEye9. We miss you.
...brought to you by Robertsspaceindustries virtual gaming consoles.
Because investing into and thus relying on technology is such a wise decision, right?
People can play a good card game themselves with no electricity.
People can play a good card game themselves with no electricity.
I was the Product Manger of just such a product. We were to be hosted in the head-ends of cable providers; literally as close as you could get without being in the home. The latency and quality was still not great and the economics simply didn't work out for anyone: us, the provider or the consumer.
You could finance a PC for that every 3 years and have direct connection. Seems too steep in cost, beyond the other stuff. And if the comeback were, but then you have to manage your own pc... Just get a console then and be done with it.
Cutter wrote on Jan 4, 2018, 12:49:
Sounds like a great plan! Especially AFTER NN has been killed in the US!
How much money are these clowns going to piss away on this? Streaming gaming is never going to happen - affordable and playable.
The only scenario I could see is in an environment with a municipal ISP and you offer it to the region that the ISP covers. That way it stays within one or two router hops of the client and is less likely to experience jitter and latency and dropped packets.
It's about as close to a dedicated virtual circuit as you could get, which is what you'd basically need in this scenario.
NKD wrote on Jan 4, 2018, 10:52:
You guys remember all the fucking shilling about OnLive when that was supposedly the next big thing? Those guys were everywhere.
Oh yes I remember the long in depth rants about latency from button presses and how simply displaying a frame on the monitor/TV was faster than rendering it and blah blah blah.
Fact of the matter is that the internet is a lossy transmission system. Period. These days you probably are better with more bandwidth generally available (the demos for OnLive used 60mbps fiber, and 60mbps is generally available to high speed markets), but that doesn't help jitter, latency, packet loss, and all the other unavoidable bits about the internet.
Sounds like a great plan! Especially AFTER NN has been killed in the US! How much money are these clowns going to piss away on this? Streaming gaming is never going to happen - affordable and playable.
For the costs you'd be better off buying a new PC instead.
For the costs you'd be better off buying a new PC instead.
nomoreshite wrote on Jan 4, 2018, 11:58:Yeah at this point it's pretty much coming directly out of a pointy hair boss from Dilbert world. They still think it's a great idea and will probably tell their engineers they dont know shit about business. I've been there.
fucking MBA's just keep bringing this shit back,
they wet themselves over the thought of having gamers paying monthly
fucking MBA's just keep bringing this shit back,
they wet themselves over the thought of having gamers paying monthly
they wet themselves over the thought of having gamers paying monthly
I messed around with Playstation Now which is the same shit so I could play Red Dead Redemption on PC. It too was pretty bad quality.
You guys remember all the fucking shilling about OnLive when that was supposedly the next big thing? Those guys were everywhere.
Do you have a single fact to back that up?
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