streaming games

[Sephiroth]

like streaming audio i read that soon there will be streaming games. You will sadly need a high speed connection and pay o monthly fee. U would be able play the full version online and the games is never truely on your hard drive. i find this interest because how would they do this with big games. single player i think may be cut off and it may be multiplayer onjly. thats all i read of the subject. has anyone else heard of this

[Gerbil]

There's a couple of ways of doing this I can think of:

1) Download everything, then off you go
2) Download everything, but prioritise so you can start playing while it's still loading
3) The server 'plays' the game and simply sends you the screen images, and you just send them your input.

Thoughts on the above:

1) Too crap - far too big and people would get pissy waiting ages to download a game each time they want to play it
2) Very tricky to do right, especially with big games
3) Dunno if they can chug the data quick enough and high quality enough for people to put up with this. Also you'd need mega powerful comps to run it on at their end.

I'm sure I've missed out stuff.
But this is all based on people not wanting to write small file size games, and people not prepared to play online games that are lower quality than current commercial games (well, certainly not pay for the privelage!).

For the time being, I reckon it's just another 'good' idea someone has had. They've connected the fact people like playing online games, and bandwidth hopefully going up everywhere soonish. Other than that it'll be complete bollocks for at least another 10 years or so. Don't hold your breath.

[Liam]

Maybe, but it would be a while before they really catch on. Wouldn't you need a really fast comp for something like that, anyway?

[Sephiroth]

in the article it did not say how it worked. I would not expect this to be out for another 2 years. I would also expect the need for a extreamly powerful PC. This article is in the june issue of PCgamer mag.

[Liam]

in the article it did not say how it worked. I would not expect this to be out for another 2 years. I would also expect the need for a extreamly powerful PC. This article is in the june issue of PCgamer mag.

Ah, PC gamer. Buy them for the demo CD's.

[fraggle]

i imagine it would just be some kind of fancy enhanced "observer mode"

[Gerbil]

I stumbled across some more information yesterday.
The idea is that the server you connect to renders your screen and sends you the image.
Which means:

A) You need bigtime broadband
B) They need shit hot computers (and lots of 'em)
C) You don't need a fast computer.
D) Start up time is non-existant.

So far, C + D seems to make it a good idea...
And that's why you can't store the games, they are never on your computer, not even in ram.
But A will hold it up for ages. I have ADSL at home, and it gives me 60k a second. Ooh, I can have 1 frame per second low res rubbish jpeg. I'll really feel like I'm in the middle of the action!