Gaikai running WoW, Mario Kart, Spore, more in Firefox – first video

I bet Nintendo are pleased he’s using Mario Kart 64 there. Especially seeing as it’s probably an emulated Mario Kart 64 and not somehow magically hooking up to a real N64.

Unbelievable stuff. I just can’t see this or OnLive being feasible at the moment for most people with connection speeds being as they are. In time, though.. Could this work in Linux? If so goodbye Windows.

It could work on a set-top box, never mind a computer. Theoretically if you can run a browser, you can do this.

Of course, broadband speed is the killer. I’m sure this is the future, though. Just not right now.

“I just can’t see this or OnLive being feasible at the moment for most people with connection speeds being as they are.”

What do you mean? TO me this is the perfect generation for this. Exclusives, fanboyism, being limited by hardware all that will not matter with software like this. WIth the economy like it is I rather pay a small amount for the device and subscription fee then paying 500$ for a device I barely use because of lack of games and hardware (Xbox 360 got the system because of Mass Effect and was lead to believe that it wasn’t going to PC, DOH!)

As has just been put to me by someone who knows about such things:

“Running in a window the way he does there essentially means SD quality and that is sustainable at 1mbps. I find it far more believable than OnLive.”

Surely something like Eve has to run at a very high resolution, though?

@Phoenixblight

The cynic in me is skeptical that’s all. I’m on a 7 mb connection and sometimes streaming standard definition video even has pauses.. However, I agree with the idea behind this, and OnLive, if it works (which at HD I really can’t see happening – for now). I agree with what you are saying. It would be amazing to cheaply access games (and apps such as Photoshop) in this way. And as you point out it would mean an end to fanboyism and the need to buy expensive hardware. I really do think, as well, that if they can get games and apps running in a browser on any platform at a decent quality, that’d be it for Windows. Seriously, why would anyone pay good money for an OS when they can use a free (and I would say in the case of Ubuntu better) OS and access the same programs?

@Blerk – Nah. I used to play it on a little Lenovo. MMOs are pretty much designed to run on lower end hardware. You can turn EVE right up, but on “spaz” settings it’ll run in little windows.

I see.

@Blerk

Sorry meant to also say – thanks for info

Anyway, amazing stuff.

Making software (like Windows, games or applications as Photoshop) and specific hardware (like PS3, x360, Wii or even high end PC’s) obsolete will not be appreciated by the companies that make money from them.

Certainly there is huge potential in such endeavors (as long as the available bandwidth is able to sustain it), but until the corporations that currently pull the strings reach higher levels of maturity and understanding (or find other means to feed themselves) I don’t see it taking off…

The implications of this go way beyond gaming and are potentially huge. Think of how much money schools, businesses, public sector organizations would save if they could access programs they need at a fraction of the cost on a set top box. Think of those in poorer countries who could benefit from this.. This, or services similar to it, could be truly revolutionary.

@JonFE

Not sure what you mean about the companies that pull the strings having control over this.. You think companies with other interests could stop this happening? I don’t think there’s much other companies could do about it, really.

Licensing agreements for desktop software would effectively completely scupper any attempt to provide access to them like this without some kind of (probably uber-expensive) deal between the providing company and the software manufacturer. That cost would then have to be passed on to the people actually wanting to use it.

So Dave Perry couldn’t just buy one copy of Photoshop and then allow any Gaikai user to access it, Adobe would kick his arse straight to court and sue him until he was dead. He’d have to sort out a licensing deal based on the number of people who were likely to access Photoshop (or perhaps all Adobe software, if they were feeling nice) in this manner. Given that Mr Perry probably wouldn’t want to pay for that out of the goodness of his heart, the cost ultimately gets passed on to the end users.

It’s not a fantastic software free-for-all-fuck-you-big-business. The service will not only succeed or fail based on the tech, but also on the number of companies who will actually license their products in this way and the ultimate cost to the end user for accessing them. I can’t imagine for a minute it’d be a ‘one small monthly payment, get everything’ deal.

@Blerk

I understand what you’re saying but there would still be huge savings on the hardware costs in the first place. Software such as Photoshop I would imagine could become significantly cheaper. It would eliminate piracy of the product, and the fact that it would be available to many more people because of reduced hardware costs would mean Adobe could make the same amount of money by selling the same product more cheaply but to more customers. There is also an opportunity for rival software to come out and offer that if they don’t.

@Armitage:
What I’m saying is that the current market model guaranties profit to a lot of companies.

Hardware-wise you’ve got companies who built components like Intel, nVidia or AMD/ATi, high-end PC’s like Dell or Alienware who depend on big game requirements to convince users to upgrade and, of course, console makers like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft who want control over our living-room entertainment.

Software-wise, apart from Microsoft who isn’t going to be happy losing even more Windows business to Linux, I’m sure Adobe (going by the article’s example) won’t be happy having anyone accessing Photoshop through a browser without being reasonably compensated, nor would publishers like EA, Activision, Ubisoft etc. be satisfied getting a smaller profit on their games than they currently do.

The above (along with internet infrastructure that needs to be much better and more widely-available) make me skeptical. Too much profit is in danger to be lost by too many companies, for them to sit around doing nothing. That’s all.

The fact that people could “try out” the software or just use it for a limited time would also present an opportunity for Adobe for example if they price it accordingly.

I’m not really seeing the benefits to the everyday user of utilising a service such as this for applications. Most apps require fairly lightweight computers anyway, and there are free or nearly-free equivalents of pretty much everything if you don’t want to shell out hundreds of dollars up front.

As an entertainment hub it’s a lot more promising. Not only do you not need to keep upgrading your hardware to play the latest stuff, you can access your games from anywhere and from a whole host of different devices. That’s a very liberating thought – sort of like Steam but without the need for a gaming PC.

@JonFE
@Blerk

Ah maybe you’re both right and this won’t have as huge an impact as I’m imagining. Maybe getting a bit carried away here. I really don’t know what I’m talking about anyway to be honest . Time will tell.

@Blerk

Although having said that, that’s the big advantage, being able to pay a subscription rather than a lot of money in one go. Maybe even students would legitimately pay for Photoshop? Nah.. I am getting carried away now..

It will indeed!

Armitage,

This is not about being right. If it does take off, it can certainly have a huge impact on our entertainment.

However, in order for it to actually work, it needs content (games, applications etc). Those who make this content would want to capitalize on their investment, make some profit off it, similar to the current market model. Until such a pricing model is introduced, established and agreed upon, it’s all just promises and potential.

EDIT: In other words, apart from benefiting the end-user (which it does, since he will pay less money for the same, or even more, amount of entertainment) the model must also cater for the companies as well, because if the companies stand to lose their profit because of it, they won’t support it. Not to mention that, if it does take off and the companies do lose profit, they will cut costs by reducing their staff, producing less games etc.

@JonFE

Hardware companies such as Intel/AMD might make much better, more expensive equipment at much lower volumes, for sale not to the end user but to the server farms of the various companies that are providing the games.. Lower sales but at much higher costs.. Maybe? Not sure.. I suppose Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo would become content providers, coming up with the games themselves.. I don’t know, just typing whatever comes into my head now.

Whatever, it’s certainly very exciting technology with potentially many important consequences.. Will be interesting to see how it goes.

The implications of this go way beyond gaming and are potentially huge. Think of how much money schools, businesses, public sector organizations would save if they could access programs they need at a fraction of the cost on a set top box.

Thin client computing for business apps has been around for donkey’s years, most of the time you would really be better off having a cheap and cheerful fat client PC on someone’s desk as it never works as well remotely. Not too bad for RAS use but as someone who administers stuff like this I wish I didn’t.

/tries spending up Citrix farm
/curses the thing

@Whizzo

Hehe OK.. Unlucky for you as well then it seems.. But do you think this sort of thing might become more usable/hassle-free/widely-used as broadband speeds increase and better services are developed?

I doubt it’s really usable until there’s a lot better bandwidth and lower latency as well, basically I can’t see it working very well unless there’s fibre to the home and even then I’m sceptical it would be worthwhile.

Why? I mean, if the internet connections are fast enough, for everyone, for the sake of argument, why even then would you be skeptical about it even being worthwhile?

Because you’d be dependent on an outside provider every time you wanted to play a game, if your internet goes down for any reason you’re left with nothing.

I just don’t see the point, especially when PC hardware is getting cheaper all the time.

Well, older PC hardware gets cheaper as it ages, new PC hardware is still expensive.. But could you see the point if you didn’t have nearly enough money for any sort of modern PC, or a games console? If there was something considerably cheaper available that could access the same programs?

What I do know is…

When XBL went down for 24 hours the other week, at least I could still play SP games on my 360.

It was during the GDC but SOny had mentioned that they are investing in their own Cloud Based Device. Thats one huge company jumping onto the ship.

The creator of ONlive said the device which would be the size of a psp(or smaller) would cost 50$ and then a subscription he didn’t mention the cost of that which would probably have to deal with licensing and all that.

Now look at the market with our video game systems majority of them have the same games except a few exclusives they are the same as far as the catalog the hardware is vastly different. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft would just have to be content based or have to add more services to play against each other with this software. All that X is better then Y because Z will be very small differences. I see this Cloud software as nothing short of a revolution, now its just watching waiting to see what will happen.

@G1GAHURTZ

Yeah that’s XBL though

PSN doesn’t go down.. At least not it’s entirety.. If the PSN is down you can’t access the store, but you can still play online, see friends lists, use PS Home and so on.. It depends how the service is set up.

There are things they can do for example the device could have a HD and be treated like my Zune, I pay 15$ a month to download infinite songs a month and if I don’t pay for that month none of the songs will play on my zune. SO things like Maintenance for these cloud based companies will not stop us gamers from gaming entirely.

But your device is a dumb terminal. Even if you could download the games, you couldn’t play them – the game is played on a remote server and the video/sound streamed to you.

Showing something more advanced than what could run on a shoebox with a Pentium in it would make the hardware upgrade costs argument more effective.

And as I say as someone who’s cable connection is currently down, I can still play everything on my PC while Virgin Media get around to sort out the problem. Including Steam titles as I’ve switched it to offline mode!

Yes but each game/app would be only affected by its own server farm, if one was down it doesn’t mean they all are..

@Whizzo

But as the tech at the server farms would be increased continually, the more advanced stuff may actually be found on the shoebox, especially as PC developers can only really cater for the market that’s out there, not just the minority that have the newest and most expensive tech..

Yeah, that’s true Armitage (comment 31).

I dunno, it’ll be interesting to see how this all unravels…

This stuff looks much more realistic than the OnLive stuff, but I wonder how much of that is a concious decision because of the backlash that OnLive got from the majority.

The NFS framerate seemed pretty bad, but not bad enough to stop you playing it.

What I really found a bit cheap though, and ‘showman-like’ was the way that they showed a COD4 thumbnail, but didn’t show it being played…

If your net connection goes down it makes no difference whether you game from 1 server or 1000 you can’t play anything while it’s out.

As long as it can go full screen with no slowdown and run original resolution, I think it’s awesome!

Blimey that NFS footage is a car crash in more ways than the literal.

@Whizzo

Get a better connection?

My Connection has only gone done once and it was during a Thunderstorm and that was 7 months ago.

Sony is getting ready for the digital age and the other companies are showing direction of it. This may just be the small tremor that causes a Tsunami….

@Whizzo

Well yep that’s true, and that’s the disadvantage. But really though, my net connection has been down maybe a couple of times in the last 5 years, for only a few hours.. Personally I think the advantages would be well worth it, providing it all can work as advertised, and that broadband speeds are up to it..

Anyway, it all seems very exciting tech, I have to be off now, thanks all for your opinions and information!

I’m pretty happy with my cable connection maybe 5 or so outages in the past 7 years isn’t too bad, unlike Dave’s “driving” in NFS!

So I’m assuming what this does is just stream the video output into your browser, the game is running on their server. Much like playing monsters on my psp from the ps3?
It’s a great idea in theory and probably how most future computers and mobile devices will work.

I just asked on David Perry’s site whether the service would be accessible on the PS3 browser. He responded!

“YES, it’s PERFECT for low memory or non-3D environments as we are just streaming video. So yes, if Sony wanted, we could make this happen. I’ve not had the time to get into that discussion with them yet.”

Possible future megaton right there then. Everything from Crysis to World of Warcraft to Photoshop and all that’s in between on PS3? Good stuff!

Yeah I’m sure we’ll be able to play Mario Kart through our PS3. Yup, that will definitely happen.

Hehe you never know. Actually I’ve already played Mario Kart on the PS3, on a SNES emulator on Linux. But I don’t think that counts

Alright that was a very bad example, thinking about it! Changed “Mario Kart” in my post to “World of Warcraft”.

Would Sony want to support this though? They wouldn’t be making money off those games, but it would be a huge selling point for them.

I have a 100Mb connection at college. 54Mb at home.