Snippets: Wada predicts consoles’ demise, Cloud gaming touted, Comics on PSP

Here's a roundup of today's news found elsewhere on the internet:

Wada predicts all consoles will die (eurogamer) - Square Enix overlord Yoichi Wada won't be surprised when one morning he wakes up and consoles have disappeared forever, because he reckons that's what Microsoft and Sony have been planning all along.

"Let's say in ten years time what we traditionally call 'console games' simply won't exist. The exact timing at which it will go away is hard to determine, but somewhere around 2005 the console manufacturers' strategy shifted," Wada told Develop.

"In the past the platform was hardware, but that switched to the network. So a time will come when the hardware isn't even needed any more, because the true strength of the Xbox 360 is Xbox Live.
"Instead of relying on the hardware layer the network becomes the operating system," he added.

"That move away from clients to the network is something Microsoft has done - moving from clients to the server is something Sony has done. If we take a look at the PS3 we can see that it is like a home server in a sense - the Cell chip is well matched to the parallel processing we use on server-based games."

Cloud gaming is a "win for everyone" – Dyack (gamesindustry.biz) - Silicon Knights boss Denis Dyack has said that cloud gaming – services that offer online games to players without the need for specialist hardware in a home – could be the ideal business model for developers, publishers and consumers.

Speaking in an exclusive interview published today, Dyack said that the cloud could be the solution to all the major problems harming the growth of the games business today, such as piracy and used game sales, and at the same time attract new consumers previously intimidated by the complexity of choice in the market.

"In some ways it's the absolute elimination of any hardware as far as the consumer is concerned, because the hardware is the cloud," offered Dyack, a long-time advocate of a single standard format for games. "It helps on so many levels because it resolves the piracy issue, which is a massive problem today, and the used games issue, because you buy something and it's yours forever – it resides on the cloud. These are wins for the consumers and wins for the game developers."

Digital comics go live on PSP (gamesindustry.biz) - Sony's Digital comics service has gone live on the PSP in both the US and Europe [also in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa].
The service offers over 550 comics to download, from publishers such as Marvel, iVerse Media, IDW Publishing, Disney and 2000AD.
As well as a handful of free samples, prices range from GBP 1.19 / 99 cents and upwards, with content promised on a weekly basis. Users need to download the free Digital Comics Reader to access titles, available for all the PSP SKUs.

Midi wrote: Cloud gaming is a "win for everyone" – Dyack

Not exactly a win for hardware companies. And really, any move towards digital distribution is going to piss off brick and mortar retailers. I imagine if something like OnLive worked out, games would be bought directly over OnLive, like with any current digital distribution, completely cutting out Gamestop etc.

Also, obviously only a win for customers that have decent internet, AKA anywhere except Australasia.

It might work when everyone has 100mb/100mb connections and content is hosted locally (e.g. Auckland, Wellington etc) but until then latency and bandwidth are simply insurmountable barriers.

i don't think i understand the concept of cloud correctly...

correct me if i'm wrong, but once you "download" the games, you still need hardware to be able to process the output the data you have downloaded????

Where is the hardware going to be? on the Tv itself? on a special decoder? As games evolve it's going to require more powerful hardware... would this decoder be upgradable etc?

Sounds like a PC to me

would be interested to know what everybody elses thought on this however.

oh and NZ internet has to not be lame for it to work obviously
agreed with Exis re game retail shops, hardware vendor

My understanding is it will be similar to how citrix/TS works. Basically you have a dumb terminal which is connected up to a large screen of sorts - the information is simply presented to you and all the actual processing etc gets done at hosting centres

Given that this is where the industry is heading, the infrastructure behind it will of course be upgraded as well. It won't take as long as people think, but I suspect we will see a couple more generations of game consoles yet.

Lightning69 wrote: oh and NZ internet has to not be lame for it to work obviously

work for us you mean, it'd work fine in their main markets of Europe, Asia & the states.

sooby wrote: work for us you mean, it'd work fine in their main markets of Europe, Asia & the states.

Currently not reliably, even in the states (honestly, connectivity is not all that great there either). It would still depend on the quality of each end-users connection.

Quote: correct me if i'm wrong, but once you "download" the games, you still need hardware to be able to process the output the data you have downloaded???? Where is the hardware going to be? on the Tv itself? on a special decoder? As games evolve it's going to require more powerful hardware... would this decoder be upgradable etc?

All the computation is taking place on server side. All the client hardware needs to be able to do is A) send user input directly to the server, and B) display a video stream to the user. Basically if the hardware at the client end is capable of displaying video, it can be used for cloud gaming.

Wally Simmonds wrote: Given that this is where the industry is heading, the infrastructure behind it will of course be upgraded as well. It won't take as long as people think, but I suspect we will see a couple more generations of game consoles yet.

Agreed.

well i'm not sure how fast overseas Internet is...
can anyone give me some indication?

and what's the fastest "affordable" speed that can be obtained here in NZ?

hmm thanks for that
i still think it won't be smooth experience...

basically you are relying on Internet connection... which is massive spiderweb...

i still think we might need a "box" to assist with the processing, unless superludicrous speed can be achieved

cloud works fine for web-based software tho, e.g. salesforce

Lightning69 wrote: hmm thanks for that i still think it won't be smooth experience... basically you are relying on Internet connection... which is massive spiderweb... i still think we might need a "box" to assist with the processing, unless superludicrous speed can be achieved cloud works fine for web-based software tho, e.g. salesforce

I don't think there's really much benefit to be gained from spreading the processing, though. By having all the processing on the server side, all that needs to be sent across teh webs is streaming video. If the processing was shared (beyond just decrypting etc. of the received packets), then the server is going to need to send back some raw data, the client will need to interpret that data, do some processing of it's own, then render the graphics. Since the rendering will need to take place on the client machine, we're back to the current issue of the game only looking as good as the hardware that you have can make it look, which defeats the purpose of having any processing done on the server.

But you're always going to have the problem of transferring data comparatively large distances - my background is geosciences so I don't profess to understand the specifics but surely by having everything processed at the hosting center you're going to be introducing all sorts of input/output lags? graphics, network etc. This might be all good when I'm entering grades into Cecil or tapping away in Matlab but local hosting and processing of data is always gonna be preferable for the PC gamer, or any user requiring seamless, speedy interaction, at least for the next decade (it might be different for Universities etc who have massive pipes that connect right to the backbone but for home users a connection of that quality is years away).

Just for example, input lag is very common on LCD TVs and monitors (3-4 frames p/s) then ontop of that is USB polling rate you're suddenly already 5 frames p/s behind without anu actual data being transferred over the network. In games like MW2, CS:S etc when encounters only last 1-2 seconds these different lags all add up...

I'm highly skeptical about cloud computing being good for gaming. perhaps lame as crap games that you can play freely on facebook etc, but games for gamers aint going to happen.

The computation already needs to be carried out at each clients end. You'd really expect the server to be running some pretty slick hardware, making it capable of running the game at a level of performance at least equal to the high-end of most home PC capabilities. So in some cases (where users previously had shitty home PC's), they could actually be seeing improvements in overall performance.

Let's say for arguments sake though, that the cloud can process at exactly the same speed as your home PC. The only issue then, is network latency. That's something that will be improved over time. I think eventually this is the way gaming will go, but it's going to require some big improvements to network infrastructure. I really don't see it being viable worldwide for at least a decade.

It could be broadcast over HDTV, you just need to upload the data from your control devices (ie up/down letf etc etc shoot etc etc.. ) quite simple and could even work on 56k dial-up while the image is sent back in HDTV format (broadcast locally using a decoder and key). Yes its all very feasible that way but if they intend for the image to come back through the internet they are going to need either some EXTREME codex (better then divx ten fold) or a fast connection.

Another system of control, prepare yourself puppets.