Sony Purchases Game Streaming Service Gaikai

[The Catboy]

I really hate the idea of video game steaming. Mostly because I am not just a gamer, but I am a collector. I love owning and having my games.
As well it would really suck to be playing a game one day, then have it remove because of some stupid reason.

I seriously doubt gaming will switch over to game streaming in a while, maybe in like 10-20 years, but for now, the next step is digital distribution.

Plus, with soulx's post, it seems most likely they'll do this for demo streaming or even using cloud streaming for other purposes outside of gaming. Like OnLive gives you a streamable desktop to work with. Not sure how this would apply to Sony, but it's just an example as to how streaming can be used outside of gaming.

I hope that day never comes.
Also I thought demo streaming (or something similar) has already been released?

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I hope that day never comes.
Also I thought demo streaming (or something similar) has already been released?

There's no demo streaming on consoles, but it's there on the PC.

For example, the Tera demo uses Gaikai. Can't think of anything else but a big draw to OnLive is unlimited access to demos. Plus they're not preset demos that just highlight the best parts of the game, it's a half hour of the entire game so you can experience what it'll generally be like.

But really, gaming is evolving to drop physical media. I mean how many people here take pride in a CD collection unless they're over a certain age? Nowadays physical copies of music aren't nearly as prized when there's iTunes, last.fm, Pandora, Spotify, and a thousand other music downloading and streaming sites and applications. Gaming is going the same way.

In all honesty I do like having a nice game collection but I take more pride in playing a game than having a box for it. Games are just games, if you want collector's items you can buy Gordon Freeman action figures (not meaning that in a sarcastic asshole way, but there is a Gordon Freeman action figure and he's fucking awesome).

 

[The Catboy]

I hope that day never comes.
Also I thought demo streaming (or something similar) has already been released?

There's no demo streaming on consoles, but it's there on the PC.

For example, the Tera demo uses Gaikai. Can't think of anything else but a big draw to OnLive is unlimited access to demos. Plus they're not preset demos that just highlight the best parts of the game, it's a half hour of the entire game so you can experience what it'll generally be like.

But really, gaming is evolving to drop physical media. I mean how many people here take pride in a CD collection unless they're over a certain age? Nowadays physical copies of music aren't nearly as prized when there's iTunes, last.fm, Pandora, Spotify, and a thousand other music downloading and streaming sites and applications. Gaming is going the same way.

In all honesty I do like having a nice game collection but I take more pride in playing a game than having a box for it. Games are just games, if you want collector's items you can buy Gordon Freeman action figures (not meaning that in a sarcastic asshole way, but there is a Gordon Freeman action figure and he's fucking awesome).

I might just be thinking of how the Wii can be used to send Demo's to your DS, but that's not really steaming.

Also you can't tell a collector not to collect. It's not so much the box I am interested in, it's actually owning the game. Owning a hard copy of the game means it will always be there. If I want to go back and play it, it's still there. Unless someone steals my games or I sell them, they're not going anywhere. But with video game streaming, it can easily end up like Netflix. I would hate to be playing a game one day and wake to see it gone the next.

 

[shakirmoledina]

i still have not been told about the experience of onlive gaming. is it really fun all the time?
on a normal awesome pc, there may be times when u feel the game is not responding or stuttering due to bkg loading. does this not have this plus internet problems?

It works, and the games are playable. They run at 30FPS. If you have a PC decent enough to run the original game, you would prefer the PC version.

i love your answer as i like it since its good as it is precise, concise, clear, short and to the point unlike the post that u are reading that I have written in this thread that is available here

 

[VMM]

I think we will see drastic changes for next PS when it comes to cloud gaming

 

[Clydefrosch]

maybe they will kill it, just like google killed meebo and other stuff like that?

 

[Hadrian]

maybe they will kill it, just like google killed meebo and other stuff like that?

It wouldn't quite be in their best interest to kill it what with OnLive being a competitor.

 

[VMM]

It wouldn't quite be in their best interest to kill it what with OnLive being a competitor.

It's clearly to compete with OnLive,
As a PS3 user, I hope it works

 

[Skelletonike]

Over a shoddy internet connection with brilliant latency? Fuck no I would not. Game streaming is something that I never want to take off.

It will take off because enough of us live near big US cities with decent internet speeds.

Just because you have a bad internet connection now doesn't mean that you'll have a bad one 2-3 years from now. Things change. Progress is made. That's where I am... I'm currently on a slow 6Mbps DSL service at the edge of my coverage zone, and I expect to be there for the next 3 years. I'm okay with waiting. Eventually my area will get better coverage.

Regarding good internet conection speeds, the US is doing pretty badly compared to most countries in Europe and Asia. z.z"

I do agree with Midna tho, I have a 100mb/s connection and with a great ping, however I've never been really keen on those kind of services, cloud gaming might bring the extintion of physical copies of games in general, something that I have nightmares about. z.z
Still, for those that do have good internet connection but have weak computers it should be ok, although I find it stupid that someone can purchase for a expensive internet but not a good computer. z.z

There's no demo streaming on consoles, but it's there on the PC.

For example, the Tera demo uses Gaikai. Can't think of anything else but a big draw to OnLive is unlimited access to demos. Plus they're not preset demos that just highlight the best parts of the game, it's a half hour of the entire game so you can experience what it'll generally be like.

But really, gaming is evolving to drop physical media. I mean how many people here take pride in a CD collection unless they're over a certain age? Nowadays physical copies of music aren't nearly as prized when there's iTunes, last.fm, Pandora, Spotify, and a thousand other music downloading and streaming sites and applications. Gaming is going the same way.

In all honesty I do like having a nice game collection but I take more pride in playing a game than having a box for it. Games are just games, if you want collector's items you can buy Gordon Freeman action figures (not meaning that in a sarcastic asshole way, but there is a Gordon Freeman action figure and he's fucking awesome).

I've been collecting games since I was like seven, I've always loved having my games lined up and looking at my limited edition collections always brings a smile to my face, same goes for music, I buy lots of music CD's, since I love having them, same goes for dvds, heck, I still have all my Dragon Ball GT complete tape collection (among a few other series I used to watch back then like TMNT).
For as long as I recall, I've always loved having physical collections, games, books (including comics and manga), etc... I''m pretty sure I'm not the only one that feels like this, so a lot of people would also feel somewhat disappointed if things did turn out that way, and well, everyone loves limited editions, the publishers can always get more money for those, and people usually buy them.

 

[Midna]

Over a shoddy internet connection with brilliant latency? Fuck no I would not. Game streaming is something that I never want to take off.

It will take off because enough of us live near big US cities with decent internet speeds.

Just because you have a bad internet connection now doesn't mean that you'll have a bad one 2-3 years from now. Things change. Progress is made. That's where I am... I'm currently on a slow 6Mbps DSL service at the edge of my coverage zone, and I expect to be there for the next 3 years. I'm okay with waiting. Eventually my area will get better coverage.

Regarding good internet conection speeds, the US is doing pretty badly compared to most countries in Europe and Asia. z.z"

I do agree with Midna tho, I have a 100mb/s connection and with a great ping, however I've never been really keen on those kind of services, cloud gaming might bring the extintion of physical copies of games in general, something that I have nightmares about. z.z

It would mean not only the extinction of physical copies, but also the extinction of digital ones. Imagine if cloud gaming became the only medium on which some games were released at all. Well, when the cloud gaming companies stopped offering their services, no one would ever be able to play those games again in any form whatsoever.

 

[exangel]

It would mean not only the extinction of physical copies, but also the extinction of digital ones. Imagine if cloud gaming became the only medium on which some games were released at all. Well, when the cloud gaming companies stopped offering their services, no one would ever be able to play those games again in any form whatsoever.

Say hello to Farmville?

 

[Skelletonike]

Over a shoddy internet connection with brilliant latency? Fuck no I would not. Game streaming is something that I never want to take off.

It will take off because enough of us live near big US cities with decent internet speeds.

Just because you have a bad internet connection now doesn't mean that you'll have a bad one 2-3 years from now. Things change. Progress is made. That's where I am... I'm currently on a slow 6Mbps DSL service at the edge of my coverage zone, and I expect to be there for the next 3 years. I'm okay with waiting. Eventually my area will get better coverage.

Regarding good internet conection speeds, the US is doing pretty badly compared to most countries in Europe and Asia. z.z"

I do agree with Midna tho, I have a 100mb/s connection and with a great ping, however I've never been really keen on those kind of services, cloud gaming might bring the extintion of physical copies of games in general, something that I have nightmares about. z.z

It would mean not only the extinction of physical copies, but also the extinction of digital ones. Imagine if cloud gaming became the only medium on which some games were released at all. Well, when the cloud gaming companies stopped offering their services, no one would ever be able to play those games again in any form whatsoever.

Just finished adding something to my previous post about that.
And yeah, the good thing about physical media, is that it's trustworthy, you don't need any servers to be online in order to play an offline game, or anything really. For example, if Nintendo went bankrupt and stopped working on games and consoles, if they only had cloud copies of games, how would people possibly play the games they had previously paid for? With physical copies, even if the devs have already gone bankrupt, all you need is the console and the physical copy of the game, meaning you can always play it no matter what happens.

 

[IBNobody]

Companies lose too much money on the retail chain. Everything is going digital, but everything won't go streaming.

I'm still hoping that Sony lets you buy game X and then lets you play it on your PS3 and also stream it to your PC/Vita/Tablet/Smartphone. It would be kinda like how remote play should have been, except you'd have a server/data center providing the stream instead of your home network.

---

 

[Midna]

words

I have no problem with digital distribution. Even if the DRM services go down, games can always be cracked for future use

But that article is hardly a point of support for cloud gaming. Cloud gaming reintroduces the middle man that was cut out with digital distribution.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

It would mean not only the extinction of physical copies, but also the extinction of digital ones. Imagine if cloud gaming became the only medium on which some games were released at all. Well, when the cloud gaming companies stopped offering their services, no one would ever be able to play those games again in any form whatsoever.

I'll just say by the time this happens I really doubt we'll care. As of now and probably for a while, cloud gaming is only an alternative and is hardly "mainstream". It's gonna take a lot of technological advances and changes to how we distribute content in general before cloud gaming becomes a norm.

This acquisition is hardly heralding the end of physical gaming.

 

[exangel]

I'll just say by the time this happens I really doubt we'll care. As of now and probably for a while, cloud gaming is only an alternative and is hardly "mainstream". It's gonna take a lot of technological advances and changes to how we distribute content in general before cloud gaming becomes a norm.

I agree, and I find it annoying when people who are against cloud gaming for their own purposes claim that it shouldn't exist at all or that gamers are better off with out it. I'm not much of a pirate, and I love digital distribution i.e. Steam and PSN. I like not having to keep track of physical objects to play games that I own. I like not having to keep backups of those games either (to prevent wearing out the originals, since that was a concern for me when I collected PSX games). I'm paying attention to those two companies and they're in zero danger of dropping support of the games I've bought through them. They also work without an internet connection in offline mode.

I also like OnLive, mostly for the demos and multiplatform support, but I don't own much on it yet. I am not going to get sick over the possible expiration of my Bastion license in a couple years. I think it's about time people stopped expecting OnLive to fold, because it's being integrated into ever-more devices (in addition to mobile OS's, GoogleTV which has already been a feature of some high-end "smart TV's" for a while). Developers who have contracts through OnLive don't currently have anywhere else to go for this service/distribution and probably don't have the imperative to directly compete by providing their own cloud. Look how well (or poorly) Origin has worked out as an attempt at competition with Steam. EA isn't removing support from Steam even though they provide their own digital distribution service.

And on the other hand, Netflix may not be doing so well despite being available on tons of devices for our region, but that's due to solid competition and bad executive decisions -- not lack of demand. The demand for "instant content" grows with the increase of services OnLive is capable of providing for its customers (like the streaming Desktop Guild mentioned, which has gotten some pretty good reviews from Android/iPad review blogs and magazines -- though nothing is claiming it's a desktop replacement yet). If the demand for instant content were not growing, they would probably not be expanding overseas. And there was a time when people were proud of their DVD collections, so that's another reason I see eye to eye with Guild here.
If Gaikai is primarily for live demos, it's fantastic that Sony's acquired it, since I am pretty likely to prefer streaming 30fps 720p for a demo than downloading 5+ gigs of something just to play a 1080p demo.

 

[Devin]

It's a nice option, and I'm glad it's there. For those with a fast enough internet connection, it's a very, very nice service. I have my Xbox 360, PS Vita, and other things all in my room so if my mother wants to play something she'd have to come in ask me where everything is. With the nice OnLive service, I've set her up an account on her tablet. So she plays Lego Batman, and some of those indie games from one of the Indie Bundle. I've given it a shot myself, and I'd give it a thumbs up. However, I agree that it shouldn't take over the gaming community due to people with low end devices that aren't supported, or that don't have a fast enough internet connection to keep up with it but should be there as an option. (I was even tempted to get her to buy the OnLive console.)

 

[chartube12]

I predicted in 2003, we have services where we get to pick what videos we want to watch with the ability to control it like a VCR but better than VOD within 10 years...Now there is netflix, hulu and several other services.

My prediction for cloud gaming? It will start with demos and manybe a few indie games here and there, but better in both morally and capability then facebook "games". Within 10 years from March 2013 cloud gaming will become as acceptable as digital-downloads and video streaming.

 

[exangel]

My prediction for cloud gaming? It will start with demos and manybe a few indie games here and there, but better in both morally and capability then facebook "games". Within 10 years from March 2013 cloud gaming will become as acceptable as digital-downloads and video streaming.

I already see a trend with MMOs and multiplayer games like Diablo 3, where there's been more and more emphasis for digital preorder and delivery; and I expect that as we progress towards more digital distribution services (like www.GOG.com

 

[chartube12]

My prediction for cloud gaming? It will start with demos and manybe a few indie games here and there, but better in both morally and capability then facebook "games". Within 10 years from March 2013 cloud gaming will become as acceptable as digital-downloads and video streaming.

I already see a trend with MMOs and multiplayer games like Diablo 3, where there's been more and more emphasis for digital preorder and delivery; and I expect that as we progress towards more digital distribution services (like www.GOG.com