Ed
03-30-2009, 05:38 PM
Article From: http://nyulocal.com/national/2009/03/30/new-gaming-console-promises-hd-streaming-games/
New Gaming Console Promises HD, Streaming Games
Could this minuscule set-up be the game console of the future? I’d say definitely. The real question is if it’s the game console of near-future.
What you see above is the OnLive set-top box, announced last Tuesday at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Once the OnLive box is plugged into your TV and a broadband Internet connection, you’ll be able to buy any game available on the service and stream it straight to your TV. This will also be available on almost any PC or Mac that can stream video, from $3,000 desktop rigs to your standard hand-me-down craptop.
OnLive operates using Cloud Computing, which many (by “many” I mean “many nerds who spend all day reading about Cloud Computing”) are calling the future of computers. It works like this: you open up the service, which you can then browse like any website. When you choose your game, it begins to run on a server miles away from you. The server then sends the video and audio feed back to you. This means that it takes your computer as much effort to stream a video game as it does to stream a video. Think of it as going over to play a new video-game at your friends house. But instead of seeing your friend, you get to sit in your room alone! Technology: alienating people since the Industrial Revolution.
Sound too good to be true? It might be. The question here is with latency. When you play a on a console, the distance from the controller to the console is a matter of feet. That means that when you hit a button, the console recognizes it almost immediately. In OnLive’s case however, you hit a button, the signal travels miles and miles to the server, which then tells the computer what to do, and the video is streamed miles and miles back to you. This results in a delay that would get your head blown off on a real battlefield, and games are no different. Except…you usually don’t die from video games.
If OnLive is to be trusted, none of this will be a problem. They say lag won’t be an issue because you only need a 1.5 Mb/s connection to play games in standard definition, and 4-5 Mb/s to play in Hi-Def. A speed test in my dorm says we have 7.68 Mb/s here in Alumni, so theoretically, NYU should be perfectly fine for the service.
Little has been announced in terms of availability. They’ve announced the set-up will cost less than a Wii ($250), and will probably be subscription based á la Netflix. You can sign up for a beta trial here, or read some testimonials here and here.
New Gaming Console Promises HD, Streaming Games
Could this minuscule set-up be the game console of the future? I’d say definitely. The real question is if it’s the game console of near-future.
What you see above is the OnLive set-top box, announced last Tuesday at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Once the OnLive box is plugged into your TV and a broadband Internet connection, you’ll be able to buy any game available on the service and stream it straight to your TV. This will also be available on almost any PC or Mac that can stream video, from $3,000 desktop rigs to your standard hand-me-down craptop.
OnLive operates using Cloud Computing, which many (by “many” I mean “many nerds who spend all day reading about Cloud Computing”) are calling the future of computers. It works like this: you open up the service, which you can then browse like any website. When you choose your game, it begins to run on a server miles away from you. The server then sends the video and audio feed back to you. This means that it takes your computer as much effort to stream a video game as it does to stream a video. Think of it as going over to play a new video-game at your friends house. But instead of seeing your friend, you get to sit in your room alone! Technology: alienating people since the Industrial Revolution.
Sound too good to be true? It might be. The question here is with latency. When you play a on a console, the distance from the controller to the console is a matter of feet. That means that when you hit a button, the console recognizes it almost immediately. In OnLive’s case however, you hit a button, the signal travels miles and miles to the server, which then tells the computer what to do, and the video is streamed miles and miles back to you. This results in a delay that would get your head blown off on a real battlefield, and games are no different. Except…you usually don’t die from video games.
If OnLive is to be trusted, none of this will be a problem. They say lag won’t be an issue because you only need a 1.5 Mb/s connection to play games in standard definition, and 4-5 Mb/s to play in Hi-Def. A speed test in my dorm says we have 7.68 Mb/s here in Alumni, so theoretically, NYU should be perfectly fine for the service.
Little has been announced in terms of availability. They’ve announced the set-up will cost less than a Wii ($250), and will probably be subscription based á la Netflix. You can sign up for a beta trial here, or read some testimonials here and here.