Hideo Kojima envisions a platform-free future

I think they screwed themselves.

Its not bothering you at all (console gamers), what's the issue?

I still reserve the right to comment on how crappy OnLive is.

They want to replace consoles, so yeah, it is an issue.

OnLive may not have gotten the forumla right. But they proved the viability of cloud computing and streaming games. This is without a doubt the future of games IMHO.

The accelerating nature of computing is changing the face of gaming at an ever quicker pace. The generational differences will be even greater in the next few cycles. Large scale computing can easily adapt to these changes and will be able to offer gamers the bleeding edge of whats to offer. If the subscription model is done right and they do well we could see quickly a paradigm shift to this new platformless platform. Games which are ultra realistic in graphics and potentially compatible with HUD hardware and advanced motion control could play on a dirt cheap computer. This will likewise allow these games to be played on any hardware including cellphones and tablets as we've seen with the iphone streaming crysis.


Im sure one day Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will one day be primarily software developers. I think we will see one more console generation. Even then It technically possible that sony or microsoft could turn the current consoles into streamers and skip the next generation all together. This is unlikely but its possible that over the next few years one of these companies will release some games that stream to test the technology and market.

It doesn't matter what type of gamer you are, this would piss off just about anyone...

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/10/onlive-launching-june-17-for-pc-and-mac-15-per-month-service-f/

The day OnLive becomes the standard is the day I stop buying new games.

Thankfully, there are so many old ones I could comfortably game for life and not complete them all.

@unboring

We had streaming gaming before. Sega Channel. It sucked. Consoles will still hold strong for ages to come until everyone is set up with high end internet bandwith. I don't need games lagging like an incomplete buffered youtube video.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, heathen! Sega Channel was GREAT! I loved the months they had a Road Rash "channel" with the three games in it. Thank goodness my parents let me have Sega Channel so I was still able to play tons of great games without breaking their wallet. Saved them tons, I bet, instead of renting me a game every few days.

...

Wow, my parents were pretty cool. Now I need to go hug my mom.

Yeah the only reason it was good was because it had sega games. Otherwise it was an abomination of a platform.

As much as I like the idea of gaming anywhere and anytime, the thought of Kojima's future predictions becoming reality always strikes fear into me. If he's right about one thing, what's to say that his other future visions don't become reality?

@ Spike

That day is not far off with Google plans to provide 100mbps to 100 million homes in US, and 1Gbps in smaller amount of homes. Information technologies and internet speeds are accelerating at an exponential rate in a similar way to computing.

Gamers will choose to go with a streaming service when they are offered a better gaming experience, at a lower price, with less hardware requirements and initial investment, with more variety.

Also Spike Sega channel was a different technology all together. The games were running natively on your console, it was almost exactly what we have today, downloadable titles.

forget OnLive, but dont expect to see this technology used by another company, and it will only get better and more popular in the future as internet infrastructure improves quicker then you expect.

@unboring

When these things happen, then the acceptance will be higher. Just right now the idea of it is horrid.

Also Sega Channel was still a streaming service. It isn't like the arcade titles we have today. Sure it hooked up to your genesis but it still was streaming through a cable line.

All in all I simply disagree with it at the moment. As you speak of future possibility, that I can agree on.

@spike
I was making the distinction between what onlive is and what sega channel was. Sega channel was very similar to downloadable games on PSN and XBLA. It would download the choosen game in a minute or two and then the game would run on the individuals console. I wouldnt call this streaming I would call it downloadable games.

Streaming technology is significantly different in that the game is not being processed on the actual hardware, and no data is downloaded. This allows seemingly amazing feats like playing graphically advanced games on netbooks and smart phones. Its only been possible very recently and of course in a limited demograph because it requires very stable and fast broadband as well as new compression algorithms.

I was just making the distinction between the two.

But yes, we'll see what the future holds. (a lot of amazing things)

Ahhh I gotcha.

I agree the future will hold a lot. Cannot wait to see what will happen. Great discussion.

@unboring

Communications speed isn't increasing exponentially as you said. The theory has been there all along, it's just that implementing the medium is very difficult. The reason we can use cable and DSL internet is because it was implemented upon already existing technology (phone lines, cable TV). To get the speeds Google desires literally requires digging up the ground and installing a fiber optics system. It's going to be a very long time for this to become a standard due to all the physical labor required.

@unboring: "OnLive may not have gotten the forumla right. But they proved the viability of cloud computing and streaming games. This is without a doubt the future of games IMHO. "

They didn't prove it's viable, they proved it can be done. Being doable and being viable are completely different things. We can build a city with giant canals instead of streets, and then build everyone their own personal titanic. This could be demonstrated by digging a single canal and putting one titanic replica in it. Proof of concept! Copy/paste/paste/paste/paste! But is this viable? No.

@unboring

You might also want to remember that while bandwidth supply is increasing, so is bandwidth demands. So if every home has 100Mbps internet, that means that, what you can watch a blu-ray "onLive" in maybe 2 rooms in your house before your internet dies? Want to have 3 or 4 friends come over and have some sweet LAN action? Well, prepare to enjoy lag since you're not really on a LAN, and also I hope you like low resolutions because if you try to make it look nice when you have multiple people there, you'll saturate your 100Mbps pipe. Also, god forbid there's an outage that day.

Remember too that if onLive wants to reach the kinds of install-rates you see for traditional consoles, they will need to own HUMONGOUS DATACENTERS that pack enough "cloud computing" to provide millions of high-end machines' worth of performance that needs to get streamed into people's homes. They would need to replace an entire city with computers. This will happen right before the Matrix becomes reality.

There are more ways to maintain an internet signal beyond just wires in the ground. The cell phone companies are actively working to make wireless broadband internet comparable to the speeds offered by copper, phone, and fiber optic lines. If cell phone towers are upgraded to meet those high standards, we could see high speed internet spread much faster than it has already. That said, we're still a long ways away from a future where cell phone towers are fast and reliable throughout the entire country and the world.

But, speaking of hard wires, Google isn't the only one playing with fiber optic internet. AT&T has U-Verse, Verizon has Fios (which they have, admittedly, slowed expansion on), and I'm sure there are others slowly trickling it all out. If the money is there, you better believe big companies will dig trenches across the world to lay these wires. However, as with wireless internet, we're a good ways away from that being any kind of reality.

Between those two scenarios--wireless vs. wired--broadband internet will almost definitely reach everyone eventually. It's just a matter of time. It won't be tomorrow or the next day. It may not even be within the next decade or the decade after that. But one way or another, everyone will have access to the internet. Once that happens, the only thing stopping a person from taking advantage of it will be how much whoever owns the signals will charge.

With all that in mind, I personally don't want physical media to go away, but we're going in that direction right now whether we like it or not. Things may change though.

Actually, I've been envisioning a Hideo Kojima free future of late.

"As for taking it anywhere, if you somehow figure out how to get home console power in a handheld and not require 20 D batteries for an hour of battery life, we'll talk. But it's unrealistic."

Not necessarily. The DS has the power of a portable N64 and last dozens of hours. And according to this article we'll be playing PS3 quality games in just three years:

http://gizmodo.com/5490330/you-will-have-the-power-of-a-ps3-in-your-pocket-in-3-years

Technology moves at a lighting fast pace. What once was science fiction is now becoming an exciting reality.

I was talking about a portable device that was equal to the current console, that allowed you to transfer your save from the console to the portable and then keep playing. Not a portable based on tech from 1996.

And that article is largely speculative. Being close graphically =/= power of the actual console. It's going to be a long time before we can drop a Cell in a handheld.

The PS3's power lies not in its GPU, but in the things the CPU can do.

Ah...sorry I wasn't clear enough.

What I was trying to say was, we're inching closer to having console level handhelds. lithium-polymer batteries can now power high end laptops for close to 10 hours, and and time goes on we begin to reach a plateau of what's possible on a home console and on a portable device. At some point the tech will converge.

I mean it's like someone saying 10 years ago that the laptop will never be as powerful as a desktop.

Laptops aren't as powerful as desktops. Close, but not close enough.

Plus, the cost increases when you start shrinking tech. No one will pay seven hundred dollars for a PS4 handheld when the full console costs 400.

"Laptops aren't as powerful as desktops. Close, but not close enough. "

Indeed, but laptops are so much more than what they were 10 years ago in comparison to desktops.

"Plus, the cost increases when you start shrinking tech. No one will pay seven hundred dollars for a PS4 handheld when the full console costs 400."

Hey you'd be surprised at what people will buy. You'll recall the original iPhone (which was a gloried PDA) soldout at $600. Plus current phones are coming equipped with HDMI-out. Who's to say you would even need to buy a home console and a handheld. It may just be one device at that point.

Except that was a phone. And it didn't sell nearly as well as it did when AT&T dropped some fat subsidies with it.

As it is, I wouldn't pay more than 149 for a handheld. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

"As it is, I wouldn't pay more than 149 for a handheld. I'm sure I'm not the only one."

IF there was a mythical handheld gaming console, would you pay $400?

I think I would...I mean why not? We're gamers and we want to play the latest and greatest right?

No, I wouldn't. If it's the same hardware, then it's not the latest and greatest, it's more of the same.

95% of what the TV providers give is the same, though, so the competition comes strictly through how they tier that content (who's going to give me History International, for instance, in the basic package, and who's going to make me pay through the nose for it), and just pricing structures in general.

The sports packages are usually exclusive.

MicroSony? or how about Sonysoft?

Pff, like Microsoft and Sony only have their gaming divisions going for them...

If this one-console concept materializes it will be because one company has slaughtered all the competition, not because two companies pooled their resources together.

Let's not mention that last one.

Jerry, don't be ridiculous. If the console manufacturer didn't get a cut of console sales you'd be paying $1000 for your consoles rather than $300.

And your example sucks because yes, when you buy a DVD other companies that have nothing to do with the movie are getting royalties. Like Sony when you buy a Warner Bros Blu-ray, or Toshiba when you buy a Columbia DVD.

DVD =/= Video game

What the hell are you smoking Jerry? How is buying a game a rip-off if the money goes to the developers, publishers, etc?

Please explain.

Probably late to the argument, but I'll add this:

Most movies make up their cost during their time in theaters. Games do not have this controlled initial public release like movies. Games go straight to disc/cart/download immediately.

Also, of course you're paying to cover their costs. When you spend $8 to go watch a new movie you're also paying for the actors, producer, director, camera crew, special effects studios, etc..

Let's just not mention the PC,360,Windows Phone portability that MS is working on for next year.

It will make Sony look better.

What the hell are you talking about? "Live Anywhere"?