Cloud-rendered online gaming will need a lot more bandwidth
Traditional online gaming has always been a low bandwidth application, but things may change as a company called OnLive releases a new cloud-based gaming service that renders video games in the cloud and then delivers a video of the game play to the end user. I first explained this possibility when I coauthored “The need for speed” at ITIF but I didn’t realize that this would come to fruition so quickly.
The bandwidth for cloud-rendered online gaming will go up from 0.1 Mbps to 5 Mbps for something that will presumably be 1280×720 resolution. While the video fidelity isn’t the 3000 Mbps 1080P video we’re used to getting on our gaming computers, OnLive is betting that it’s “good enough” to attract casual gamers who want to play any game they want without having to buy gaming hardware or individual games. While this probably won’t attract hardcore gamers, OnLive is hoping that the casual gamer market will be bigger. Latency will be a very critical factor so the rendering farms for these gaming servers will have to be distributed to be as close to the end user as possible.
This will effectively be another HD video streaming application similar to YouTube, only the content is interactive and it is remotely rendered online and the bandwidth requirements are much higher.
I find it hard to believe that this will scale. But it’s intriguing from the pay-to-play perspective, lets them keep the game while you pay only when you want to play it.
You could almost consider it the ultimate DRM.
But still, that’s a business solution to a business problem at best, and a solution in search of a problem at worst, hardly a strong selling point for consumers.
Though I might point out this is exactly what I was talking about a week ago, RE: games.
Leave your response!