There May Be No Consoles In The Future - According to EA - Polidicks

Peter Moore isn't a gamer, he's a corporate suit. That he thinks gamers would ever go in for streamed games, especially with the associated input lag and latency issues, demonstrates his complete lack of understanding of his own market.

So then I guess my follow-up question is, how small does the delay need to be in order to be imperceptible? What is the shortest period of time that the human brain is even capable of processing unaided? And, accepting the hard barrier of the speed of light for relaying the signal between your system and the server, could improvements to existing technology (or the creation of new technology) not put us within that range? For example, you're allowing 9-14ms of delay in various pieces of equipment, such as the display and the routers and switches. Is it not possible that advancements in display technology could further reduce monitor delay, or that the network architecture of the future could eliminate the need for such routing equipment and thus the delays they bring to the table? Like, just so we're not talking about the whole of human existence here, let's put cap of fifty years on this. Is it not feasible to you that, with another fifty years of development, we could find a way to improve or bypass these current bottlenecks to such a degree that the communication delay be so small as to be effectively imperceptible? It's obviously all speculation, but I'm not seeing anything so far that makes the concept of streaming game services replacing consoles and PCs impossible. At worst, all I've seen is there are some potential limitations.

snip: recant that statement keep forgetting the Anti-consumer aspects of it.

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;50332198]I have to agree. The future is Netflix for games. It will be a while before our infrastructure and technology has upgraded to that point, but subscription-based game streaming services are basically inevitable imo.[/QUOTE] You own 270 video games that you can have stored on your computer and then played at any given time offline, so I'm sure you've played a few always online games mid fight you're disconnected from a single player game. This ALREADY happens in some always online games, imagine that happening x100. In fact, you're disconnected to the point where you have 0 access with said game. Now, that'd be ok with netflix as you could maybe just skip back to your progress, but with a game that's a lot different.

[QUOTE=J!NX;50333105]You own 270 video games that you can have stored on your computer and then played at any given time offline, mid fight you're disconnected from a single player game. This ALREADY happens in some always online games, imagine that happening x100. In fact, you're disconnected to the point where you have 0 access with said game. Now, that'd be ok with netflix as you could maybe just skip back to your progress, but with a game that's a lot different.[/QUOTE] I can definitely understand the consumer arguments in opposition of "Netflix for games," and if there's anything that would prevent that concept from ever becoming a reality then it would be these. They're fair criticisms. Now I'm just more involved in the discussion on whether or not it's even possible from a technological standpoint (at least in terms of perceptible input delay). It's pretty interesting!

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;50333124]I can definitely understand the consumer arguments in opposition of "Netflix for games," and if there's anything that would prevent that concept from ever becoming a reality then it would be these. They're fair criticisms. Now I'm just more involved in the discussion on whether or not it's even possible. It's pretty interesting![/QUOTE] Well, there were at least a couple services that tried it before, I forget the name of one, but the other was OnLive. Both business ventures failed after only a short time live, as I recall.

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;50333068]So then I guess my follow-up question is, how small does the delay need to be in order to be imperceptible? And, accepting the hard barrier of the speed of light, could improvements to existing technology (or the creation of new technology) not put us within that range? For example, you're allowing 9-14ms of delay in vvarious pieces of equipment, such as the display and the routers and switches. Is it not possible that advancements in display technology could further reduce monitor delay, or that the network architecture of the future could eliminate the need for such routing equipment and thus the delays they bring to the table? Like, just so we're not talking about the whole of human existence here, let's say put a cap of fifty years on this. Is it not feasible to you that, with another fifty years of development, we could find a way to improve or bypass these current bottlenecks to such a degree that the communication delay we be so small as to be effectively imperceptible?[/QUOTE] There is no point where the delay is imperceptible. People are able to perceive the delay of using a controller on their home systems, an extra milliseconds is entirely noticeable. And as I said before the speed of light will add multiple milliseconds delay, I intentionally picked a short distance and good connection conditions in my example because for the vast, vast majority of people the conditions, and the delay, will be worse. I intentionally biased the results toward the network streaming and it still came out with twice or more of the delay a home machine would have. And yes, improvements to monitors and controllers, and even the PC/console hardware will be able to shave off a couple of valuable milliseconds. But you have to remember for every millisecond you shave off the home machines receive all the benefit too, while the network delay will always persist. Routing equipment can get faster but it won't ever go away, it is the vital part of the internet which means you don't need a direct connection to whatever you want to access. Without routing equipment you would need a wire directly from your house to the server with the game on it. So no, in 50 years we will not reach a point where the delay is imperceptible, nor will we do so in 100 or 200. The simple fact is for all the advancements we make in precessing speed and routing speed a network connection will always have a delay, and the delay will always be determined by the distance between you and the source. This is fine for literally everything else. It's fine for a video to spend 5ms buffering before it starts playing, it's fine for you to be a few seconds behind a livestreamer, it's fine for a download to take some time to initiate. It isn't fine for you input to take 15 milliseconds to register, such a delay actually makes precision control impossible. The reason the delay isn't too noticeable in multiplayer games also comes down to lag compensation. The games use predictive calculations to offset the differences between players, typically using a server as a mediator.

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;50333124]I can definitely understand the consumer arguments in opposition of "Netflix for games," and if there's anything that would prevent that concept from ever becoming a reality then it would be these. They're fair criticisms. Now I'm just more involved in the discussion on whether or not it's even possible. It's pretty interesting![/QUOTE] I guess on the flip side, when talking about the practicality of it if would at least be super useful for streaming a powerful game to a tablet and using a controller with imagine a really beautiful turn based strategy while you take a train, which has oddly good wifi because no ones using it / its the future so wifi just works well. And because its streamed it can look amazing because everything is in 64k now, even tablets, sadly it DOES run at 5 fps, but its turn based so thats ok. etcetc hypothetical babble the opposition to it's pretty strong from what I've seen. Always online alone is scaring the shit out of people. I imagine people think some games will be stream-exclusives

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;50333124]I can definitely understand the consumer arguments in opposition of "Netflix for games," and if there's anything that would prevent that concept from ever becoming a reality then it would be these. They're fair criticisms. Now I'm just more involved in the discussion on whether or not it's even possible from a technological standpoint (at least in terms of perceptible input delay). It's pretty interesting![/QUOTE] Game streaming services will certainly exist in the future, Playstation Now is a thing you can access if you're in America, but it'll never be the primary means of distributing and playing games. Mostly I imagine it'll be used so you can play console or PC games on a laptop or a TV dongle with a controller in times where you have no access to a console or PC. I can see game streaming becoming a thing in hotels which can afford to hire some local servers. Like a hotel service in a large city or somewhere that hosts conventions hiring out a game streaming service during events to lower power consumption costs.

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;50333124]I can definitely understand the consumer arguments in opposition of "Netflix for games," and if there's anything that would prevent that concept from ever becoming a reality then it would be these. They're fair criticisms. Now I'm just more involved in the discussion on whether or not it's even possible from a technological standpoint (at least in terms of perceptible input delay). It's pretty interesting![/QUOTE] As Janus said, less latency is always better, but judging from what I've read so far about latency in fighting games, you could probably get away with perhaps 50ms of latency in total. Assuming half of that is from data transmission alone, this means that the server cannot be more than 2,500 km away (probably less than that due to routing issues). It's definitely possible, but it would require lots of servers everywhere.

I guess I'm just having trouble even visualizing how much of a delay we're talking about. You say we're in the ballpark of 10ms delays with our current equipment doing everything locally, which is .01 seconds, right? 1/00th of a second? I cant visualize that, and it's certainly not something I've ever noticed or been frustrated about while playing a game, twitch shooter or otherwise. If we are allowing that streaming game services could theoretically reach about this point as a result of various technological improvements before it is physically impossible to transfer data any more quickly, then on a personal level I am unable to comprehend how this delay is significant enough to cause problems with the enjoyment of the games. Wouldn't human perception and reaction times be the bottleneck at that point? Do you have any resources that could help me visualize this in a way that helps it click?

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;50333239]I guess I'm just having trouble even visualizing how much of a delay we're talking about. You say we're in the ballpark of 10ms delays with our current equipment, which is .01 seconds, righht? 1/00th of a second? I cant visualize that, and it's certainly not something I've ever noticed or been frustrated about while playing a game, twitch shooter or otherwise. If we are allowing that streaming game services could theoretically reach about this point as a result of various technological improvements before it is physically impossible transfer data any more quickly, then on a personal level I am failing to understand how this delay is significant enough to cause problems with the enjoyment of the games. Wouldn't human perception and reaction times be the bottleneck at that point? Do you have any resources that could help me visualize this in a way that helps it click?[/QUOTE] I remember seeing this video a while back, took me a while to find it but here: [video=youtube;vOvQCPLkPt4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4[/video] As you can see, even at 10 ms, the lag is perceptible. The situation with games is different because you aren't interacting directly with the screen but the idea is the same: tiny differences that may seem insignificant can still be perceived.

[QUOTE=Shalaska;50327134]That's so incredibly consumer unfriendly I can totally believe it's going to happen. Not for a long-ass time, though. Onlive was awful.[/QUOTE] Online wasn't as awful add everybody says. It let me play AAA games on a shitty Dell with decent reliability (definitely ran better than if I tried to run it right on my machine). I sunk so many hours into the Homefront multiplayer with it. Plus there were never any hackers since it wouldn't be possible.

[QUOTE=Headhumpy;50333288]I remember seeing this video a while back, took me a while to find it but here: [video=youtube;vOvQCPLkPt4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4[/video] As you can see, even at 10 ms, the lag is perceptible. The situation with games is different because you aren't interacting directly with the screen but the idea is the same: tiny differences that may seem insignificant can still be perceived.[/QUOTE] That's incredibly helpful, thanks! I can definitely see what you're talking about now, and will allow that this is a perceptible difference. However, it's something that would really only affect those gamers who have almost superhuman reflexes in the absolute peaks of competitive gaming anyway, and even then only in rather specific types of twitch reflex games. For the vast majority of the gaming market, I remain unconvinced that a 10ms input delay is significant enough to cause the game to be unenjoyable, even in shooters and fighters where reflexes are important. For the average player, it's their reflexes that are going to be the bottleneck, not the input delay. Beyond that 10ms or so, however, that delay would get exponentially more noticable and frustrating.

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;50333362]That's incredibly helpful, thanks! I can definitely see what you're talking about now, and will allow that this is a perceptible difference. However, it's something that would really only affect those gamers who have almost superhuman reflexes in the absolute peaks of competitive gaming anyway, and even then only in rather specific types of twitch reflex games. For the vast majority of the gaming market, I remain unconvinced that a 10ms input delay is significant enough to cause the game to be unenjoyable, even in shooters and fighters where reflexes are important. For the average player, it's their reflexes that are going to be the bottleneck, not the input delay.[/QUOTE] That's the thing though, it won't be a 10ms delay. Over a network it would be significantly more. In my example above I was being biased toward network connections by imagining a short distance and a great connection, and still came up with 15ms at best. You have to also account for distance, so the further away you are the worse the delay. It's largely the problem of you only notice it after you've had better. Most people are fine playing at 30fps, but if you get them to play at 60 consistently for just a few weeks then 30 actually becomes a strain on the eyes. The same is true for input delay. You might not notice 10ms of lag, but once consoles get down to 2 or 3 ms delay then 10 (or more realistically 15) will seem like a huge delay. It doesn't take superhuman reflexes, it just takes familiarity with something better.

[QUOTE=J!NX;50327008]Streaming will eventually become fast enough that peoples brains won't be able to tell anyways so it won't really matter[/QUOTE] you're looking at doubling your latency in MP, adding latency to SP. Unless light lag stops being an issue, this will remain a problem.

[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;50327247]I really don't like that future scenario of streaming being everything. [B]t would leave basically everything in the hands of publishers that may happily pull the plug on games they want people to buy again as remakes or sequels, or they simply get rid of old servers fairly regularly and screw over people that love browsing through old nostalgic titles or that are interested in preserving the history's medium.[/B] Which isn't just important for the sake of it, but also to educate future developers that need to learn from the past. There's also technical difficulties to consider like a magnification of current issues for Always Online games, so you may not even be able to play Singleplayer during launch/patch hell or the occasional DDoS attacks. It would also probably favor development of games that can be played even with some lag, just like console games have encouraged development of simpler control schemes and two-weapons shooters with aim assist. Assuming games would still be produced cross-platform in the future and there'd be a big push to take advantage of these streaming capabilities/working around its disadvantages, it would also most likely affect the PC gaming community and completely screw over user-generated content, from fan patch support and workarounds requiring file edits to datamining for secrets and scrapped content - and modding in general of course. Basically it would take away a lot of user control in exchange for convenience. Which I find to be a disturbing modern trend in general.[/QUOTE] take a guess why they want this to be true...

[QUOTE=NeonpieDFTBA;50331338]Never, seen as you can't transfer information using quatum entanglement.[/QUOTE] oh i dont know quantum physics