Notices

What are the pros and cons of gaming on the N900 as a service? Do you accept the idea for this maemo device? Would you prefer it over native game development? Why/why not?

Companies like OnLive and OTOY are gearing up to 'stream' videogames over the internet to a myriad of devices that meet the minimum requirement of being able to stream video and sound. What does this mean for the N900 and it's competitors (iPhone, Android handsets, etc).

I'm very interested to hear your thoughts!

}:^)~

There are 3 main points any such service (and users) must consider:

a) Lag. Yes, 3G is quick and all, but you WILL have a non-stable 100-1000 ms lag depending on coverage. Not all games appreciate that.

b) Controls. Unless you plan on attaching a mouse and keyboard (or dedicated joypad), you will not be able to play Crysis and such no matter how cool it looks on the screen - accelerometers and touchscreens are p*ss-poor substitutes for a gaming-class mouse (just take a look at the recent iPhone 3GS FPS demo).

c) UI. Computer or console game UI-s know nothing about your fingers, they are designed for keyboard and/or mouse input. Remember, if you're streaming you can't do anything about it.

These two mean that not ALL software will be fun to do on a mobile device (regardless if it's the N900 or iPhone or something else). It could be fun for apps that require a lot of horsepower but are not sensitive to lag and do not rely on precision mouse input.

Very good points.

Consider that 1) some users will game using a WiFi connection, 2) not all games require Keyboard+mouse for an enjoyable experience, and 3) some can be played with a mapped keypad quite well or a bluetooth PS3 controller.

Of course not ALL games will do well streamable and on a mobile device, but I feel it is a very significant technology. Consider the following (assuming a streaming game client):

1) The maemo library of playable games goes from 0 to god-knows-how-high literally overnight.
2) As an OTOY client *may* be blocked by apples app-store for replicating core features, an N900 client may provide a competitive plus for the device.
3) Without services like this, maemo's gaming looks to be slow start. I've read that android game developers are having trouble despite the platforms success.

There are many cons as well, though I'm very interested in this discussion and would like to hear your viewpoints.

};^)~

Actually, as funny is it may sound, the main advantage I see in such a service if one was to do *dedicated* mobile games for desktop hardware, to be streamed. You write stuff on a regular PC, you don't care about what the destination OS is, processor speed, OpenGL ES level, amount of memory, upgrade issues, DRM, etc. That's a truly write once run anywhere paradigm as long as one has enough bandwidth and battery juice

In other words, the service provider's servers will do all the work, while the NITs will be just dumb terminals? Woow, that would be immense amount of load... Maybe Google could do such a thing, but any others...

Hey, that's what cloud computing is for

Well yes it is, but I always assumed it would be for some basic, non intensive stuff, such as office for instance.

Really? Check out http://jaycut.com/ for example.

Tim

OK, but imagine a real 3D game, like say Oblivion, or Crysis, ran on cloud, and played by millions of users at the same time? Wouldn't that be a bit too much? If of course all of the processing is done on the server. And the service provider providing the best possible experience, without any lags (provided that the network is fast enough)?

But then again, maybe not:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1243836589036.html
Guess this be used in such a project.