Cloud gaming is the future

By Sebastian Anthony

Against all the odds, and contrary to some of the world’s greatest network and software engineers, OnLive has proved that cloud gaming is possible. Exact figures, as always, are hard to come by, but as of November 2011 OnLive apparently had “tens of millions” of users in the US and UK.

While no one is ever going to claim that the OnLive experience is as good as glorious can’t-hear-yourself-think-over-the-GPU-fan desktop and console gaming, for many gamers it is good enough. For hardcore gamers, OnLive’s 150-250ms latency and 720p resolution is akin to gouging your eyes out, but for almost everyone else — i.e. most console gamers, and almost every social gamer — it is just fine. If you haven’t given cloud gaming a try, visit OnLive and sign up for a free trial; it still blows my mind that it takes just a split second to send your mouse movements to an Onlive data center, compute the next frame, render it, encode it, and send it back to you.

Bear in mind, too, that OnLive games are competitively priced — and because this is all cloud-based, you don’t have to download 15GB of data before you can play (a huge boon for casual gamers), and you can play OnLive (and access your game saves) from any internet-connected computer. If all that wasn’t enough, because OnLive is ultimately a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider, it also has two more awesome offerings: For many games you can buy a 3- or 5-day pass for just a few dollars (which is often long enough to finish a game, if you’re a hardcore gamer); and for $10/month, you get unlimited access to some 200 games.

In short, if the latency could be reduced and the resolution could be pumped up to 1080p, OnLive — cloud gaming — would be almost perfect. Which leads us neatly onto Nvidia’s new Kepler GPU, which, according to Jen-Hsun Huang at the GPU Technology Conference yesterday, contains new virtualization and encoder tech that makes it the ideal building block for cloud gaming installations. Nvidia has taken its new Kepler GPUs and built it into what it calls the GeForce Grid, which as far as I can tell (details are scarce) is a complete cloud gaming solution. Gaikai (a cloud gaming company similar to OnLive) and Citrix are launch partners.

Currently, according to Nvidia, in OnLive and Gaikai data centers, one server is required for each gamer (or “game stream”). Each server has a single CPU and a single GPU and consumes around 150 watts — i.e. current cloud gaming setups aren’t efficient in terms of space or power. With GeForce Grid, however, Nvidia squeezes four GPUs into each server, giving each server the juice to accommodate up to four users, at just 75 watts per stream. Nvidia hasn’t stated which GPUs will be used in this new cloud gaming system, but the hardware specs on the Grid website suggest that they’re GTX 690s with extra RAM, or simply re-branded K10s (the upcoming Kepler-powered Tesla GCGPU).

Not only will the GeForce Grid be more efficient, but Nvidia is also claiming that its new system will register a huge drop in latency over existing cloud gaming installations. Take a look at the graph to the right: Yes, Kepler is so powerful that the GeForce Grid will be a hair faster than your Xbox + TV. Keep your eye on the Kool-Aid, though: While Kepler’s hardware H.264 encoder will certainly help things along, the “Game Pipeline” and “Network” improvements are peppered with caveats.

For a start, the huge reduction in game pipeline processing will only be realized if software developers actually design their games “specifically for the awesome graphics processing power that these cloud machines deliver.” As it stands, game developers really don’t care if an engine takes 5ms to render a frame or 15ms — it’s all the same, on a local console or PC — but when we make the jump to cloud gaming, every millisecond counts. In a day and age where games are riddled with small, latency-inducing bugs, Nvidia is too optimistic on this front.

Then there’s network performance. Basically, it seems like Nvidia’s solution is to install so many GeForce Grid data centers that network latency never accounts for more than 10ms — either that, or it wants to roll out its own fiber infrastructure. Neither of these things are likely to happen in the near term. Nvidia has the right idea with GeForce Grid, but it’s simply five years too soon.

Despite my misgivings, though, cloud gaming does have promise. Worldwide roll outs are now so rapid that in five or 10 years, a large percentage of the developed world will have fiber to the home or cabinet. It will take time, but with enough pressure from console makers and publishers, developers will eventually fine-tune their game engines, too.

What then? What will happen when there is no logical reason to keep a console in your living room? With the PS4, Xbox 720, and Wii U all coming down the line, cloud gaming isn’t going to take off in the near term — but what about the next generation of consoles?

It is entirely possible that the Xbox 1080 will simply be a dumb little box, with four gamepad sockets on the front, and HDMI and power on the back; it could even be built into a Microsoft TV. Microsoft already has a huge cloud presence, too — and really, streaming games isn’t all that different from streaming movies.

The appeal of cloud gaming to companies such as Microsoft and Sony is immense. In an instant, short of breaking into the local data center, software piracy goes out the window. With the expensive console out of the way, their pool of prospective gamers (and customers) immediately swells. By default, the Xbox 1080 service might be completely free — but just like today’s free-to-play games, Microsoft could charge you for additional levels and in-game items, as well as the ability to connect multiple gamepads, output at higher resolution, unlock higher framerates, and so on.

Cloud gaming is completely cross-platform, too: There’s no functional difference between a PC monitor, TV, smartphone, or tablet. Imagine being able to pause a game at home, and then continue it on your tablet or office computer. Imagine multiplayer games where you’re in front of the TV, but your friend is on the other side of the world, playing from a Facebook window on his laptop.

The flip side, of course, is that Microsoft (or EA) could charge you for excessive use (“you have exceeded our fair-use policy…”) — and what happens if you get banned? Do you lose access to all of the games you’ve purchased? Will you have the option of storing saved games locally, or will they all be in the cloud?

Ultimately, though, in much the same way that cloud computing and storage has exploded in the last few years, cloud gaming will follow suit. Cloud gaming, like cloud computing, digital downloads, and streaming video, simply has too many benefits to ignore.

Source: Extremetech 1 and Extremetech 2