[quote name='Hydro2Oxide']What happens when a game crashes?[/QUOTE]
You die in the game, you die
for real.
[quote name='DarkNessBear']You guys are pretty harsh/negative.[/quote]
The only reason someone would be enthused about this nonsense is because they are not knowledgeable enough to understand why it
will not work. Which isn't a crime, of course.
WE haven't even used it yet, who knows they could have figured something out.
Definitive mathematical, logistical, and technical impossibility is not something you just "figure something out" for.
You guys act like you know better than them, yet you have nothing to prove this.
You mean besides the the cold, hard,
non-negotiable realities of the state of broadband networks in the United States? Besides the fact that there is no PC on the planet that could render graphics and encode video fast enough to overcome the inherent latency problems?
Lag is problematic enough in decade-old online FPSes, which typically transfer mere kilobytes per second. Adding in internet transfer time and high-definition video encoding will only add greatly to this. There is no way around it.
I do want to point out that I don't believe that this service won't function at all. I believe that it will function, with waiting lines to play games, lag times in the single-digit seconds, ugly video artifacts, and nasty bandwidth limit conflicts. There is no question that this service is possible, with these conditions. But is
that how you want to play?
What I really object to, and find offensive on an ethical level almost, are the claims of flawlessness from this company, the promises of nigh-zero latency that simply defy the nature of computing, and the internet; the promises of the "too good to be true, but REALLY TRUE WE SWEAR" (which tie into psych impulses from consumers, as I'll get into later). The insane notions from the press that this could possibly become a major institution, rivaling or much less overtaking the firmly installed console and traditional PC markets, is so outlandish, that the only way to categorize it is as flat-out lying to their readers, and a disservice to them.
They have a pretty good backing of publishers, and they haven't taken any of my money yet so I aint gonna get all worked up over promises.
I'm getting worked up over yet another stupid gaming tech startup with a bunch of bullshit, inflated claims and a gimmicky, unstable business plan, who announces their stupid product, has every tech site on the planet spend a few days writing hypey articles with a bunch of copy-and-pasting from the official press release, posing the question of "
Is this the future of gaming that may change the way we play games FOREVAR?" and weighing on on the preposterous notion that this "
New game system could threaten the 360/PS3/Wii" and fooling the ignorant into believing that there is any possibility that the service might "
Change gaming as we know it," which stirs the hype-machine of the mainstream public (which simply doesn't know any better, and believes whatever IGN and Cnet tells them, because they want to believe in the promises of impossible technology) into a frenzy, which then causes those of us who really understand these matters enough to not fall for it the headache of having to deal with the obnoxious and misinformed enthusiasm of a bunch of uneducated consumers who want to believe in miracle technology that is ostensibly "on their side" (gamers will want to believe that they can experience top-end PC gaming for pennies on the dollar, and that they have a savior in the form of a service that will enable this dream, which will help them finally beat the system of endless PC upgrade expenses; this psych play applies to all "miracle products/services") and is providing them with a truly great value in their service, all the way up until it comes out, they buy into it, it doesn't work and/or is cripplingly flawed, and they then proceed to bitch about how much it sucks, until the company finally goes bust, tens of millions of dollars in debt, while the CEO skips town and runs off to found yet another other dumb, gimmicky, doomed-to-fail tech startup.
Phantom. DISCovery. WebTV. This is a well-established pattern. How many stupid, doomed-to-fail attempts to turn the PC into a TV accessory do they have to come up with before people stop paying them any attention?
tl;dr: this crap is dumb, annoying, and offensive