Dave Perry's Gaikai demo video

What's difficult to tell here is how responsive it all is.

Certainly, Mario Kart and NFS were being played very badly. Is that just because the demonstrator guy (Perry?) is crap at driving games? Is it because he's playing them with the cursor keys since Gaikai doesn't support joypads? Or is it because the latency is too high to be able to control them effectively?

This all sounds fine except that we already know that this doesn't work when the servers are under any kind of load at all. We also know that the bandwidth requirements rise exponentially the more users you have on such a service.

As far as I am concerned, these services are simply an attempt to get invester money and then retire to the bahamas. I can stream a game from a server easily but, I couldn't stream even 10 individual sessions of that game from a single server. I'd need a server per session or at least a server per 2 sessions. It's impractical and cost prohibitive the moment you try to scale it up to any realistic numbers.

@penhalion

The big barrier for me isn't the server load. That can be managed and scaled by the parent company (ignoring the financial costs for a second) as it is within their direct control.

The barrier for me is the lag associated with the internet. That is NOT within the control of any given company, and a crucial part of any thin client network is traffic management over said network.

Why are his WoW toons so low?
On a serious note, this is all very impressive!

I'm sorry but there's a distinct 'lag' in every game he's playing in this video; frames seem to lag or halt and then carry on again.

I'm not sure if this is his video recording that's messed it up or whether it's his link (and presumably other links will be fine - because he says he's at the 'edge' of the server's connection) or there really is a lag in the feed he's getting.

I can definitely see the advantages (no subscriptions, no patching, no massive hardware or peripherals, backwards compatibility, retro gaming etc) But surely not with this perceived lag I'm noticing.

Has anyone else noticed this in the video?

Can anyone explain it?

I'm old school and conservative so deep down inside me I wish the paradigm won't shift to this in the future. But this can work if he franchises the technology to ISP-s in the biggest consumer countries to reduce lag significantly (in the demo he was playing from US to France if I understand correctly). Then it would work a bit better than in the demo.

They must be thinking about franchising the technology, I don't believe they intend to invest in a few million servers (one needed per player) by themselves, that'd be kinda nuts.

I was initially upset thinking of all the Windows licenses they'll get to run the games on the servers, but he said there's no Windows. It's Linux + Wine then? I deem it acceptable then.

But I still like myself installing and having control over my games.

@zedzee
I can definitely see the advantages (no subscriptions, no patching, no massive hardware or peripherals, backwards compatibility, retro gaming etc) But surely not with this perceived lag I'm noticing.

I'm not sure what you mean by "no subscriptions" I mean, you will have to subscribe to the Gaikai service and you'll have to have a subscription to MMOs before you can play them (you need your own username and password to log in, after all).

You'll also still have down time while they patch. Just no ability to start patching yourself.

I like them on my own hd and own the box Server gone no games. One time that will happen.
Nothing less 4ever