Reshaping the way we consume games

Coming soon: superfast internet - Times Online

The article talks about what CERN is doing with the grid and how it is bazillions times faster than our current technologies. But that got me thinking that this could lead to a different way in which we consume our gaming media.

If download speeds were 10,000 times faster(as they claim) then you could stream entire games instead of downloading them or buying a gaming disc. You could rent games on your machine instead. Playing online with 10,000 people wouldn't be a problem.

Imagine playing a game like Ghost Recon with whole armies going at each other. Never having to worry about your game disc getting scratched or lost and not worry about having too much downloaded on a hard drive.

They could even expand this into what Microsoft is trying to do with Live by allowing people to rent and stream HD movies to watch.

But in thinking of all of this I can't help but be reminded of the pioneers that brought all of this to us. That is right. The Phantom! Not only was it way before its time. It will probably be the future of media consumption. Thus bringing us one step closer to conquering that trip to the store to find out they are out of whatever you wanted ;_;

Discuss how, if CERN doesn't destroy the world first, something like this could change the way we consume game media and play games online. Are you excited for it or do you like having that physical media?

I hate the idea of streaming games.

For one thing, it assumes that everyone is going to be online all of the time. I didn't have internet access at home from May to December of last year. I wouldn't have been able to play any games if I had to stream them.

Another thing is that I don't like the idea of paying large amounts of money for something I don't get to have a physical copy of. If my WiiStation 1080 dies or gets stolen or something, I want all of my games to be readily available if I decide to replace it.

I had a third point but I forgot it.

This would be world changing, let alone game changing. Possible social improvements aside, it would allow real MMOG's, with thousands of players all on the same server. It would be epic beyond proportions.

Daaamn. When I was a youngin' it took 30 years to get online and another 30 to download anything. Now I can get movies in an hour and stream videos off YouTube instantly. It wouldn't surprise me if this comes along and is everything promised. And it would be awesome.

There will most likely be a choice between physically buying a game and streaming it right away. I'd love to have that choice, and I would usually choose the latter. Yay for making my hermit lifestyle even easier! Down with offline interaction!

Playing a game with so many at once would be amazing. Grand Theft Auto, every person in the game is real, not a single NPC... Bake me some of that cake, please.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LunarWeaver

Playing a game with so many at once would be amazing. Grand Theft Auto, every person in the game is real, not a single NPC... Bake me some of that cake, please.

---

I don't think many people would want to be the ones you run over. :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Roto13

Another thing is that I don't like the idea of paying large amounts of money for something I don't get to have a physical copy of. If my WiiStation 1080 dies or gets stolen or something, I want all of my games to be readily available if I decide to replace it.

---

No problem because the games are not saved on the system but rather you would have an account with the company that will be streaming the game.

I for one like the physical media because if I want to play a game 20 years from now then I don't want to bank on that company still being alive and still have the game on their servers. Hell, I still mail in my IRS tax forms XD

Tell that to the Xbox 360. DRM ruins it. (I think that was going to be my third point. xP)

I'd suggest some kind of way for fans to burn games onto a cartridge or disc themselves, but that would probably result in piracy, unless they had these cartridges require the original system itself, but that would defeat the purpose.

Edit:

Quote:

---

Ian Bird, project leader for Cern’s high-speed computing project, said grid technology could make the internet so fast that people would stop using desktop computers to store information and entrust it all to the internet.

“It will lead to what’s known as cloud computing, where people keep all their information online and access it from anywhere,” he said.

---

NO.

Games are far too crunchy to consume. [/idiocy]

Yeah, this would be pretty cool.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LunarWeaver

Playing a game with so many at once would be amazing. Grand Theft Auto, every person in the game is real, not a single NPC... Bake me some of that cake, please.

---

It's what MMO's have been doing for the last decade. :p

Personally, I don't like the idea of an MMO without any NPC's at all. I always liked the idea of having a game where multiple people play the game together, rather than have multiple people make the game with various rules attached.

But then, that defeats the purpose of MMORPG's.

But back to this super fast Cerngrid, which I guess will be the new internet in the future. For communication purposes, don't you think they could combine that motion-sensing technology from a few threads ago and transfer the data collected using something such as this? Something I came up with was pretty silly, but still cool if you ask me.

Well, the motion sensor a depth image, right? And you know those needle-picture things, where if you push your hand in, it shows the shape of your hand indenting the needles on one side, and needles forming a protruding hand on the other? Well, what if that could be mechanically and digitally controlled? The data for the controls could be transferred over from the commanding PC (which is influenced by somebody's movements and other objects near him or her), then converted into something the machine understands on the other side of the world. I think it would be pretty neat, even if totally impractical. :p

Okay, I admit, the needle idea is pretty dumb, but moving things in real life rather than projecting a picture image of something seems like something more feasible than holographic, 3 Dimensional images being projected.