The type of game does matter here. I could see a turn based game (like Civilization) being playable with a second or two of latency. It would be annoying, but it wouldn't render the game unplayable. On the other hand, I don't see action games being playable with such latency; I wouldn't want to play something like Shovel Knight or Crimzon Clover with noticeable latency (especially the latter which is hard enough without it).

Yes, thanks :) That was the name.

*drags onlives disfigured carcass in front of the crowd* THIS is what happens if you offer games as streams only!

I'm sure it would go over quite well with the modding community.

Fuck game streaming. This message has been brought to you by people who actually want to own their shit. :)

Whew! It seems game streaming is not taking off anytime soon. Anyhow, doesn't look it's very possible for quite awhile, as already, you can hear lots of complains about people's internet connections being very slow, data-capped, shaky and just not good in general. It might be something to worry about when internet infrastructure the world over, including suburb areas, are somehow brought up to line speed.

If it happens, all I've got to say is that I'll be ready for this particular apocalypse as my laptop and external HDD is loaded with DRM-free games to keep me busy.

Our wallets will decide.

It won't necessarily be all streaming either, could be partial streaming like Diablo 3 (AFAIK). It still gives the control to the publishers that they want, but gives an illusion to the customer that he bought a copy of the game.

Going all-streaming for gaming is tricky also for the service provider, as they have to provide masses of computing power for that gaming experience, plus bandwidth too. The "PS4 playing streamed PS3 games" is particularly interesting because PS4 is a relatively high-performing gaming device, yet it is used for streaming games that are from the earlier generation (ie. less power hungry). It is kinda like all that power of the PS4 goes totally wasted there.

Usually streaming gaming is rationalized by that then you don't need that powerful machine anymore, playing even the latest and greatest AAA games. Like, playing AAA PC games on a low-powered Android tablet, or how I played Batman: AA or Saints Row: The Third on an old Lenovo ThinkPad T400 laptop with OnLive (T400 couldn't possibly run those games locally at all, far too weak and old laptop). Hence, the Playstation example feels more like playing old DOSBox games streamed on a high-powered PC. Kinda ass-backwards.

The funny thing is that whenever I attend any cloud computing trainings or whatever, they always give a very positive view on it, how great it will be in the future when everything related to computing etc. is provided as services, not products/licenses. They present it as a fact that that is where the world is heading, no way around it. They don't specifically talk about gaming, but I guess it is included there too.

I've tried to explain the dangers of streaming to people, but some don't seem to get... or maybe they're just corporate yesmen. Things people should ask iare questions like:

How fit are cloud servers to handle DDOS attacks?
What happens when something gets pulled from a streaming service like how Netflix removes movies and P.T. is no longer available for download on PS4?
I'm sure more questions can be thought of if you think about them.

The idea of "cloud gaming" has been around for a while though, and Sony aren't the first to implement it. OnLive have already been mentioned, and there was also Gaikai - both of which were acquired by Sony and the latter's technology is what drives Playstation Now (according to Wikipedia).

1. "it's in the cloud (and since it's not on actual machines, but in the cloud, which is everywhere at once, magically, it can't be brought down)"
2. "I don't care about having my stuff around in ten years, I want it now and will likely forget about it within a month"

Yeah...

I'm not very impressed with streaming. To be perfectly honest it seems like a cop-out, since it relies on many things, including the person having internet as well as high quality internet that won't die in the middle of it, and low latency. The sheer amount of data you'll transfer to stream the game will heavily outweigh actually downloading the whole thing and using an emulator or running locally.

Considering companies are quite happy to leave internet speeds/quality as they are since they have the monopoly in the US, i don't expect things to move to stream-only, not any time soon anyways.

1.) Let me rephrase that. If someone decides to DDOS Netflix when you were wanting to watch something from it, you wouldn't be able to watch Netflix until the issue is resolved, would you?

2.) Just because you might not want it in ten years doesn't mean no one else does. I got my cousins a few seasons of Are You Afraid of the Dark? for Christmas. They were unsure about it at first, but they did seem to like it after they watched some episodes. If the series was disposed of after the series finale, they wouldn't have gotten a chance to enjoy them.

DDOSing a proper CDN (like Netflix should be using) is not such an easy endeavor. We are talking Spamhaus or Cloudflare like incidents, which were at 300 and 400 Gbps (pre-post edit: this year's BBC DDOS was at 602 Gbps).
Still, depending on where you are at, and which servers are getting DDOS, you may be able to watch Netflix without any issues, assuming a proper CDN is in place.

Ah, it would be a problem, if it wasn't for the fact that ISPs aren't regulated enough, and as such they can gouge users by forcing them to pay 60 for 5/1 Mbit connections. But since Comcast hasn't been taken over by a socialist government coup, you don't have to fear about game streaming even being a viable platform.

I believe streaming and cloud computing is the future. It gives big companies a lot of control which suits them and it gives customers cheaper (albeit a lot more limited) entertainment, which in turn suits them. It's also generally a lot more economic - every consumer essentially has a receiver as opposed to a computing powerhouse for their games (that applies to consoles too, not just PCs) and when 100 people want to play Undertale, it's not 100 powerful computers doing the work - it's like 2 future uber-servers instead. At the end of the day, when internet connection around the globe gets faster and more reliable, computing will move to cloud and I don't believe there's anything we can do about it (nor am I entirely certain we should)

That being said, I'll hold onto my old-school local stuff tooth and nail. I love modding, I love messing with game files when its possible, I love being able to install a game which is 15 years old and have it running from the original media. I have more options with my software and more power over what happens with it. I'm kinda slowly getting used to the idea that it might not remain like this and my grandkids will point and laugh at me saying "Behold the ancient pant, still having a computer-tech! Termies are soo much more kroxome!" (damn kids and their future slang)