Is this the End of Gaming Hardware?

The purpose of Onlive is to eradicate the annual purchase of the latest hardware such as a Playstation or Xbox (the PS3 launched in the UK at a RRP of £425), reducing the cost of games by ‘renting’ games through the service, improving development cost and time for dev companies by only having to develop for one system, use a cloud service to offer ‘save games’, friends list, multiplayer and other social networking goodies.

During the development of OnLive, due out 17th of June 2010 (initially US only), specialists have raised several possible problems to such a system in our current technical environment. I will mention three of the largest problems facing the service and possibly leading to its downfall.

1 Internet speed

Or more accurately, internet latency. Game input data has to now travel from your wireless device (if using the micro consoles Wi-Fi controller), to the console, forwarded through your local network, to the server cloud a number of miles away. The server then runs the game code dependant on your actions, converts the display to a compressed video and sends the signal back to your micro console which then forwards the display to your television.

Bandwidth may now be large enough for HD video to stream down a broadband connection. However, the fear here is that the time between inputting a command to the game and seeing the results on screen, maybe too large for most gamers and hinder the experience. Considering that a lot of current gen games software alone lag at around 50ms, that doesn’t leave much overhead for further delays.

2 Server Horsepower

A single computer required to play today’s ‘hottest games’ would be a large expense for an individual. This new company is looking to purchase a huge array of servers, each machine capable of supporting multiple players simultaneously. Onlive have so far kept very quiet about their pricing structure and cost of installing their cloud. I personally will be very interested to see how low they can get their monthly subscription fee.

3 Image quality / data compression

Everyone today is talking about HD and this is no exception in the gaming market. Onlive, however offers sub-current generation output. Although Onlive does offer HD gaming, the compression needed to get the data through your broadband connection will affect the final output image in terms of quality.

However, with all that said, Onlive have demonstrated their system working at GDC last year within a ‘controlled environment’ using an external server to the building where games were being played. Also I am sure to excite our own Director of Search, Jon Earnshaw, by highlighting that the iPhone was also recently demonstrated playing Crysis via Onlive to a group of Columbia University students by Onlive founder, Steve Perlman. No doubt then that the service will smoothly transfer to the iPad.

Also BT has just purchased a 2.6% stake in the company, promising to host servers which would vastly reduce game latency.

Although with an Xbox 360 now costing just £160 RRP, will a service offering lower quality output, with slower game reaction speed really be able to compete?

Firstly, let me point out that I am not a Lost fan, I am still yet to sit through an entire episode and as a result was left bewildered this morning at the fact my colleague felt compelled to wake up at the crack of dawn on 24th May (on a Monday of all days) to watch the globally aired last ever episode at 5am – Then sit on a Lost Forum for another few hours.

After partaking in some universal questioning of his sanity, one thing has become clearer as the day has progressed…- I appear to be part of a minority on this one. If search traffic and trends are to be believed that is.

“Lost Forum” – high impact on Google search

‘Lost forum’ has risen to be the 35^th most popular search term in Google by lunch time on Monday, a phenomenal achievement and indicative of the vast online community this series has created over its 6 seasons:

Google trends data indicating search traffic during the past 24 hours (Pacific Daylight Time) for “Lost Forum”

This huge surge in online activity surrounding the last Lost episode is evident throughout Google  – when using Google Trends earlier a persistent theme was apparent in the Hot Searches from the USA.

Five of the ten results displayed here are centred around the Lost finale, even considerably eclipsing the news of a celebrity death. (that of Brittany Murphy’s husband)

A similar scenario occurs in Google Insights, this time concerning UK data, with searches for ‘Lost finale’ rising by a huge 200% today.

How has Google Performed for Lost?

So has Google delivered on this mass surge in Lost related searches, even after some slightly iffy search results recently? Let’s take a look at the Google UK (The Web) results using the first keyword term examined here, ‘Lost forum’:

Google searches for Lost

It appears Google has served the grieving Lost fans well with a 10 out of 10 for relevancy here in the Serps, though a slight slip with www.officiallost.com returning a rather unattractive ‘This account has been suspended” page. Bad luck to them for the biggest day in their history, and no page is available.

The forum www.4815162342.com appears to have been overcome by the surge in traffic today and as a result in temporarily unavailable, though many other returned results, such as www.losttalk.net and darkufo.blogspot.com, offer threads addressing theories, explanations and general counselling following the finale of Lost.

Overall a good job from Google here (if not so much the returned sites in some cases), allowing a global nation of Lost fans to mourn as one as yet another long-running series goes to the great box set in the sky.

Lost – Long Term positions in Google

P.s. To see who else has been benefitting from this traffic surge results from January 1^st to the present (24/5/10) are illustrated below for the term ‘Lost’:

Article By Kim Shepherd

More popular than a cool pint of shandy on a bank holiday Monday, Twitter was positioned by many as the best thing that had ever happened to the Internet. There is no denying the fact that it is popular, very popular, with around 1 million user in mid-February.

We Love Twitter…

Everyone was using it and every single article and TV show seemed to be mentioning it. There was Barack Obama famously using it to win the US presidential election. The cleverest man in the UK, Stephen Fry was telling his 100,000s of followers about his travels, oh how we laughed. And then there was Oprah. Infact the “Oprah effect” on Twitter, as TechCrunch suggested, encouraged more than one million people to sign, and Hitwise said it led to a 43% spike in Twitter traffic. Plus many many more celebs (Shaq, Wolverine, Russel Brand, Jonathan Ross and my favourite Jeremy Paxman, got involved).

We Hate Twitter…

Now just a few months later, we have a bit of a morning after feeling and embarrassing hangover. President Obama didn’t write anything for weeks after he won, this great marketing machine seemed to stop once people had spent their vote. The Oprah effect too may have brought people online, with a massive 850,000 followers Oprah has managed just 29 updates after she first posted – The chat show hostess is now reportedly bored of Twitter.

Twitter is Boring – The Facts

These hard-hitting celebs are not the only ones who think Twitter is a bit like Ricky Martin. Apparently most people see it as a short-lived craze, enticing and the centre to everyone’s conversation at first, then a bit of a one-trick pony later. Twitter’s traffic is not as good as first thought, numbers are high but people are not getting into it. Apparently a Nielsen study has shown that 60% of Twitterers don’t return after the first month of joining.

Apparently at this current rate, Nielsen say that Twitter will only reach about 10% of online customers. – Something that probably needs to be told to the plethora of salesmen frequenting the said website.

Twitter still very popular and lots of traffic

Twitter may be like a large room of lots of people shouting and not a huge amount listening, but whatever we think, there is still many people turning up to have a yell. But if Twitter traffic is slipping we shouldn’t blame Twitter for the tedium, we should blame the content providers – us.

Image of London in Google maps

Google Maps was the starting point for Google’s navigation based platform, allowing users to user either a map or satellite view of the terrain to explore areas, find locations, and locate businesses and more. As time went on the Maps platform expanded, offering more dynamic views of the earth, with interactive views, 3d imaging and terrain exploration.

Google’s next step was to allow webmasters to integrate Google maps with their websites, allowing the plotting of coordinates and customization of the maps.

The current step has now brought Google to creating the Street View platform which offers an incredibly detailed 3d view of streets using high quality imaging. You can explore in any way you wish, choose what road to go down, what junctions to take, zoom in on shops, even take a look at the people that have been captured leaving pubs, shops and much more.

It’s amazing to think that Google have managed to create the idea and put it into existence considering the sheer volume of places throughout the USA and the UK. The amount of storage needed for this huge volume of images would near an exobyte in size.

So what kinds of views are on offer?

Take a look at some of the famous UK landmarks with Google Street View, below is Big Ben

Big Ben in Google Street view

Here is a snapshot taken from Google Street View, this is one of the most famous landmarks in the UK and is found in central London.

When you are done exploring Big Ben, why not take a trip to Regent Street, London

Regents Street in Google Street view