Crytek CEO: Streaming Games A Promising Venture, But Not Viable Until 2013

[x3sphere]

In midst of all the hubbub surrounding OnLive, an ambitious technology that promises to stream PC games over a network in a VNC-like fashion, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli has stated that he does not believe such an initiative will be viable until -- wait for it -- 2013. This belief comes after careful research and development on such a venture, which concluded in 2007.[blockquote2]We had our research in 2005 on this subject but we stopped around 2007 because we had doubts about economics of scale. But that was at a time when bandwidth was more expensive.

We saw that by 2013 - 2015 with the development of bandwidths and household connections worldwide that it might become more viable then.[/blockquote2]Yerli further stated that the success of such a service will largely be dependent upon the technology of cable and broadband providers. He also said Crytek themselves were not in talks with OnLive, despite Crysis being used in various tech demos as a showcase of the service during GDC.

The OnLive service will launch in beta form later this winter.

Crytek: Streaming games service viable in 2013 [GI.biz]

 

[mortalinstincts]

But then wouldn't the service have to be cheap enough?

Because if it isn't wouldn't people rather go and buy a graphics card instead of spending on a really fast broadband connection and then on a monthly/yearly cherge from OnLive?

 

[solarnoise]

This is a joke... oh, I'm sure they "researched" and found it to not be "viable"... you know what? We ALL know how much of a deal Cryotek struck with hardware vendors when Crysis and Warhead came out.

All kinds of companies were hyping "Crysis-ready PC's" and marketing got people to buy GPU upgrades they didn't need because the cards were said to "run Crysis at high settings".

I think Cryotek is just tying to play down the possibilities of a cloud service.

You know what? I'm fine with Wii-level resolutions with my average 2mb connection if it means I don't have to drop a thousand bucks on PC upgrades every couple years.