Consoles have a lifespan of 5 years. The current generation is 6 years
old. There are rumours that production of the GPU's for the new
generation has started in asia. So the new consoles can come in 2013.
Theres also a rumour that these new consoles will require internet to
download games. These games can weigth 9 to 20 GB. That may be 30
million users in USA, maybe 50 worldwide.
The question is:
Can internet in USA support that? Call of Duty 15 releases may 2014
and 30 million gamers start downloading a 20 GB files. Would the
internet collapse like a house of cards?.
If not, will be internet USA ready for the next next generation? ( 2018 ).
Can internet in USA support that? Call of Duty 15 releases may 2014
and 30 million gamers start downloading a 20 GB files. Would the
internet collapse like a house of cards?.
not a problem. the vast majority of the states is like a developing
country [0], the last mile is pretty much a tin can and a string. so
this will effectively throttle the load.
It seems ridiculous thought, considering you can literally find PS2 today
in Siberia in a tent behind generator in a middle of nowhere, with
seemingly legally acquired titles.
Without having any data to back this up, I'm going to claim significant
portion of revenue is generated by late adopters in emerging markets.
Theres also a rumour that these new consoles will require internet to
download games.
Apply some logic here - is it in the vendor's best interests to *require*
internet to download games? As somebody else pointed out, there's an awful lot
of current-gen consoles in tents in Mongolia and farmhouses in Montana - do you
want to make a product that those people can't buy and use *at all*?
There's also a large segment of the gaming community that will, in fact, be
rather upset if you take away the ritual of camping out in front of GameStop.
Can internet in USA support that? Call of Duty 15 releases may 2014
and 30 million gamers start downloading a 20 GB files. Would the
internet collapse like a house of cards?.
I'll go out on a limb and say that neither Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo are stupid
enough to release the sort of console your rumors predict until after the guys
at NetFlix have made it safe for them to do so.
Here's your baseline: Sony Vita. They already tossed the UMD out with the PSP-GO and that failed miserably. Now they are trying again to go to digital only with the Vita. It's not the scale of PS3 or XBOX360 but it may be a good way to gauge the potential success of the concept.
The PS Vita still uses a proprietary memory card format, so it's not just
download only.
The best example of download only would be OnLive, which basically is a game
system that only delivers on demand games.
IMHO, it's the market that will determine whether this is the right choice
in the long run.
It's a creative way to eliminate the used market and stop piracy, but if the
consumers don't join up like the PSP Go, it will eventually fail.
Sincerely,
Eric Tykwinski
TrueNet, Inc.
P: 610-429-8300
F: 610-429-3222
Now we are venturing OT but I thought the format was proprietary but you still had to get the content on the memory via the glorious Internet? Are you saying I can go to Gamestop and buy a stick with whatever game I'm looking for? Is that the plan?
From what I've read, the XBOX 720 is still going to have traditional distribution but also including online purchasing (think Steam). The goal is to go with a key system to play the game. I think the idea you will be able to register the game via phone, or other means as well. However, their idea is to rid the world of the secondary market of used games.
It doesn't have to. Look at Steam on the PC, where digital distribution has been the norm for years (I literally can't remember the last physical copy PC game I purchased). Preorder a game and it gets preloaded in an encrypted form days to weeks in advance of release. On release day, the content is simply activated, you get the key, your PC decrypts it, and you go play.
On a well designed digital distribution system the release second traffic spike should be a lot less than you'd think.
I don't know if the box uses any different settings, but using the Windows client on my PC with quality maxed just now I saw a consistent 5.35mbit/sec during action sequences and fast-paced cutscenes, much less of course in menus and such.
I don't see a problem with supporting this. As other posters have said, any congestion that results from this would likely be concentrated at or near 'the last mile' - the downloader's location or the download server's location. Even then, the result would be that it takes longer to download the game data - not a total meltdown. Also, while there would very likely be a big rush to download Call of Duty 15 the millisecond it's released, it's not likely that every one of those 30 million gamers will do that at the same time. I would hope that Microsoft/Sony/other major game producers do some sort of geographic disribution of their downloads, or use one of the several CDNs that are available, if those logistics can be worked out.
Just curious to know at what bandwidth big ISP's like AT&T, Verizon,
Level3, Cogent etc are operating? Are all at or above 40Gbps core bandwidth?
Probably a mix of 10G, 40G and 100G as appropriate. By 2014, that might tilt more heavily toward 40G and 100G. From what I've seen, most peering connections at public IXPs are one or more 10G links. Private peering connections could certainly be higher, if the providers at both ends feel it makes good business sense.
This is already very normal (tens of millions of people doing this).
World of Warcraft, RIFT, and Star Wars: The Old Republic, etc. are all
around 20G of downloads. Sure they have boxed versions, but after you
install them they need another 10G of patches to download (looking at you,
Blizzard).
The majority of players buy the digital download (instant gratification).
Some companies, like Blizzard, have even created streaming game clients
that prioritizes what is downloaded to get people playing right away.
Well, those are the numbers we can see from a single transceiver (right now
mostly 10G and some 40G right now, and 100G on its way); but most of the
big players are using multiples of these with DWDM and link aggregation.
I'd say the actual numbers are closer to 680G average right now, per path.
