[PresidentLeever]

When do you think this will happen, in what form and what would you pay?

Edit: Sorry, wrong board. Can't delete apparently.

For those who don't know, Spotify is a music streaming service with a huge library and a pretty low subscription price (10$ a month, or free but with frequent ads and more limited interface)

[jink640]

This is already a thing i think. Its called "Playstation now".  It streams games to your console.

[PresidentLeever]

Yeah, I just learned about it as I asked at the GOG forum too and was met with.. a lot of skepticism 

PS Now seems like it could be cool in the future. What I'm talking about is a cheaper alternative with games from the entire history of gaming, and the option to still buy each game on it.

[Chronosplit]

You mean OnLive?  No, plus it's dead now.

I can see how one would be skeptic of it.  Streaming games like that in general with no download option is pretty high up on the "DRM-o-meter," because at least Steam and the like let you play offline and have the game on your computer.  Even worse as we learned from OL, once it's gone it's gone and your money is flushed down some rich guy's golden toilet.

[PresidentLeever]

No, I don't mean OnLive, and there would be an option for downloading. At around VC-ish prices I suppose.

[MegaManJuno]

nVidia is doing something similar with the Shield devices with the GeForce Now streaming for PC games.

Personally, I just stream my own PC library to the TV on the Shield console for those time's I'd rather be in the living room with a supported PC game. Aside from the nVidia in-home streaming, you have the Moonlight app which is based on the nVidia one, and the Steam Link device streaming (never messed with one of these, so no clue how it fares).


As for PSNow, wasn't this basically built on tech from when they bought out Gakai (or something like that), which I think was similar to OnLive?

[PresidentLeever]

I've heard Gakai mentioned in one of the YT vids that I checked, but I've also not heard any complaints about lag or noticeably worse graphics. Just the pricing.
The sound, while worse, seems to be around mp3 quality. That's based on one vid of one game though.

[FAST6191]

https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games
https://archive.org/details/internetarcade

That is probably the form it would take, also games built from the ground up for it.

Streaming from a renderfarm somewhere is just too latency prone. Maybe if they stuck things in a cabinet or exchange but I am not sure how that might play out for little old games.

[PresidentLeever]

Interesting, so that's a us government server? When I tried Outrun it ran at a ~3 frames per second and with a lot of lag. But I'm in Scandinavia.

Tried PoP and it didn't work, then SF2 and it was also very slow.

I thought the DOS games would be downloadable too when they're public domain?

Not sure what you mean by cabinet or exchange.

Edit: Apparently these sites have free, legal DOS downloads: www.dosgames.com , www.dosgamesarchive.com and www.dosgamesonline.com

[FAST6191]

Not sure what the archive.org people's organisation is these days. It was mainly a javascript emulator from what I saw and that was the form I reckoned it would/will take. Equally I don't think they are public domain as much as licensed for streaming/browser play from the site.

When the internet gets distributed about the place it gets subdivided several times between the internet backbones and your house. Various streaming, content delivery network, caching servers and even the isps themselves have stuck computers in the cabinets at the end of your street or the bigger exchanges located about each town/city so as to avoid loading down the backbones or shorter links. In games I think Valve/Steam had a few things, and some of the game streaming things had something too for some places. Outside that Netflix and Comcast had some good stuff, though if you go looking it will probably mainly get back the net neutrality thing. Either way though while those might have been more concerned with bandwidth they have the added bonus of reducing lag if done properly because it is closer, see also why computer storage land next to stock market exchanges is ridiculously expensive.

[PresidentLeever]

I base the PD claim on what the admins of this site say: http://www.dosgames.com/forum/about3851.html

Is this part of the internet archive site also legal? https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom

And does it stream well for anyone here?

[STARWIN]

My understanding is that the internet archive is as legal as various abandonware sites, and less legal than RHDN.

[PresidentLeever]

Sterling weighs in (07:02): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85fILN_m5pg&feature=youtu.be