- by Ken "Chaobo" Serra
- Posted on June 6, 2012 @ 3:00 PST
At the Nvidia Conference at E3 2012, they showcased their upcoming cloud-gaming service, Nvidia GRID. In collaboration with Samsung and Gaikai, Nvidia aims to bring you the latest, most high-end games to ANY device through the next generation of cloud service and their demonstration was beyond what I expected from streaming your games using an outside provider. Could this be the end of actually NEEDING a high-end gaming computer if all you do is game? I know this isn’t a video game, but this right here is my “Best of E3 2012.”
Nvidia describes GRID as cloud gaming with “super low latency” and “fast streaming technology.” The demonstration was done playing Meteor Entertainment’s upcoming FPS mech-game, Hawken, on the highest settings using nothing but Samsung’s latest Smart TV connected to the internet through an Ethernet cable and loaded with the app required to access the Gaikai game library. The cloud device, utilizing two Kepler-based Nvidia GTX 690s, streamed the game from 10 miles away from the convention center and many players still experienced zero latency and input lag issues. Basically, a high-end game was played using nothing but a TV, the internet, a controller, and a data center that was 10 miles away… Say What!? The Ethernet cable just became the game console.
That’s unbelievable. I have been hearing that the future of games rested in cloud-service but I thought that would be quite a while from now. With Nvidia, it’s happening sooner than you think. They even say the service will work on ANY connected device, from your tablet to your smartphone, or even your fancy oven… Not that you’ll play anything on your oven. Perhaps I could stream high-quality MMOs onto an iphone one day.
What all this cost hasn’t been unveiled yet. The only required item is a connected device so if you plan to use only a TV, you may need a smart TV that has the ability to access the internet. Look below for the demonstration of GRID at E3!
[Video provided by legitreview & TheVerge]
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Looks good, but it's probably just like onlive in the way that people outside the US have no chance of getting it, like me, and my 2.5mbps connection and 12gb bandwidth.
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Unfortunately, I don't know if GRID will be truly available outside the US. They talked about their latency-enhancement technology saying that unless you have dial-up, your ping and response-time should still be really really good. Another big point Nvidia made was lowering your own ping to the server of the game. Not entirely sure how that'll work but the demonstration was rather impressive.
