June 8, 2011 - Los Angles, CA - At the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) held earlier this month, there were a number of significant new software titles released. These titles were debuted both on console platforms and also as on-line titles.
The Ubisoft press event had a number of new titles including the latest Tom Clancy Release Ghost Recon. The game is available both on the PC/PS3/Xbox360 console platforms as a disk based game, but also as a free to play on-line game. The On-line game is not the same storylines, and there is a linking between points/awards earned in both arenas to appear and be used in the other platform. This game is designed as a multi-player experience with required communications between the members to complete the activities. The multi-player game play supports in-network voice traffic in addition to the data content. The console systems, keep most of the game play local, and only transfer the motion commands to the net. The on-line version, however, has to transfer the graphics, sound and the voice communications. The estimate is that the game will require a network bandwidth of 1.5Mb down and 128K up for minimum operation. The optimum is 3Mb down and 256Kb to play multi-player. With voice, an additional 200K of up bandwidth is needed.
Vindictus Blackhammer Character
Nexon has released a new game called - Dragon Next. Once again it is a free to play MMO that now adds to their Vindictus and MapleStory gamming communities. Nexon supports a game currency model that allows for real money to purchase game currency to help enhance your position in the game. The games are quite visually intense, and have high resolution and detailed backgrounds as well as personnel details. In order to handle this detail, the product is architected to work with the H.264 codec with maximal efficiency. The code base also uses optimized data transport methods to allow the large data packets to transfer. The new result is a game that operates very comfortably in modest bandwidth (levels equal to 784Kb down and only 128K up needed). They typically have over 50K on-line players at a given time, and the response time and data bandwidth is very compatible with long term game play. The Dragon Next product utilizes the same technologies, and although the character base has a different style, the background and game play is similar to Vinductus.
Dragon Nest Forest Background
Bethesda introduced several new games - Skyrim, Prey2 and Rage. These console targeted products (Xbox & PS3) have undergone extensive redesign to improve the quality of play and image realism/detail over previous versions. As the consoles have not changed their hardware base for a while, the company took efforts to create new display technologies for the game to enhance the user experience as their story lines progress. The games now occupy a increased code base on the distribution disks. They did not have any bandwidth specification for playing the on-line accompanied version as the new games are not released yet.
A new method for gaming is available from OnLive. This site allows rental and full purchase of games that are located in a cloud based engine. The portal allows for game play directly on internet enabled TVs, tablets, and other light compute devices without the need for a console. The games available are 720p or 720i down-sampled versions of the full console games, released typically within 30 days of the media release. The service allows for mobile use and traveling gaming with just the micro-console TV adapter and the wireless controller.. A challenge for the game are the recommended bandwidth requirements - Internet Connection: 5 Mbps wired, Computer: Dual-core PCs, all Intel-based Macs and Screen Resolution: 1280x720. For extended game play, the access to this bandwidth will be a problem in some locations, which will effect the QOE of the game play. Most home environments will have network traffic (facebook games, streaming video download, etc) that will disrupt the high bandwidth requirements of the gaming system.
The high level of TCP/IP based bandwidth consumption is a major technical issue that has to bee addressed by the gaming community. The infrastructure build-out is not up to the same release schedule as the game products, and the game schedules are not slowing down.
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