CONSIDERATIONS FOR A REAL TIME BROADBAND DELIVERED INTERACTIVE GAMING SERVICE Charles H. Jablonski VP Operations, OnLive Inc Abstract Introduction The march of enabling technology and the Real Time graphics intensive applications, continued improvement in broadband such has “first person shooter games” have connectivity and availability have enabled presented challenges in being server/cloud many services and products to be delivered to based because of the inherent roundtrip end consumers and enterprises as various latencies. compressed data and media files. The success of services such as video on demand and This paper will describe an approach that “ultra” high speed broadband are well known provides the ability not only to deliver real and their effects have caused consumer tastes time games but also that is able to deliver any and expectation to evolve accordingly. graphics intensive application over existing broadband infrastructure. In few short years linear packaged media has evolved from a shrink wrap retail point of The approaches taken to provide the sale product to a anywhere, anytime, almost necessary low latency compression, server any device availability. At times the business and data center architecture, integrating into issues have been far more daunting that the exiting carrier and ISP data infrastructures as technological, but one undisputed fact is that well as the impacts of “last mile” ISP (DSL the consumer continues to be more and Cable) considerations as well as the demanding and the expectations of required performance of the date delivery, availability, selection, schedule and packet loss and jitter specifications of the independence increases. infrastructure. Further the same technologies that have An approach using existing PC/Mac client enabled these distribution advances have lead for delivery of the service to end consumers to a far greater availability of consumer will be also be described as well as a small unilateral and multilateral consumptions stand alone low cost (<$30) terminal adapter platforms (PCs, Net books, Tablets, Portable that connects a consumer television directly to Devices) and the ability to imbed the a internet connection to enable game play. functionality into broader consumer platforms, and inexpensive stand alone The system allows a variety game content, devices. media and enterprise application to also be provisioned and delivered over the same One of the last frontiers remaining is true infrastructure. real time interactive consumer experiences in the home, using inexpensive and available end devices, that are provisions by centralized . “cloud based” systems. In these applications, such as gaming, the consumer experience 2010 Spring Technical Forum Proceedings - Page 62 cannot be fulfilled unless the challenges of where the initial developer and published latency, quality and availability using cloud receiving none of that incremental revenue. based systems and broadband networks are Some high end titles are resold and used 4-5 met. times (as evidenced by registrations to the publishers). OnLive is one such system, and it is believed the first among many that will be This “quantized” method of sale also taking advantage of the broadband makes incremental releases, episodic, infrastructure to widely deliver these upgrades extremely problematical in the interactive real time applications. games market. Although there is a strong online community and infrastructure its broad Business Issues and Consumer Expectations use is limited to small add-ons, consumer social features test and chat. What few online As with any good technological sales mechanisms in existence they either innovation, there must be an underlying suffer from extremely long and large business reason to support the development downloads, or they are very limited in their and implementation and the implementation catalog of current first release titles. must be compelling enough for all parties to embrace it. Science experiments, although Typically software publishers receive less intellectually fulfilling, must have the support than 50% of the MSRP at the retailer point of and resources of a real business problem to sale. Clearly there is room for improvement in evolve into broad and accepted use. the economics of the existing system. Now, when one examines the exiting consumer The gaming industry, although a large experience for high end interactive games, mature business (>$50B annually worldwide), that picture has room for improvement as the distribution of the end product to well. consumers has been dominated by retail point of sale. Even though the economics of game Typically a consumer has to spend $500 development resemble other media (high (in early cycle) on a proprietary closed development costs, intensive consumer gaming console, that by definition and promotion and advertising, short selling practice will require replacement in 3-5 years, season and short initial release life) the actual purchase games at retail, sometimes having to end distribution is the last unfulfilled digital wait in line or just wait for availability of a delivery for modern media. hot game, spend additional monies to participate in a social network for that Typically many scores of millions are console. The other choice is to purchase an spend developing a game, a few score spent in extremely high end PC (>$5000) and suffer advertising its release, and then the selling the same issues acquiring the games and season is typically a few weeks before the software. holidays. This is all delivered through shrink wrap product that is sold through retail Naturally with retail purchase model the distribution channels. These channels suffer end consumer may not have immediate access from various impeded costs (duplication, to new “hot” games, and be in the position on distribution, platform fees, retailer margins) as not knowing the game experience until it has well as theft, returns and “spoilage”. Also been purchased brought home, installed and since the end product is in the consumers used. hands piracy is a constant battle, and >30% of the games are resold through the used market 2010 Spring Technical Forum Proceedings - Page 63 As with the publisher side of the equation, availability of new release games from this systems is ripe for a disruptive change various publishers. and consumers continue to expect to enjoy Up until now, the key limitation in existing real time availability and experience of all technologies has been the latency of real time other digital media, an online, cloud based video compression systems. These existing gaming system that addresses these business technologies (JPEG, MPEG et.al.) have either and consumer needs can be a commercial required bandwidth only available on large success. corporate LANs, or required many milliseconds to compress real time images. The Consumer Experience (Typically game play requires <100ms of response time to be effective in competitive In order for a server based, cloud served game play) system to be successful; it must meet or exceed the existing experience expectations The OnLive Platform for current consoles and PCs. What does that incorporate? The following is a brief description of the OnLive platform: One the image quality must be the same. That requires the ability to render, in real When the user performs an action on a time, high definition, high frame rate images. computer or TV connected to OnLive (e.g. The response time for the system, using presses a button on controller or moves a readily available controllers, must be fast mouse) that action is sent up through the enough not to limit the game play because of internet to an OnLive data center and routed lag or latency, a large amount of amount to a server that is running the game the user is devices must be available and supported, be playing (or the application the user is using— deployable on existing PCs or Macs, it must since the interactive demands for video games be extendable to a large screen display device are generally higher, remote video game (i.e. TV), be enabled and installed simply over operations will be primarily described in the exiting broadband infrastructure, afford social following paragraphs, but these discussions infrastructure and features and have wide are entirely applicable to remote application operations). OnLive Platform 2010 Spring Technical Forum Proceedings - Page 64 The game computes the next video frame Mac, a cell phone, or a cable TV set-top box, based on that action, then a proprietary chip introduces a certain amount of latency (i.e. compresses the video from the server very lag) from the point you perform an action and quickly, and the user’s PC, Mac or OnLive you see the result of that action on the screen. MicroConsole™ decompresses the video and Sometimes the lag is very noticeable (e.g. on displays the new frame of video on the user’s some TV set-top boxes it takes over a second computer display or TV set. The entire round to move a selection box in a program guide). trip, from the point the button is pressed to the Sometimes it isn’t noticeable (e.g. if you have point the display or TV is updated is so fast a well-designed game running on fast that, perceptually, it appears that the screen is hardware, and pressing the fire button results updated instantly and that the game is actually in what appears to an instantaneous display on running locally. your screen of the your gun firing). When the user performs an action on a But, it’s important to note that, even when computer or TV connected to OnLive (e.g. your brain perceives game response to be presses a button on controller or moves a “instantaneous”, there is always a certain mouse) that action is sent up through the amount of latency from the point you perform internet to an OnLive data center and routed an action and your display shows the result of to a server that is running the game the user is that action.