With all the talk recently of Onlive, and online game streaming service. It had me thinking that since Microsoft was rumoured to be releasing a new camera type peripheral that perhaps it could be used to run an entire OS which is run on virtual machines on their Live servers.

If someone buys an Xbox 360 for $200 and buys games and plays offline or subscribes to Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Live Windows for say $100 per year it still ends up being a source of profit for them one way or another.

Virtualising game processes and virtualising an entire operating system are two completely different things. You could run dozens of instances of Windows on a single server blade, and the operation itself isn't nearly as latency dependant. Nor do each Windows instance require much CPU time to keep operating in general use by the end user. It also gives them a way to develop their server architecture in case they do end up wanting to follow the Onlive route and stream games as well.

In the end its a possible source of massive profits, it locks people in to the Xbox brand and entices a much wider market to consider buying a console. They have the means, the incentive and the opportunity to pull this off. I think its just a matter of time before we get an announcement.

Microsoft is definitely heading the services route in a big way. They just completed one of the biggest CDNs in the world for their services, aka Live, Virtual Earth, and their Cloud OS. If bandwidth can make a leap, M$ will be in a good position to deliver a compelling streaming service for gaming. They have the brand and the infrastructure already in place to allow them to capitalize on this avenue. No other gaming company is in a position to quickly deliver and dominate a service such as this. Maybe Blizzard or Valve, but even their infrastructures are minuscule compared to the network that M$ just rolled out.

As for the camera, I think it will definitely be used for more than gaming. But the scope of functionality that the 360 offers at this time doesn't give much other use besides gaming. You could start up the box and scroll through the NXE to a Netflix movie or something without even having to get out of your chair, but unless they offer a browser or some other functionality, the use of the peripheral will probably be limited to gaming. And I am not sure how I feel about playing a game without a controller, unless they plan on combining the two, and that might be a little weird.

Once M$ gets all of their disparate groups that develop services together into one cohesive whole, it will be hard to top. Also, I hope they offer a combined subscription for Zune and Xbox Live.

But what if I installed Crisis on that virtualized OS? The lag would be unbearable. And if you say I can't install games, then what use do I really have for the OS?

Cloud is still years off. US bandwith restrictions don't help anything, and there is still noticeable "lag" in inputs, especially fighting games. Maybe in 10+ years but not right now, especially from MS because their #1 source of revenue is still the US market.

If anything next gen they will be pushing towards a steam like process and I wouldn't be surprised in two consoles from now if everything is digital, as much as I don't want to see it happen at least it will save me shelf space I guess.

Slimebeast said: But what if I installed Crisis on that virtualized OS? The lag would be unbearable. And if you say I can't install games, then what use do I really have for the OS?

The OS is in the cloud. All that would be needed would be maybe some memory to cache frequent information and a video output and input handling. But this is not necessarily the only way to do things. Perhaps a happy medium where the server farms generate some very compressed precise instructions for the GPU that is housed in client hardware to execute and display. It is definitely the future, but the implementation will probably be different than we have heard of so far.

JaggedSac said: Microsoft is definitely heading the services route in a big way. They just completed one of the biggest CDNs in the world for their services, aka Live, Virtual Earth, and their Cloud OS. If bandwidth can make a leap, M$ will be in a good position to deliver a compelling streaming service for gaming. They have the brand and the infrastructure already in place to allow them to capitalize on this avenue. No other gaming company is in a position to quickly deliver and dominate a service such as this. Maybe Blizzard or Valve, but even their infrastructures are minuscule compared to the network that M$ just rolled out. As for the camera, I think it will definitely be used for more than gaming. But the scope of functionality that the 360 offers at this time doesn't give much other use besides gaming. You could start up the box and scroll through the NXE to a Netflix movie or something without even having to get out of your chair, but unless they offer a browser or some other functionality, the use of the peripheral will probably be limited to gaming. And I am not sure how I feel about playing a game without a controller, unless they plan on combining the two, and that might be a little weird. Once M$ gets all of their disparate groups that develop services together into one cohesive whole, it will be hard to top. Also, I hope they offer a combined subscription for Zune and Xbox Live.

CDN? What does that mean? Has their server infrastructure increased substantially, if thats what you're saying?

Anyway the reason why I thought that a camera will be useful for doing OS work is considering the type of 3d depth camera they will likely deploy they could probably have the accuracy to type which has been the main draw back for trying to do computing with a TV based operating system. If the rumours are true they may even deploy it now and then integrate their service into some brands of TV, because there really seems to be a push towards integration and their service could probably leg up every other competitor simply by being called Windows.

 

 

Squilliam said: JaggedSac said: Microsoft is definitely heading the services route in a big way. They just completed one of the biggest CDNs in the world for their services, aka Live, Virtual Earth, and their Cloud OS. If bandwidth can make a leap, M$ will be in a good position to deliver a compelling streaming service for gaming. They have the brand and the infrastructure already in place to allow them to capitalize on this avenue. No other gaming company is in a position to quickly deliver and dominate a service such as this. Maybe Blizzard or Valve, but even their infrastructures are minuscule compared to the network that M$ just rolled out. As for the camera, I think it will definitely be used for more than gaming. But the scope of functionality that the 360 offers at this time doesn't give much other use besides gaming. You could start up the box and scroll through the NXE to a Netflix movie or something without even having to get out of your chair, but unless they offer a browser or some other functionality, the use of the peripheral will probably be limited to gaming. And I am not sure how I feel about playing a game without a controller, unless they plan on combining the two, and that might be a little weird. Once M$ gets all of their disparate groups that develop services together into one cohesive whole, it will be hard to top. Also, I hope they offer a combined subscription for Zune and Xbox Live. CDN? What does that mean? Has their server infrastructure increased substantially, if thats what you're saying? Anyway the reason why I thought that a camera will be useful for doing OS work is considering the type of 3d depth camera they will likely deploy they could probably have the accuracy to type which has been the main draw back for trying to do computing with a TV based operating system. If the rumours are true they may even deploy it now and then integrate their service into some brands of TV, because there really seems to be a push towards integration and their service could probably leg up every other competitor simply by being called Windows.

CDN is a content delivery network.  It is basically a bunch of nodes deployed in a way that the consumer's network traffic does not have to travel far no matter where they are.  My company has our own servers located on the east coast of America, so we use the services of a CDN to aleviate the customers from having to go all the way to our servers for every request.  So someone on the west coast would hit the CDN servers for a lot of the request.  Akamai is a company that sells their CDN services to companies, but M$ has their own network.  They recently upgraded their network and it is one of the biggest in the world.  They did this for their new Cloud services, Live, and also Virtual Earth.

Yeah, if this motion detector is good, I can definitely see them adding this to lots of things.  I can definitely see clapping to turn on the 360, and flipping my hands around to get to some content I want to see.  If put in tvs it could be used to change channels, raise the volume, mute, and pretty much map a hand gesture(one that would be relevant to the request) for every button of a remote.  Hell, we could all be John Maddens and draw lines over paused images.  I definitely see a use for a non controller motion detector, but at this point I am not looking to kindly upon its gaming uses.  Seems kinda silly watching people drive a car with just their hands.  Although, I guess I could just make my own fake wheel.