When Will We Get Cloud Deployment of 3D Worlds? When Gaikai & OnLive Get Big (If They Ever Do)

Gaikai, the game demo cloud-streaming service, just entered into a major deal with Walmart, the gargantuan retail chain, which is good news for anyone waiting for virtual worlds on the cloud. Last November, Linden Lab tested Second Life deployed on Gaikai (screencap above) shortly after Blue Mars did a similar cloud-streaming demo using another service. Since then, however, we haven't heard much about cloud deployment from this space, even though it's a great solution to 3D worlds' high barriers to entry (hardware, installation, etc.)

So when will we get immersive 3D worlds on the cloud? I haven't heard anything official from either Linden Lab or Blue Mars' Avatar Reality since then, but I have talked with a lot of techs who know way more about cloud streaming than me. Based on those conversations, my thinking is this:

Cloud deployment is currently too expensive to use for a free-to-play 3D world, and so the service will first need to gain a larger audience, which will in turn drive per-user deployment costs down.

That's why Gaikai's Walmart deal is so significant. Up until now, while the tech industry has shown a lot of enthusiasm for cloud computing in general, the two major consumer-level services, Gaikai and OnLive, haven't shown much traction. Check out this Google Trends chart, tracking "Gaikai" and "OnLive", versus "cloud computing":

Now OnLive gained a lot of interest when it was first announced in 2009 (including from me), but since then, I haven't heard much about user numbers or revenue for the service, which aims to be a cheap-but-quality alternative to Xbox 360 and PS3. (And OnLive's site traffic is negligible.) I think Microsoft Kinect has helped 360 maintain its centrality to next gen consoles. And a developer friend recently made a very good point about next gen console users: Gamers have an incentive to keep buying boxed games at retail, because they can get part of their money back by re-selling the game to GameStop or via another re-sale option. That's partly why gamers haven't shown much interest in OnLive, which aims to do away with boxed games entirely.

So watch for what happens with Gaikai's Walmart deal goes, and for OnLive customer growth. The more users they gain, the more interest investors will show in cloud-deployed 3D interactive entertainment. The more revenue and investment we see in cloud deployment, the cheaper cloud streaming will become on a per-user basis. Then and only then, in my view, will Second Life get a second life on the cloud.

Comments

[Scarp Godenot]

Isn't decond life by definition already in the cloud?

[Nalates Urriah]

Linden Lab could offer a cloud based app to a new level of member. We only have Free and Pro accounts. They could offer Gold accounts that have a could based app for smart phones.

Some of the smart phone apps in use with SL now are amazing expensive.

As time passes and the cost of cloud based apps decreases cost of a Gold account could come down... naw.

[John Lopez]

The overloaded and overused term "cloud" in this case is referring to using remote computers to render the client and then to stream the video of that rendering to a viewer program that also allows mouse and keyboard to be fed back to the remote computer.

It is like playing a game over Remote Desktop, VNC or LogMeIn... except that it was optimized to do that so it actually works. The heavy lifting of the 3D rendering happens elsewhere, making your computer just a video playback and input source.

[Ananda]

Here's a question I haven't found an answer for yet, which you ought to ask these techies. Which consumes more bandwidth, streaming the content SL-style or streaming the continuous video feed? This'll tell you whether there's any long-term benefit to this "cloud" idea or not - it won't be that long before mobile computing devices catch up to the sort of graphical capabilities needed to run something like SL.

[Kat Lemieux]

As a previous commenter noted, SL is already "cloud based". What I'm waiting for is an iPad app that is a real client -- one where I can actually see and be seen in world, not just an enhanced chat tool. Surely there are developers out there who can do a real tablet client?