https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeX38RD52-4

Ie, what if streaming games from publisher approved installs for us to play becomes the norm? Just think about the implications of this. We buy the game on their servers to play and they decide what happens to the files. We play off of streamed video and audio from their servers while they have total control over the files and the system on which it is actually installed.

I'm staying the fuck away from anything like this; and I think everyone would be right to do so.

I can think of a very good implication. People having high bandwidth, low latency internet access being the norm. Doesn't matter what we'll be using it for, game streaming does require an extremely good connection.

The linked video is almost two years old. Take a look at how much did the trend evolve in those two years.

They can implement region wise you know............ Not very much at all, but its worth discussing. I imagine some dev to dig it up as the ultimate answer to piracy or to ''provide games cheaper''. The principle of the thing is evil.

So? That would mean that at least some regions will have extremely good internet connections as the norm, and other regions will be asking for the same. Not sure how many countries can currently claim to have the required internet infrastructure, but I don't think there are that many.

Hm, may have to go take a look to see if I can find any such stats.

Edit: Best stats I could find (and the ones most people report) are from this report by Akamai. You can also see them consolidated here.
Average global internet speed, 5.1Mbps. Highest average internet speed for a country, 20.5 Mbps for South Korea. Countries with at least 50% with higher than 10Mbps speeds, 12.

No, the current state of the internet is not good.

Isn't this... 5 year old news? it was tried, and did not work very well. Doubt it will become a standard.

My thoughts. That practice is very familiar. There was a shop (Voldemort? Forgot its name...) that tried that and it closed pretty fast IIRC.

There is one other thing to note: A bug in the server can't harm the client, as long as the client doesn't have a security flaw. In other words, a server bug won't be able to wipe out your personal files. (Of course, you can prevent that with conventional games by running the games as a separate user; SteamOS does this.)

I think this might be somewhat OK if a few conditions are met:
1. The client is open-sourced. Hence, one can check the source to make sure the client doesn't have any security flaws. (Also, this would allow ports to devices like the Raspberry Pi.)
2. The game is marketed as a rental, not a purchase; in other words, it is made clear that you are not owning the game. Also, it should be priced accordingly; no paying full price for this sort of thing. (Alternatively, this could be used as a demo for a game sold more conventionally.)
3. A DRM-free purchase option is made available for those who want to run the game on their own systems.

Yes. And the people of the countries that don't have a good enough internet infrastructure will be pestering the companies and government for better infrastructure. Yes. So one could possibly check how well retail games sell in countries with high average internet speed, to see if people prefer to have a disc or a download. One would also have to check if the games are available in the region as digital downloads though, since Japan, which does have quite a high average internet speed does also have quite a lot of games unavailable, as does Germany.

They'll be doing that for any other thing that requires higher speeds as well. Like downloads to their own PCs. And its not really a good source of telecom encouragement because games don't make up the largest part of most countries with lower speeds.

The second point was that people who already have that speed will be better off downloading the game to play off their own PCs instead of trusting another with it. If those conditions are met, then it will be a positive feature to have. But in the context of that video and in the possible way in which I see it being applied, this might be the only choice and many publishes would try to legitimize it with excuses of anti-piracy and (in the PS4's or consoles cases) backwards compatability. Imagine a new version of Windows allowing you to play older MS games only via streaming because porting it over ''was not possible''. It seems like a system that can very easily be used to trick people into thinking they're buying something when they're actually renting it. Sony's PS4 backwards compatability is based entirely on this. And judging by the timestamp on the video, its been 6 months.

Speed and latency. Downloading a large file is easier with better speed, but one could still download it at 1Mbps (it will just take a lot longer). One could watch a youtube video with 1s of latency, since it wouldn't cause that much trouble with the viewing.
Do try to video call someone on a line with a second or two of latency, or a line that is less than 1Mbps, and then ask yourself how a game would play that way.

Yes, there are many reasons to have a good internet infrastructure, including medical ones (instead of game, think surgery). Entertainment though (and porn) is one of the biggest driving forces of technology changes.

Why? That would mean that you would also need a beefy computer to run the games, instead of doing something like this.

I think I tried game streaming with... Playfire was it? No! OnLive! Got a free trial, but I did not like it one bit. Sure, no need to buy games one by one, no need to download and install, but the quality is so bad! And what's more, other people may peep at how I am playing. What if I want to have some fun, like jumping off a cliff a thousand different times? I do not need any comments about that.

Anyway, game streaming is a no no.

Think the one you were looking for is onlive. they tried and failed :P

I don't wanna hear about streaming, ever!
But something tells I will anyway..