US cable companies to trial streaming video games this year, says Bloomberg

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US cable providers are in talks to provide on-demand gaming to their millions of customers across the country, potentially obsoleting the need for dedicated gaming hardware. Citing "people with knowledge of the matter," Bloomberg reports that AT&T, Verizon, and Time Warner are all said to be beginning trials this year and wider deployments as early as 2013, while Comcast and Cox are still in talks and may not enter the market until 2014.

According to Bloomberg, all of the companies named are interested in providing an experience beyond Tetris and Solitaire by offering "advanced action games form top publishers." The technology behind the scenes is said to be provided by startups like CiiNow and Playcast Media, the latter of which recently partnered with Nvidia and networking companies like Cisco and Pace to build gaming-compatible set-top boxes. Some of the network providers are said to be looking at software that would allow smartphones to be used as controllers.

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Cool, I would subscribe to a Cable Channel which lets me play games on it with a custom controller and cable box.

I bet if this takes off fewer people will rent games since game rentals are expensive at Blockbusters, and if this Game Channel cost 5-10 dollars a month for unlimited play of a 50+ games then it is a better deal then renting a game for a few days.

Hopefully, the controller is easy to use, and games run fast as well being streamed from a Cable Box.

This sort of reminds me of Sega Channel in the 90s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM4j_BnAZjE
 
first off LOL!

I've been hearing that gamers can't connect to Xbox live these past few days in certain areas with Time Warner ISP.

Second my ISP's cable boxes are shit. Your telling me there going to play games on those? That is my laugh of the week right there.
 
Demon_Skeith said:
first off LOL!

I've been hearing that gamers can't connect to Xbox live these past few days in certain areas with Time Warner ISP.

Second my ISP's cable boxes are shit. Your telling me there going to play games on those? That is my laugh of the week right there.
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You won't be playing games directly on your cable box, but it will be streamed to you similar to how your TV shows and movies are streamed from Television stations to your TV. Although, instead of a television channel streaming shows to your TV, it would be a game console, gaming computer, server, etc streaming games to your TV, and you use a controller, remote, joystick, etc to control the game like how you use a remote to change channels, and do other TV related tasks.

It uses the same connection as Digital Cable for the TV, so internet limits/outages won't affect streaming games although TV outages from a fallen tree or lightning hitting the TV wires will.

I think a lot of digital cable channels/companies can already stream video in 720P-1080P without problem since digital cable already broadcasts in HD, and there is no lag from digital cable when I watch it on my TVs, and I don't hear many people having lag when watching HD movies on TV from a digital TV provider company.
 
Still not a good idea, the game saves would still be on the box or on a cloud server which you would only have access while paying.

If most ISP are like mine, people would switch providers and lose all their game data.
 
Maybe the game maker like EA, SquareEnix, and other makers can make it possible for you to save the save files on USB flash drive, SD Card, or the Game saves would be on channels/sites like EA, Square, Activision, so you can still play your games even if you switch television cable providers.

I think this would be a good idea if this is a rental/subscription service like Pay per view movies or themed channels like Spike, G4, Cartoon Network , CNN, ABC, Disney, etc where you rent the game for a few dollars a month, or a dollar a day rather then using Gamefly, Blockbuster, and other rental services which require you to mail back the game, or go to the store to return the games on time to avoid expensive late fees.

This service would be good to play a game quickly, try out the game to see if it is worth buying or renting, or just play some random game to waste time while waiting for a TV show to start, or in between commercials.
 
They wouldn't be able to stream it through the cable box anyway, not enough bandwidth. You would probably connect it to a computer. Plus Cloud saves are much more reliable than backups because you can't lose Cloud unless you delete it. It's always somewhere.
 
I think this would be like Sega Channel which existed in the 90s where they use an adapter to plug into a Sega Genesis, but Game Cable TV streaming will most likely use a PC, or newer game console like device like the Ouya, Google Android settop box, Apple TV, etc.

Here is a TV commercial of the Sega Channel from the mid 90s which uses TV signals to stream games back in the mid 90s. I think if Sega Channel was Nintendo Channel or Playstation channel it would still be around today since more people play PSX and Nintendo games back then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZQwzKnlMRA

I'm also not sure if companies can copyright a save file since it is just a file which tells a game console where you left off like a bookmark for a book, and there is no original content like artwork, music, or video in save files.
 
GracefulAssassin said:
They wouldn't be able to stream it through the cable box anyway, not enough bandwidth. You would probably connect it to a computer. Plus Cloud saves are much more reliable than backups because you can't lose Cloud unless you delete it. It's always somewhere.
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then what would be the point of cable companies doing this?
 
Because they can still make money from it. Regardless they will make a profit because they only need to produce the games when someone wants it, sot hey are insured a profit.
 
Cable TV also needs to come out with new services like streaming games to stop people from unsubscribing to Cable TV, and replace it with Netflix, Hulu, DVDs, Blu-Rays, RedBox, Antennae TV, and other paid and free online or offline alternatives to cable.

I read online that paid TV Cable subscriptions are dropping because of the internet, poor economy, and offline alternatives like RedBox, DVD rentals, etc.
 
Yeah, I cancelled my cable. I don't need it now that I have Netflix. Plus even if I didn't, I could just Google the shows.
 
I find cable also kind of expensive compared to free and paid alternative, and the anime and movie selection on basic cable is kind of old, or bad unless you subscribe to the premium pay per view channels.

I think my cable company has on demand movie and sports events like WWE Wrestling, and football ordering, but it cost more then Redbox, and DVD rentals.
 
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