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An Era Of Cloud Gaming Technology Is Booting Up

June 17, 2012 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

UPCOMING TECHNOLOGY – Speaking of new games released in the era of The Witcher 2, Tomb Raider, Watch Dogs, Star Wars 1313 and the likes, you no longer have to worry about upgrading your PC configuration or owning the latest consoles, ever. All you need is a display screen – be it a TV or desktop monitor and an internet connection with at-least 3 Mbits/s bandwidth; most importantly the internet connection must not be limited by download or upload caps.

What I’m talking about is the Cloud Gaming Technology – NVIDIA GeForce Grid is a service launched on the 25th May 2012 by NVIDIA and Gaikai (one of the premier cloud gaming companies) as a collaborated effort. It offers a high fidelity and immersive console/PC gaming experience on any device such as a TV, tablet, PC, laptop or your mobile irrespective of the underlying configuration. Streaming Xbox 360 Games, PS3 or PC with the exact visual and audio experience on any screen, without the need of expensive hardware is now possible. The game is first processed at the server side and then streamed at the user’s end. Cloud Gaming has been termed as a hardware and a software solution, this can potentially aid in making gaming the #1 form of entertainment in the world.

Cloud gaming isn’t a new phenomenon. It has existed in the market for a while now with OnLive providing the service since March 2010 (Check OnLive vs. Gaikai see below). Though both the aforementioned companies have NVIDIA technology as the underlying basis, how it has aided them to provide a next-gen cloud gaming experience is commendable. They have successfully aided both the cloud gaming companies in overcoming the hindering barriers which marred the previous cloud gaming experience. The latency (delay) over broadband networks, the quality of the video images and the high cost per user are now a thing of the past. So imagine playing a game, that you could never run on the most ambitious ‘ULTRA high settings’, on your average PC with gaming experience beyond your machine’s capabilities and performance smoother than imagined.

NVIDIA has its GeForce Grid running on Gaikai’s 24 data centers worldwide and Gaikai is already offering its global cloud streaming network as a service. It’s live in 88 countries, serving 400 million monthly unique users on hundreds of gaming sites and with retail partners that include Walmart, BestBuy, YouTube, the Electronics Arts’ Origin store, Ubisoft’s UBIShop, Capcom, and Eurogamer.net.

The Face-Off – OnLive Vs. Gaikai

OnLive launched its cloud gaming service on March 10,2010 and almost a year later Gaikai joined in. The two competitors, though offering identical services, are targeting different markets. Gaikai provides more flexibility to game developers and its technology partners by allowing them to provide a collection of customizable offerings (not restricted to games) and allowing them to brand their offerings, whereas OnLive focuses more on providing an end-user experience for gamers through their game systems and playPack subscriptions.

The partnership with LG and Samsung

OnLive has partnered with LG and has been in the market for almost a year more than Gaikai, who on the other hand has allied with Samsung. OnLive will be utilizing the Google TV as a platform built into LG TV’s. They also have tapped into browser based gaming and released an Android app last year, which allows players to use their portable devices as gaming consoles streaming games over Wi-Fi or cellular networks.They also are likely to launch their service on iPad.

What about mobile devices?

Gaikai hasn’t yet ventured into the mobile scenario but is soon going to launch a 3D-ready gaming tablet with physical controls, which is in collaboration with WikiPad. Both companies are relying on NVIDIA’s graphics processing units to provide the best experience possible. AMD has not entered the cloud gaming market yet, so NVIDIA has no competition for now. But the major competition here is more between the hardware manufacturers (Samsung & LG) than the service providers as the number of devices a brand sells would reflect the number of customers a service provider can garner.

The Future

Cloud Gaming Technology is still in its infancy. There are vast prospective markets which are yet to be penetrated with today’s high-consoles and PCs , so for such markets cloud gaming might just be a pipe dream. There lies another obstacle that hinders the ability to experience cloud gaming, it is nothing but the core pillar – networking infrastructure. So the true potential of cloud gaming can only be realized once this connectivity medium has reached the desired level. With that potential realized, one can say that cloud gaming possesses the ability to replace consoles as well as PC gaming entirely.

Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference 2012

March 11, 2012 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

The upcoming Nvidia’s GPU technology conference (GTC) 2012 is open for registrations and will be held at San Jose, California (USA) from May 14 – May 17.

nvidia gpu technology conference — Event branding

The 4 day event will showcase breakthroughs across the scientific, visual and Technology fields. If you have plans to attend the event, then you should consider registering soon, as they have an early bird discount for attendees registering before 20th March. And as Nvidia suggests, the event is expected to gather great minds in the scientific, engineering, research and developer communities from more than 40 nations.
The Nvidia GTC 2012 will include keynotes, presentations, research posters, tutorials, and hundreds of instructional sessions from top experts. It will feature some of the world’s most innovative startups showcasing new technologies.

Sponsors for GTC 2012 include: HP, Microsoft, Supermicro, PNY, Adobe, Dell, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lenovo, CAPS, Bull, Synnex, Cooley, TSMC, Amazon Web Services, Next IO, GE Intelligent Platforms, Appro, Fusion IO, and SGI.

The Reign Of Rude, Fast And The Smartest Phones!

March 4, 2012 by Raj Agrawal 1 Comment

The year 2012 is going to be a huge step forward for the mobile market. The current generation is now poised to become the previous generation and new technologies are geared up and ready to replace the old ones. And, as with the advent of any new technology, every mobile company will try and get new handsets equipped with these new advancements as soon as possible to the masses in order to establish a following and make maximum use of the monopoly thus acquired due to lack of competitors. Today we look at the most anticipated handsets of the year along with the features which they claim will make them stand apart from other phones in the same specification range.

HTC One X

With the S2 beating the Sensation this generation, HTC had to come out all guns firing to ensure that it is not eclipsed by Samsung again. And hence, the One X. Featuring a swift Quad Core processor by Nvidia, this is probably the most anticipated quad core handset right now, until Samsung spill the beans on the S3. It also has enhancements to the UI and enhancements to the camera which enables it to click photos at a much faster rate and also enables burst mode which can allow users to click many images in an instant. Add to this the amazing build quality, and you have a complete phone, one which will give Samsung a run for its money.

Nokia 808 Pureview

Touted as being the biggest surprise of Mobile World Congress 2012, this phone has taken the world by surprise. Nokia seems to have given up playing the following game, and is trying to explore new areas of innovation to regain the ground that it seems to have lost. Instead of trying to create a superphone which has everything, it’s trying to delve into the one area which has been their forté over the years – Camera. This beast of a phone has a 41 megapixel sensor which interpolates images into 5 mp snaps. The kicker over here is that each pixel is actually a scaled down version of 8 megapixels, and hence the image does not lose any quality while zooming.

Asus Padfone

The Galaxy Note created a huge confusion among the users as to whether the device is a phone or a tablet. The Asus Padfone brings utmost clarity in this regard by being both a phone and a tablet without creating any ambiguity. So basically, what we have a here is a phone which is inserted at the back a tablet, and it becomes one with it to serve as the latter! The main advantage of this is the bigger screen and the improved battery life. Asus claims that with the tablet and the dock provided with it, battery life can improve almost 9 times as much as that of the average smartphone, which is huge! And with ICS (Android 4.0) integrated into it, there no reason not to put this as a prime contender on your wishlist when you go mobile shopping next time.

Huawei Ascend D Quad

Samsung did something different when it launched the S2; instead of putting a pre made processor into the phone, it created its own processor. Today the Esxynox is considered as the fastest processor of the last generation. It beats both the Tegra 2 and Qualcomm variants by quite some distance and made the S2 the absolute phenomenon that it turned out to be. Huawei seems to have taken inspiration from Samsung’s approach and are packing their own processor into their flagship Ascend D quad handset. They also claim it to be the fastest phone in the world, which is quite a tall claim with the next gen Tegra and Qualcomm processor making waves with their performance in the mobile market. But if the performance of the phone supports their claims, then we could have a new winner in the mobile market.

Samsung Galaxy S3

Samsung are quite mum about this one, but we know its coming. And we’re waiting; not just us, but the whole world is waiting. S2 owned the last generation, and the S3 is the only phone that can match the hype. Other competitors might have all the fancy new features, but S3 has the brand and following behind it. And it’s not like it won’t have tricks of its own; Samsung will make sure it packs the absolute best features available in the market today and make another classic which will blow us away. And i hope we don’t have to wait for too long for that to happen.

So these are our picks for the most anticipated and new smartphones of 2012. Feel free to comment on the article or add handsets/ of your choice in the comments section below!