Online Gaming In Sights At CESOnline Gaming In Sights At CES

MANHASSET, N.Y. — As CES celebrates its 40th year next week, the online portion of gaming industry might not be there. Online gaming has the potential to be a killer Internet application. At CES 2007 (Jan.8-11) in Las Vegas, gaming will be front and center with Intel and Microsoft Xbox leading the way. The two companies are sponsoring the World Series of Video Games (WSVG), a video game competition circuit on multiple gaming platforms, spanning eight simultaneous three-to-five day events that will be open to the public. Other CES activities only open to industry participants.

But online gaming needs no venue except the seat of a PC or a TV. And, it is going to eat up a great deal of bandwidth and needs to compete with IPTV and VoIP as another bandwidth-hungry application clogging the Internet.

Nielsen Entertainment market research firm found that 56 percent of the 117 million "active gamers" in the U.S. play games online. The "Active Gamer Benchmark Study" also confirmed that gamers want more of a social experience when playing games.

The likes of IBM and Intel are studying how to optimize the use of broadband technologies to make the most pleasant experience not only for gamers but also for regular users of digital services who share the bandwidth with the game enthusiasts. Intel is experimenting with Verizon in online gaming.

Gaming is serious business

IBM has a research project for developing an on demand service platform for games. The aim is to investigate the opportunity for developing a multiplexed infrastructure across business applications and games, for example to better utilize servers and bandwidth during idle periods.

Real-time requirements of online games, in contrast to traditional Web-based applications, demand very low latency and high responsiveness from the server and network infrastructure. The research has led to applying predictive provisioning. Their predictive models can use game workload patterns to deploy game servers slightly in advance to further improve the perceived provisioning delay.

The IBM reearchers, led by Anees Shaikh, Manager, systems and network services at the IBM Research Center (Hawthorne, N.Y.), analyzed workload data collected over more than a year for different games. The analysis shows that the player population exhibits stable temporal patterns, particularly for mature games. "We can exploit these patterns to develop predictive models that enable the provisioning system where peak periods can be anticipated and sufficient resources are made available," according to an online technical paper by Shaikh.

They have also developed a content distribution service, an ad-hoc delivery network to distribute large game patches and content. The service allows simultaneous download from multiple nodes, servers as well as peer game clients. The set of download nodes are chosen according to their network proximity and connection speed with respect to the client. One Silicon Valley chip company is providing gamers its own tool for defeating "game lag." Ubicom, has launched a free testing tool to let online gamers determine their OPScore, or Online Playability Score. This a benchmark that measures "game lag" under different network conditions. The OPScore benchmark can be used to effectively tune users' home networks and Internet connections to greatly reduce game lag.

The online congestion is caused by high bandwidth demand applications such as file sharing, e-mail, and picture uploads. This network congestion results in delay, jitter, and loss of data for gamers and labeled as game lag. The OPScore benchmark, developed by Ubicom, measures the flow of game data and other traffic on users' own internet connection to give a precise OPScore.

OPScore values relate directly to scoring in games such as "frags" per minute in Quake 3, ranging from 0.0 (unplayable) to 5.0 (optimal performance). This measurement technique is based on research conducted separately by major universities and Ubicom. The OPScore test can be run from any Windows PC with an internet connection and can be found at http://gamer.ubicom.com.

The company's StreamEngine technology in the form of communications chips and software, enhances gaming in its own right. The technology uses Intelligent Stream Handling, a patent-pending algorithm that automatically manages the flow of traffic going to the Internet, without the need for user configuration. As a result, real-time, interactive traffic, such as gaming, VoIP, and video conferencing, are automatically given the appropriate priority when other users and applications use the network.

Recently, audiovisual company JVC has added Ubicom's StreamEngine wireless processor to its Sophisti DD-3 and DD-8 advanced living entertainment, which will enable videos and music to be streamed from a LAN-connected PC to the Sophisti DD-3 or DD-8 media center.

The media systems allow users to play audio, video and photo files from their PCs on a flat screen TV with surround sound speakers, creating a complete at-home entertainment system. One of the fastest growing markets today is the digital home market. The central hub of the digital home is the gateway where WAN meets LAN. These new generations of digital home gateways have new roles and stringent bandwidth requirements.

"As video becomes more accessible online, we have seen a spike in demand for Internet video compatibility in home theaters," said Bart Somsen, corporate communications manager for JVC Europe Ltd. "Ubicom's StreamEngine technology gives our product a competitive edge with its ability to ensure seamless delivery of video content from the Web to the screen."

Recently, Ubicom incorporated Cadence Incisive Formal Verifier into its overall design flow enabling Ubicom to identify bugs that had eluded simulation-based verification. This is allowing the company to bring video stream solutions to the market faster than was possible without it.

For its part, Intel has recently announced its own online gaming solution. Together with Verizon, Intel is enabling users to play PC games on their TVs through Intel Viiv technology-based PCs running Microsoft Windows XP (MCE). The companies will also be marketing a version of PlayLinc, an TV-based display interface which provides for the use of free private servers, VoIP integration and the ability to track other players online status.

PlayLinc supports both PC and console games and allows players to host any LAN-enabled multi-player game on a virtual LAN.

The PlayLinc service was developed in with SuperComputer International (SCI), a provider of game-server hosting solutions, gameplay-related services and gaming portals.