EA patents method to avoid waiting for game downloads

This is weird. It streams the game to you (like Stadia, etc) and then switches over to local processing once enough assets are downloaded.
 
jfreund said:
https://www.techspot.com/news/88737-ea-patent-outlines-technique-bypass-game-download-install.html

I remember having a way to do this in the past. It was called a disc.
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Could still be useful considering you would have to wait for the installation to finish with a disc.

A playstation 4 for example:
The PlayStation 4's Blu Ray disk speed is rated at 6x, which is a maximum reading speed of about 27 MB/s.

Some people now have faster internet connection than that (i.e. the installation would be faster via internet than the dvd drive I think)
 
If they have the speed and the systems to stream, don't they have the resources to just push downloads? I'm failing to see the point.

EA is a business, one I don't like, but even in that I'm trying to give constructive critisism. I wish they as the 800lbs gorilla would actually be good, despite their entire recent past (10 years or so) devoted to the contrary.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
If they have the speed and the systems to stream, don't they have the resources to just push downloads? I'm failing to see the point.
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Not sure I understood what you meant.
Use case: When i buy a game I'd rather wait 5 minutes to download/install before I start playing instead of 1 hour.
 
serpretetsky said:
Not sure I understood what you meant.
Use case: When i buy a game I'd rather wait 5 minutes to download/install before I start playing instead of 1 hour.
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I guess? I just see systems like Blizzard has with Battle.net that only requires partial download to start playing as probably being more useful for more use cases. Combined with of course fast download speeds.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
I guess? I just see systems like Blizzard has with Battle.net that only requires partial download to start playing as probably being more useful for more use cases. Combined with of course fast download speeds.
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I think it could be both, with the EA version that make it quite universal and painless on the game developer side thought.

Say you have a 200 gig games with a you need 66 of them to start playing and you have a 100 mbits connection.

1) You can use your 100 mbits for 4 hours 30 minutes to download the whole game.
2) You can use your 100 mbits for 1 hours 30 minutes to download the portion of the game that let you play
3) You can start to play right away dedicating 30 mbits to the game stream, 70 mbits to the download and after 2 hours you start to play from the 70 gig that was downloaded

Hard to see (all else being equal and with some exception that the creator feel the first scene of the game needed to be lag less experience and so on) how option 3 isn't not by a good amount the best one for the users and get obviously simply not use it if he want to maximise download speed if they hate streaming.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
I guess? I just see systems like Blizzard has with Battle.net that only requires partial download to start playing as probably being more useful for more use cases. Combined with of course fast download speeds.
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yeah I see what you are saying. So with EA system they actually stream the game to you initially (like google stadia or nvidia geforce now) while it downloads?
I had assumed it more traditional where it waited to download the core game and the first level/ textures/ sounds/ etc.

I haven't experienced game streaming and also haven't downloaded any new large games in a while, so my opinion probably isn't relevant here.
 
LukeTbk said:
I think it could be both, with the EA version that make it quite universal and painless on the game developer side thought.

Say you have a 200 gig games with a you need 66 of them to start playing and you have a 100 mbits connection.

1) You can use your 100 mbits for 4 hours 30 minutes to download the whole game.
2) You can use your 100 mbits for 1 hours 30 minutes to download the portion of the game that let you play
3) You can start to play right away dedicating 30 mbits to the game stream, 70 mbits to the download and after 2 hours you start to play from the 70 gig that was downloaded

Hard to see (all else being equal and with some exception that the creator feel the first scene of the game needed to be lag less experience and so on) how option 3 isn't not by a good amount the best one for the users and get obviously simply not use it if he want to maximise download speed if they hate streaming.
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Personally I'd rather wait for the whole download to finish so I can play the game locally from the start. First impressions are everything, and visual artifacts combined with lag is going to leave a poor first impression.
 
Armenius said:
Personally I'd rather wait for the whole download to finish so I can play the game locally from the start. First impressions are everything, and visual artifacts combined with lag is going to leave a poor first impression.
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Same for me, but I could see the average console noob preferring it.

The experience for a lot of them now is buy new game at store, put it in, wait for 2 hours of updates, then play. Or buy new game via digital download and wait 2 hours for it to download then play.

They would love to be able to just play right away, and the quality of a console experience for a lot of people isn't far off from streaming so it wouldn't really bother them.
But if they're ok with streaming why even bother downloading.
 
Susquehannock said:
Priorities? Many things I'd rather spend an extra $120 a month extra on. 25mbps is plenty here.
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It’s more like $80 / month, but Every job I’ve had since 2003 has let me expense my Internet. As such, I’ve had the fastest Internet available since then
 
Endgame said:
It’s more like $80 / month, but Every job I’ve had since 2003 has let me expense my Internet. As such, I’ve had the fastest Internet available since then
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Giga $80 for you, extra $120 a month for me. Not all carriers or locales are the same. Like I said, priorities. Some people need/want super fast internet, some don't. Some people I know only have dial up available - no DSL. And satellite is atrocious. Ever try to download a 25GB game with a spotty 3g cell signal? Less an hour's drive from major US cities on the I-95 corridor. Many seem to forget that broadband is not everywhere. These are the people who still buy DVD and BD.
 
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Susquehannock said:
Giga $80 for you, extra $120 a month for me. Not all carriers or locales are the same. Like I said, priorities. Some people need/want super fast internet, some don't. Some people I know only have dial up available - no DSL. And satellite is atrocious. Ever try to download a 25GB game with a spotty 3g cell signal? Less an hour's drive from major US cities on the I-95 corridor. Many seem to forget that broadband is not everywhere. These are the people who still buy DVD and BD.
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this won't help anyone on Dialup.
 
Susquehannock said:
Giga $80 for you, extra $120 a month for me. Not all carriers or locales are the same. Like I said, priorities. Some people need/want super fast internet, some don't. Some people I know only have dial up available - no DSL. And satellite is atrocious. Ever try to download a 25GB game with a spotty 3g cell signal? Less an hour's drive from major US cities on the I-95 corridor. Many seem to forget that broadband is not everywhere. These are the people who still buy DVD and BD.
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Exactly. I have access to gigabit internet for $80 a month. But why do I need it? I live alone and perfectly happy will 100mb for $50.
 
vegeta535 said:
Exactly. I have access to gigabit internet for $80 a month. But why do I need it? I live alone and perfectly happy will 100mb for $50.
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Because you can stream multiple 4k pornos at once with gigabit? I also thought 100 was fine until I got on gigabit. Do I need it? Nope. But then most of us dont need Internet at all - its nice to have. If it goes down we dont die or arent at serious risk of doing so.
 
High capacity USB drives are so common place now that they should just switch to those.

Of course though, the “disc” version of any game these days is usually an unplayable mess that needs a day 1 patch the size of the game itself.
 
Endgame said:
It’s more like $80 / month, but Every job I’ve had since 2003 has let me expense my Internet. As such, I’ve had the fastest Internet available since then
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Not everyone is in your boat maybe?
 
kju1 said:
Because you can stream multiple 4k pornos at once with gigabit? I also thought 100 was fine until I got on gigabit. Do I need it? Nope. But then most of us dont need Internet at all - its nice to have. If it goes down we dont die or arent at serious risk of doing so.
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By that standard we don't need electricity. I've used the internet to apply for my current job and the 4 before it. I consider a paycheck a necessity 😁.
 
So how does this differ than something like what Blizzard has done, where you can start downloading and then play when enough information is on your system, while the rest of the game finishes in the background? Does streaming games actually let you play immediately? I'm not understanding how it can since you seen need the data on your side.
 
sfsuphysics said:
So how does this differ than something like what Blizzard has done, where you can start downloading and then play when enough information is on your system, while the rest of the game finishes in the background? Does streaming games actually let you play immediately? I'm not understanding how it can since you seen need the data on your side.
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Yeah you play immediately, basically doing a remote desktop to their servers. The same thing you do on Stadia or any of the other streaming services.
It doesn't work that great.
 
sharknice said:
Yeah you play immediately, basically doing a remote desktop to their servers. The same thing you do on Stadia or any of the other streaming services.
It doesn't work that great.
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Ah I see, so they effectively show you a "youtube video" of what it looks like, while their machines handle the data. Ok that makes sense now, not sure why I couldn't wrap my mind around streaming a game.
 
Susquehannock said:
How about a USB key with game on it? And no convoluted online launchers to run the damn thing. :cautious:
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You are going to have a key for every game. Hell no to that, not managing USB keys, I will lose them before you know it lol and mess one has to deal with.
 
Susquehannock said:
You mean like when we had a disk for every game? Oh the horror.
Mine still work from the 90s.
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That's not the point lol. its preference. No way in hell I wanna deal with different flash drives for each game. Much easier to miss place and damage.

Plus to have flash drives that will be able to keep up with speed requirements will only add to more cost and might never be as fast as internal IO.

Yea I do remember having to wait for levels to load off disks and glad your disks work from the 90s. I had so many I had to rub and clean to make work its crazy lol.
 
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