Topic: RUMOUR: Nintendo involved in the Apple tv conference in some way.

I certainly wouldn't scream bloody murder if a partership of this kind happened. On the contrary, I'd be quite pleased.
Nintendo can make magnificent games but they are mediocre when it comes to nearly everything else.
You can criticize Apple as much as you like, but aren't they made of the same mold as Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft etc?!
It's always people who are after your money, after all. It's not like Nintendo is Little Red Riding Hood and the others are big bad wolves.
Like it or not, the biggest share of the videogame market nowdays belongs to iOS, so how in the world would be bad if Nintendo had a partnership with the people who distribute it?!

@spizzamarozzi: Could not agree more with you. I don't like the idea of Nintendo going mobile personally but it's something that had to happen. Teaming up with Apple, love them or hate them, is a no brainer. People will moan but people will moan no matter what. Don't think this deal will happen though, as it makes too much sense for Nintendo.

Sooo, Nintendo? You basically described Nintendo there.

@IceClimbers: lol! hence, partners

Can't roll my eyes enough.

I would love to see Nintendo be the first out of the console makers to make the leap from a pure set-top system to a thin client/server based system where the processing for the game is done at the server and the client side merely streams the gameplay footage to the TV and as an interface via whatever controller Nintendo produces. Is the Apple TV is the mechanism through which this happens, then fine by me.

However, technology wise I don't think were quite at the stage where this could be reality yet. Bandwidth we're there already but I think latency needs to be a little bit better. Plus at this point too much of the market would be cut out because of a lack of a decent enough Internet connection.

@RedDevilAde: That sounds horrible and a lot like Microsoft's original plans for XB1 before Don Mattrick thankfully got fired.

Is It might sound horrible to you, but it's inevitable it will happen as bandwidth increases and latency decreases at some point. Once we're at the stage that it is feasible, it makes no sense to pay to make consumer hardware since it will be cheaper and easier to maintain everything on site and just push to a thin client/Smart device. Eventually everything will be cloud based in this way, IMO this is not a fad, it is the future and probably means the end of the home console as we know it.

I think Nintendo will do well to partner with a company like Apple to make it happen since they have to make this jump some point. Although I do think now is too to early to be doing it, timing is going to be very important in making this jump.

@RedDevilAde: I'm with you. I doubt the apple tv concept is going to support it or be even about this, but otherwise nintendo needs to get into the cloud sooner or later.

I'm not saying the experience is ideal now, of course. All I mean is that a nintendo console as a service is the way forward and perfectly feasible once the hardware is out of the way. The latency bit is all that needs to be taken care of, and that seems to be a matter of time only.

@RedDevilAde:
For other kinds of media it's pretty easy. Movies, music and TV have already gone pretty far down that road. The problem with gaming is, as you mentioned, latency issues. And the problem isn't just people's internet connections. Distance is also an issue, light doesn't travel across the world instantaneously.

As someone who's in Australia? My 'nets are alright, only 15ms to the exchange. That's not the biggest problem though. The problem is that I'm 360ms away from London, 220ms away from the US and 160ms away from Tokyo. That's some serious input lag. Really, they'd have to have a server in Australia for it to even be worth my time. Even then, I'm in the most isolated city in this country. Presumably if they were to build it in Australia they'd aim for the centre of our population. Which I'm about 70ms away from. I'm probably an extreme example but still, they'd run into that same problem everywhere.

You're completely right, I think the distance issues are probably already/partially solved. Although I am not privy to Nintendo's internal network structure I think it's very likely that they have locations for servers already set up in good places in all their major markets for Mario Kart 8; Splatoon etc; I doubt the servers for these games are all located in one place globally

I'm honestly not following you guys but seeing the SPEED OF LIGHT mentioned in a discussion about a possible Apple & Nintendo collaboration is somehow incredibly funny. I hope the SPEED OF LIGHT is fast enough to allow us to play games in the future.

I've skipped Nintendo products before and I'd skip this one. Apple is a scummy company and I find their OS to be severely more constricting than Android. Also, they are devices that revolve around planned obsolescence that cost $600. I never got on the apple hype train. Now tell the same story with "Google" and "Android" and I'm all over it.

Well given the topic is about the Apple TV which is a low powered device for streaming media? It shouldn't shock you that thoughts about game streaming services came up. Netflix for games. Makes sense?

And the main issue with that is that unlike video or music gaming is a very time sensitive media. You can't buffer a game, with games the quicker the better. So yes, the speed of light in glass is "too slow". As impressive as it may be that light in glass can go from Perth to Melborne in 1/10th of a second? Or from one side of the world to the other in 1/3rd of a second? That's too long for someone to wait between pressing jump and having their character jump.

The speed of light isn't some sci-fi concept. It's an actual limit that we have to deal with on a daily basis. Especially for gamers on the other side of the world

It would basically have to be one for every second or third city for it to be a reasonable replacement to the real deal. And these would be pretty power hungry stand-alone units. It couldn't work like the way Netflix does it where they give ISPs some fraction of their whole library in one box and then load balance across the whole network. It'd have to be a lot of horsepower and fairly local. I think we're a ways off. Especially for global coverage. I'd concede that it's probably already cost effective to do places like LA, New York, London and Tokyo.

This is going well beyond any expertise I have in the field of IT, I would expect the issue of necessary latency Will be closely tied to how frequently the main loop in the Game runs. If the game is running the main loop 30 times per second that effectively gives the user 33 ms to get any control input to the server before the next loop completes. Half that for 60 times per second. Given there is a two-way passage the image needs to get to the user and a response and needs to go back to the server i think were probably looking at necessary latencies of 15 ms for a 30 frames per second game and 7 ms for a 60 frames per second game to give the appearance of instantaneous response. Although those are just educated guesses. That certainly seems to confirm your expectations that Perth to Melbourne would be too far for this kind of infrastructure.

The Apple TV was just talked about but nothing about Nintendo.

The Apple TV part is over no sign of Nintendo

Disappoint.

@Smash_kirby: To some extent Nintendo was present, the Apple TV controller functions rather like a Wii Remote and HMX (the creators of Rock Band) revealed a Wii Sports esque game for it.

@Grumblevolcano: yeah, I just like how they made it their own, then act like they were the first to do it. I do hope Apple doesn't sue Nintendo for waggle motion controller patent.