Verizon Offers Free Dedicated Servers
If you’ve ever thought about starting your own dedicated server rental business (like I was until today), prepare to be disappointed.
Verizon will soon be releasing the final version of its PlayLinc service. According to the PlayLinc website:
PlayLinc is a next-generation, online game browsing and messaging platform that gives gamers more control over their multiplayer gaming interactions, a richer set of social networking tools and a wider variety of gaming experiences than has ever before been available.
Among the features gamers can take advantage of on the PlayLinc platform will be support for a variety of gaming platforms (PC & Console Games), messaging tools including IM (Fully Integrated with AIM and ICQ) and VoIP, dynamic server launching, server browsing, team management, buddy tracking, player invitations, game management and information, on-game controls and more.
Whoa wait… did anyone else notice this: “support for a variety of gaming platforms (PC & Console Games)”? So… how exactly will Console Games be supported? Could this be a springboard to invading the Xbox Live market? Could this be the backbone of a new Sony or Nintendo online service platform? Who knows, but considering the (non-free) crapfest that is “Gamespy Arcade” something like PlayLinc is SORELY needed… and it’s free (as in beer)!
Stay tuned to Aeropause as I will likely be reviewing the PlayLinc service in coming days… assuming I can tear myself away from Dead Rising, that is.
| more | via Ars Technica
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I’ll tell you how console games are supported– whereas PC games are supported through hosted servers OR through virtual LAN hosting, console games are supported through virtual LAN hosting. So if your Xbox is on your network and mine is on mine, we can launch and join Call of Duty on our Xboxes as if we’d LANed them together.
Neat, huh? Basically, PlayLinc creates a fake LAN on the net, and you can launch anything on it. This is actually how Xbox Live works as well– the host runs the game on his machine.
But hosted servers are strictly for PC games.