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That sounds very cool! Maybe a similar project could take off: sharing console instances. Flat community of 50 apartments would buy 5 consoles and share them w

That sounds very cool! Maybe a similar project could take off: sharing console instances. Flat community of 50 apartments would buy 5 consoles and share them with each other (you keep them all in a storage room and just connect with TV via ethernet). One major problem is that console manufacturers would probably need to be a part of this and I think they would rather sell 10 consoles individually than 5 for sharing.

toast0 4y ago
> One major problem is that console manufacturers would probably need to be a part of this and I think they would rather sell 10 consoles individually than 5 for sharing. It would certainly work better with manufacturer involvement, but you could use HDMI capture to source the video, and USB to provide the inputs, so the console doesn't know any better. There's some licensing rigamorole and content management as well. You could probably do a forced log out between users and rely on cloud saves, but that's kind of ugh... Would work better if you can trust the people you share the console(s) with.
- badtension 4y ago
  Yes, in principle you could do that (apart from all the legal troubles...) In practice we like things customized and only want to see our own savegames available on the list so this is a real issue that could break this especially if large number of strangers were to use it. Another issue is waste - what if you want to play some game but it was installed on another console that is currently playing something completely different? Installing all games on all consoles seems crazy. Maybe have a large NAS with multiple games preinstalled? If we could add another type of game licensing which would allow for playing the same game on 5 different hardware consoles simultaneously that would be perfect. Resources would be used to their maximum potential.
  - toast0 4y ago
    Scheduling around game installs would be tricky yeah. I don't know how the various console do with having their storage swapped... I know the switch can store downloaded games to SD cards, but I don't know if it lets you put that SD card into another console and play the games if a licensed user is logged in... Or if it needs to be downloaded by that specific console. I think the current xbox and playstations also have user replacable storage, but again, it may be specialized per console? I know the platforms already have code to check for licensed user on a downloaded game when the game is downloaded to a console not deemed the 'home' console for a user. If you can swap storage, you can build around NAS connected storage emulators. Otherwise, yeah, big storage and guessing about what should go where. Like Netflix CDN nodes, but with more black boxes.

toast0 4y ago

> One major problem is that console manufacturers would probably need to be a part of this and I think they would rather sell 10 consoles individually than 5 for sharing. It would certainly work better with manufacturer involvement, but you could use HDMI capture to source the video, and USB to provide the inputs, so the console doesn't know any better. There's some licensing rigamorole and content management as well. You could probably do a forced log out between users and rely on cloud saves, but that's kind of ugh... Would work better if you can trust the people you share the console(s) with.

badtension 4y ago
Yes, in principle you could do that (apart from all the legal troubles...) In practice we like things customized and only want to see our own savegames available on the list so this is a real issue that could break this especially if large number of strangers were to use it. Another issue is waste - what if you want to play some game but it was installed on another console that is currently playing something completely different? Installing all games on all consoles seems crazy. Maybe have a large NAS with multiple games preinstalled? If we could add another type of game licensing which would allow for playing the same game on 5 different hardware consoles simultaneously that would be perfect. Resources would be used to their maximum potential.
- toast0 4y ago
  Scheduling around game installs would be tricky yeah. I don't know how the various console do with having their storage swapped... I know the switch can store downloaded games to SD cards, but I don't know if it lets you put that SD card into another console and play the games if a licensed user is logged in... Or if it needs to be downloaded by that specific console. I think the current xbox and playstations also have user replacable storage, but again, it may be specialized per console? I know the platforms already have code to check for licensed user on a downloaded game when the game is downloaded to a console not deemed the 'home' console for a user. If you can swap storage, you can build around NAS connected storage emulators. Otherwise, yeah, big storage and guessing about what should go where. Like Netflix CDN nodes, but with more black boxes.