Stadia, Google game-streaming platform

[blackdog]

Have you guys seen the announcements at GDC? What do you think of the streaming system by the big daddy of data-centres?

TLDR

Full keynote

The hype is real?

 

[FMPONE]

If graphics get crazy enough such that hardware manufacturers can't keep prices low enough for the average consumer, or developers can no longer afford to optimize what they're making, or consumers get sold on the idea of "hyper-realistic" rendering that only Google data-centers could provide I can see this taking off. Not sure America's shitty infrastructure could handle the streaming aspect.

Ultimately this being successful wouldn't be great for anyone except Google.

[Beck]

14 hours ago, FMPONE said:

If graphics get crazy enough such that hardware manufacturers can't keep prices low enough for the average consumer, or developers can no longer afford to optimize what they're making, or consumers get sold on the idea of "hyper-realistic" rendering that only Google data-centers could provide I can see this taking off. Not sure America's shitty infrastructure could handle the streaming aspect.

Ultimately this being successful wouldn't be great for anyone except Google.

Yeah, I think something like bigger worlds, more players, super realistic graphics and zero loading times is the only thing which would draw me to this service.

I don't think it'd ever be great for competitve games unless they can get the latency right down which just isn't possible right now - but for the average gamer it'd probably be an ok service.

[blackdog]

6 hours ago, Beck said:

I don't think it'd ever be great for competitve games unless they can get the latency right down which just isn't possible right now - but for the average gamer it'd probably be an ok service.

I wonder if they can provide esport organisations with local servers. At least for tournaments.

The mention at “no cheating” suggests that they are at least considering the problem. E-sports are just getting bigger and building a system that can’t cater to it just makes it less interesting.

My biggest “pros” of such system would be: no need to wait hours to download, also getting rid of space management; play on any device any game – as my ideal user-case for this would be being able to play in bed an AAA game.

I wonder how friendly this will be for devs, in terms of monetisation mostly. They hint at all the major players being interested (the average Joe wants their sports game) but as distribution is getting more and more fragmented for monetisation reasons, I wonder why/if eg. EA would want to share the revenue of their exclusive title. On top of that many companies are believed to be investing and researching their own streaming solutions.

Friend of mine was arguing if the best benefit would be developing a “streaming engine” so you download a small client and most assets come from the cloud, but you still render locally. 

[fewseb]

Im not really sure anyone can Trust google with a gaming service, keep in mind Google was one of the larger tech firms that started shadow-banning user names back in the early 2010s, they essentially wanted to end the practice of user names and have people just use their legal name for every website they signed up for. This feels almost like another attempt at that, as Google first tried to force users to use legal birth names after they launched Google+, and this feels all too similar to another Google+.

Other then that, the obvious issues of god awful US infrastructure and network support really hamper this service, online only games also slowly becoming a big issue for consumers. Keep in mind that if a game is exclusive to Google Stadia, theres a good chances that that game could be lost permanently if removed from the platform or if Stadia shuts down.

[dmu]

Personally, I'm worried that if this becomes an industry standard (like its being advertised) it can hurt consumers, taking away their freedom of choice for games and hardware. With this technology big corporations can likely push out smaller hardware companies and indie developers. To place a comparison, if people are choosing games from 'Netflix' they can never find something small and interesting like Europa or any of the other small indie games we see on these forums.

[Interfearance]

Essentially it will become a industry of conglomerates. Another profession destroyed by capitalism with no improvement in terms of game quality. Also, no one likes monopolies.

Edited March 23, 2019 by Interfearance

[ZZZ]

Google really belives that internet = electricity. But unless the input lag is around 50ms, games will be forced to run slower to offset latencies over 100ms.

[fewseb]

Also keep in mind, playstation tried this same crap a few years back, pay a subscription and you got access to several old classics for free. It didnt go very well because of the combined problems of US infrastructure and network speed along with Sony's usual failure in all things they claim to specialize in. It was like wise despised by gamers because of the awful input lag, as well as a whole debacle where if you canceled your trial/subscription sony didnt have any client support to actually cancel the subscription, so you kept being charged by auto renewal and sometimes wouldnt even receive emails of said auto renewal.

[blackdog]

Surely this initiative relies a lot on timing (infrastructure).

Keep in mind it comes off the back of the experimental “Google Fibre” in selected areas of the US, and 5G is being deployed.

I feel that services like Netflix & co. Have forced providers to provide better services than before, they’ll have to adapt to the market requests or new players will come in. So doesn’t seem atm this is ideal but we are nearing the time it is.

 

[Castle]

The only reason I like this is that it will possibly be used as a means to push internet speeds a lot higher against the will of the ISP oligopoly.

Otherwise the future is decentralized technologies which is something I am pushing for at the moment. I see a future for both technological paradigms at the same time.

Also the latency is not as big of a deal as a lot of you are probably worried about. Even in the case of full out twitch shooter PVP its not as bad as you think. Back in the ye old days before we had dat der fancy client side prediction, we old folk played Quake 1 on dial up internet with 70-300 ping and still managed to have a good time doing it. Playing with ping takes a different kind of skill and after awhile you just get used to it. I know it sounds crazy but if everyone who is playing is subject to the same latency then learning to play with the lag becomes a kind of skillset in and of itself. That was back in the day when calling someone a LPB meant something. (Low Ping Bastard) 

Edited March 27, 2019 by Castle