Google presents its Stadia platform for streaming games

Article on the beeb made the good point that if this does succeed in any significant way it will probably lead to increased amount of micro-transaction based games. Which is definitely not in anyone's' interest. I'm interested in cloud gaming but definitely more along the lines of Shadow where you run a virtual machine and play games you own.

 

What I find immensely amusing about this--Google stated that people would no longer have to wait "for days" to download a game to install it. OK, the only people who have to do something like that are people who have dog-slow Internet access, so what is Google going to do about that? If it takes "days" to download a compressed game installer, will it take weeks to download 4k content (don't mean low-res scaled up!), and actually play the game @ a non-scaled 3840x2160 while simultaneously communicating key presses and mouse use to the central server, and back? Do they plan on compressing games 100K:1 or more? You know, if consoles are already having trouble on line because of lag (latency) then that's with all of the actual game content stored and pulled locally from the console hardware--way, way faster than online! Seems like trying to download the entire game while you are fighting for latency would make things exponentially worse. Someone talked about Netflix streaming--that is strictly low-grade compared to this, because the Netflix stream is one-way--from Netflix to you, and it is highly compressed even so (excellent compression for the purpose.) What Google is talking about is a two-way street--where you are receiving the content at the same time as you are trying to play the game--but not on your hardware, on Google's remote hardware, is where the game is actually being played. Unless Google plans to restart its high-bandwidth, inexpensive ISP service nationwide, I don't see this happening. Xbox tried to start this with its "always-online" requirement--and Microsoft was booed so hard they scrapped it! I'll have to see it to believe it--there's a catch somewhere, no question about that. Reminds me of SUN's "network computer"--SUN wanted to control everything, leasing on-line time to us like you buy electricity on a grid, leaving the user with nothing but a dumb terminal. SUN is no more, so you can see how well that went over... Everybody wants to "control" everything these days--Google will be disappointed, I predict.

 

^^Well so far Google have shown nothing tangable of Stadia other than a joypad, so i am leaning towards a streaming app on andriod, so at this point it is right up there will the Atari VCS, and the key speech was more like a investor meeting than launching of a product. lol

 

Yes, I think that's exactly the group this was intended for..."investors"...*cough*! Excellent point.

 

because you think that your computer doesn't use compression to display things... lol

 

Thanks for putting that into terms I would understand with your sports car analogy.

 

I would say the long-term value proposition is still pretty good. After all, you don't need to incur the cost of upgrading your GPU (or system), not to mention component failure. Steaming the game also draws far less power so it saves on power bills.

 

That depends how much it costs per month. If we're talking less than $25/month, then sure, it's probably a better or "good enough" long-term value (especially when you consider consoles also have subscription fees).
But, you do have to pay for reliable higher-speed internet, you're not getting hardware that can do other things, your overall gaming experience will be worse, and you still need to buy peripherals. We also don't know if there are additional costs involved in trying to play more games or if it's just a fixed rate of "play whatever is in our library". So, the definition of value becomes very muddied.

 

I'm just saying, playing on your own PC is not exactly a build once, play forever kind of deal - there are on-going costs associated with it, just like a subscription service.

Most PC builders upgrade their components regularly - a couple of years for the GPU and the entire system every five years or so. Assuming $200 for a new GPU every two years and a total system upgrade every five years for $500 (for a mid-range system - much higher for a high-end), the cost over a decade would be about $2000. That's about $16.67 per month, which might be what a subscription service would go for (and that's not counting electricity costs).

The thing that I find most positive about this is that it will make PC gaming more accessible. It eliminates the initial hardware barrier, allowing anyone with a cheap Chromebook, light laptop or a Chromecast Ultra to play AAA games at 60 FPS. It might just make PC gaming more convenient than a console and draw in more casual gamers (consoles may eventually go this route as well, but you still need to buy the thin client console device).

 

I get your point but you also have to consider the target demographic here. The people who will use Stadia don't care about being part of "PCMR"; I'm sure most of them have a hard enough time justifying buying a console, or maybe can't even afford to get one immediately. After 2 years, owning a console would probably end up being a more sensible choice.
If we're going to consider the experience of PC gamers, there are arguments to be made that even consoles are a better value. But, people play on PC for various reasons, where it's possible to get a PC that's a better value than a console. Some want the elevated experience like very high FPS, 4K, multiple displays, more input options, no required subscription fee, the exclusives and so on. PC gamers tend to be enthusiasts, so like I said before, the definition of value becomes really muddied.

That I agree with, though I'm not confident most people would be able to stream 60FPS without major compression issues.

 

streaming never changes... you cannot remove frame latency + connection latency (server-client-server) + monitor latency + user input latency... no thank you, go away google.

lol are they targeting pirates with a paid service?

 

Doesn't matter what the 'console' claims to be able to do, or for that matter IF it can actually do what it claims, like EVERY other console that has ever been released this thing lives and dies on the games it can play and specifically the exclusives. The PS4 has been killing it this gen and if Sony can keep it rolling it doesn't matter what Google claims this thing can do.

I do however have a serious concern with this subscription based service for a number of reasons.

1). Lets set a nice figure for the system... £15 a month. If it's a lean year and their are only two games out I want to play. One right at the start and one right at the end. I pay £70 and I get both of them or I can pay 12months worth of £15 to play them both. I could play the first game then cancel the service and then resub when the second game comes out but we know fine well that these subs services hope you just put up and don't cancel and this leads in to
2). What if that 1st game is amazing I opt to play that game for the entire year until that second must have game comes out, can I cancel and keep playing. Nope I have to keep paying to play a game that I could buy and own for a fraction of the cost and this again leads in to
3). That amazing game I played for a year gets replaced by that second must have game. I play that one for the next year and a half, get bored and decide that I really want to go back and play that first game again. It was amazing and I really want to give it another run... oh but they have opted to remove it from their service because not enough folk wanted to play it.
4). This system flies in the face of the current trend of games as a service. For it to be cost effective you will need a constant stream of games that are engaging enough to make you pay for the service but not so that they keep you hooked. I mean paying a years worth of subs to play a game that could have been bought outright for a fraction of the price. The games will need to be cheap, quick runs and disposable, in essence they need to fit in to the 'binge' model that current TV streaming services use but with every man and his dog wanting games that are 'live services' that have multi year roadmaps design to hook players in and try and keep them coming back time and again AND spending real money for in games to then ALSO have to pay for the service to run the game is a kick in the teeth that many folk simply won't put up with.

This will only work if the games are right and the pricing for the service as well as in game items is right and that's before we get in to discussions about the technical capabilities and limitations of the hardware and the service itself.

 

Latency issues will never go away, but they can improve enough that 95% of people don't notice.

It's the video compression side i have concerns about, 4K YouTube videos don't look anywhere near what original gameplay looks like, so it would need to use higher bitrates than what YT currently offers, but again this could also be something that the majority of people don't notice.

I also wonder which service someone would pick if they had a choice:

1. 30fps Console
2. 60fps Cloud based service

 

I smell a failure coming.

I mean who would want to not own games you'd already paid for. Not me or a single one of my friends would use a game streaming service. Never going to happen.

 

Why do you need to own them though, games aren't gold. They start devaluing the second you buy them.

I don't see this is something that high end gamers would even consider, but casual games and alot of console gamers would consider it.

 

My sister has a Wii. I once played Mario Cart on it and noticed a lot of lag with the Wii Remote, but nobody else complained about it. I also didn't find the resolution to be all that great, but again, nobody complained.

For casual console gamers, things like latency don't really matter (they don't really notice it or don't know any better). I don't think a bit of lag or IQ loss would be noticeable for most of them.

 

Yep, it's a bit like Netflix which for the vast majority of people is perfect quality sound and video wise.

We pay for Netflix, but i get picky with it and wait for a BD release, or at the very least download it and run it through higher end players/renderers, and i know i'm in the minority.

Again though, what would people pick if the choice was 60fps on Stadia or 30fps on a console?

 

The consoles, the bandwidth requirements which last i checked is about 20 mbit for bluray quality of 1080p and audio 4k is double that, most people in usa or lucky to have 20mbit at affordable price, never mind the whole monthly bandwidth is still thing in alot places add the LATENCY that would attached to streaming/cloud. Even IF the bandwidth and latency wasn't a issue for anyone or even me, I would still prefer the console or pc. for same reason I prefer physical copies of games over digital if I have choose.

does cloud/stream gaming have it advantages?, sure it also has some heavy negatives too.

I think for most people it gona come down to how much and how good it plays. me I personal want nothing to with the whole cloud/streaming gaming things.

 

I think it would have to be higher than that, BluRay can be nearly double that and that is 1080/24, even 1080/30 would bump that up by 25%.

H265 is alot more efficient though, UHD discs are 4x the res but not 4x the size of BluRay.

As much as i like the idea, I still think i personally would struggle with the image quality more than latency. I'm sure it would be fine in a simple game, but we all know what happens to compressed video with stuff like rain, particles etc...

If Sony offered a high quality cloud based option so i could play some of their exclusives without wasting money on the console i would probably sign up though, or if Google offered Sony exclusives then the same but the latter is very vey unlikely.

 

I love flushing the toilet while my girlfriend is in the shower!.....