Did anyone catch the details on their private cloud offering? Are they selling server blades? Can you run apps on it like CAD or simply Unity itself?
Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
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Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#72Some may remember an earlier streaming game service, OnLive, that crashed and burned spectacularly: https://www.theverge.com/2012/8/28/3274739/onlive-report plus HN discussions here: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=onlive&sort=byPopularity&prefi... I saw the OnLive demo. It was very slick, and the concept seemed more than viable, it was inevitable.
Internet speeds in North America have greatly increased since the OnLive launched. I suspect that Google will have better infrastructure than OnLive, and that their customers will have better Internet.
Speed is not the (main) problem. It's latency and jitter. With the last one especially bad on mobile networks. To get at most 1ms of additional delay you also need a datacenter every 300 km.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#73So, who wants to make a bet on how long this "experiment" will last? I'm thinking 2 years before Google gets tired of it and abandons it, and another year before it's taken behind the shed.
This comment has gotten so predictable and tedious on this site; I really don't get it. Google launches products. Some of them fail. That's life.
Depreciation schedules for cloud services are one thing. Consumer products are another.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#74Rewrote this a few times. Overall I think this would be really bad for the gaming world. Not buying consoles would be nice, but the natural business model will be ads or pay per hour or pay per MB. This is going to further drive the industry to towards mass multiplayer and grindy games I think. More accessible but worse content. Indie shops would probably struggle even more under this model. The cost per user will va…
I disagree. The natural business model will be a mix between subscription services and free to play games with micro transactions. Microsoft (and others like EA) is already moving in that direction with game pass (monthly subscription gets you all first party games plus partner games).
The biggest concern is going to be internet availability and data caps. I tried the beta for Project Stream (now Stadia) this past winter. It worked well and was impressive, but I have a good internet connection with a 1TB cap. I have friends with much worse speeds and harsher caps and I am not sure if this would be viable for them.
I am more concerned about 'physical' gaming being phased out. I doubt Stadia will do this soon, but I like building a new computer every 4 years for playing games. Maybes it's something I won't actually miss(like how I don't miss CDs for music), but it remains to be seen.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#75Some may remember an earlier streaming game service, OnLive, that crashed and burned spectacularly: https://www.theverge.com/2012/8/28/3274739/onlive-report plus HN discussions here: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=onlive&sort=byPopularity&prefi... I saw the OnLive demo. It was very slick, and the concept seemed more than viable, it was inevitable.
OnLive's patents were bought up by Sony in 2015, and I imagine they now power at least some of Playstation Now, Sony's streaming servier.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#76The key to me is that this is a console built for YouTube and that might be its biggest selling point to a lot of people.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#77So, who wants to make a bet on how long this "experiment" will last? I'm thinking 2 years before Google gets tired of it and abandons it, and another year before it's taken behind the shed.
They might roll it up into youtube or something, but the main components are cloud compute (GCP) and video streaming (Youtube). Its naturally aligned with their other initiatives so its pretty safe I would think.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
If all the players are in this service, it means lag is much easier to deal with for developers, since its only input lag. All the players actual compute/rendering would be on a very low latency network. you no longer have to deal with all the other networking problems between the client software, and server software.
My point is following: you have a character standing in a world. You click "w" - at which point character has to move. Right? On local machine that's what you will get. Not so much with the streaming - first you input goes to the google, being processed there, returns to you and only now you see that character is moving.
But the server knows which frame you pressed the 'w' on. So when it gets the 'w', it rewinds it's state machine X frames (hopefully X==1), applies your input, moves the state machine forward X+1 frames and displays that state.
So there might be a slight visual glitch but you won't be missing your targets.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
If all the players are in this service, it means lag is much easier to deal with for developers, since its only input lag. All the players actual compute/rendering would be on a very low latency network. you no longer have to deal with all the other networking problems between the client software, and server software.
My point is following: you have a character standing in a world. You click "w" - at which point character has to move. Right? On local machine that's what you will get. Not so much with the streaming - first you input goes to the google, being processed there, returns to you and only now you see that character is moving.
Yes, even with a Steam Link over Ethernet in my house there's a slight but noticable input lag. Most games are playable but it doesn't feel quite right.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#80So, who wants to make a bet on how long this "experiment" will last? I'm thinking 2 years before Google gets tired of it and abandons it, and another year before it's taken behind the shed.
This comment has gotten so predictable and tedious on this site; I really don't get it. Google launches products. Some of them fail. That's life. Depreciation schedules for cloud services are one thing. Consumer products are another.
The difference is they launch high-profile, promising-the-moon projects and put their full weight behind them, and then give up a couple short years later for inscrutable reasons ([cough] Google Fiber [cough])