Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service • Hacker News Board

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#261

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

diminoten wrote: post #217

b_tterc_p wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I’ll give you that nothing is confirmed, but nobody has made this work yet. It’s mostly tech testing, so current business models aren’t a good metric. I’m open to debate about how this could be priced, but I’m pretty comfortable pointing to existing cloud computing business models or streaming services as a precedent. I would invite you to come up with an alternative business model for serving people who like…

> but I’m pretty comfortable pointing to existing cloud computing business models or streaming services as a precedent. Why are you this comfortable? Netflix, YouTube TV, Twitch, Sling, Amazon Prime Video -- basically all streaming services offer flat rates, not per-MB ones. Further, all existing game library services tout unlimited gaming as a primary selling point! That's the primary reason you opt into Gamefly or…

> Netflix, YouTube TV, Twitch, Sling, Amazon Prime Video -- basically all streaming services offer flat rates, not per-MB ones.

YouTube (and Google Play TV & Movies, which appears to carry the same for-sale/rent content in a different storefront) and Amazon Video also both offer purchase of individual content items as well as a common flat rate subscription to certain content.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#262

Post by mtgx » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

zarriak wrote: post #229

I really don't understand why people here aren't talking about the real underlying principle of this service. Google has captured the education and cheap laptop space with chromebooks. This is the logical extension of that software. Sure they will eventually combine chromeos and android but this is one more step in the direction of everything happening inside of your web browser. The entire reason this is happening i…

What worries me is that I read about this being "Chrome-only".

Google is not just trying to win in console gaming space here - it's trying to establish itself as the browser monopolist and it seems to be doing it without much subtlety.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#263

Post by _bxg1 » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

jpambrun wrote: post #12

And the games will run on Linux using Vulkan. I find that pretty awesome.

That is an interesting detail. I don't want the future of gaming to be Google-based, but it would be awesome if this project - in the couple years before Google ditches it - leads to some real headway in Linux gaming.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#264

Post by satysin » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

johnyzee wrote: post #190

golfer wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"so I can instantly change my game session from my phone to my TV?" Clearly the latency advantage is the main benefit. Just as stated in the quote you used. Can you explain why that is a horrible design choice?

How does it improve latency? The device it is connected to is already internet connected and there is no meaningful latency between the controller and the device. So how does the on-board wifi help? Adding wifi to a device for no reason is horrible, I don't suppose it needs explaining.

By directly connecting the controller to the service via WiFi it removes any potential issues with the device having to act as a proxy for the controller input. For their dedicated Stadia set top box it isn't a big deal (as they will control the hardware) but when used with phones, third party STBs and such it can be problematic. Google will have no control over the WiFi hardware in all these devices and many cheaper WiFi chipsets are buggy in a multi-device setup.

Adding WiFi to the controller removes all those potential issues and allows them to tweak things to be as good as they can be for latency, power consumption, range, etc. (at least in theory anyway).

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#265

Post by eropple » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

vvanders wrote: post #243

eropple wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not super sure, anymore, about latency being as big a deal. Particularly with regards to monitors. Display lag on a large TV can be upwards of 50ms by itself ; display lag on a monitor can be as low as 5ms. If you're viewing this as a competitor to low-end, relatively lightweight console play, the total lag of display plus network is actually maybe not that bad. Also, living in Boston I was seeing 16ms pings on G…

Yeah, but you hit the nail on the head when you said you have a steady, consistent latency on your TV. When you're stuffing the pipe w/ 4k encoded content that puts a lot more pressure on the connection and added packet loss or delay is brutal in that case. All of this stuff is subtle but it compounds in the same way that the average gamer won't be able to immediately spot 30 vs 60 fps but they'll know that the game…

I fully agree that it's an inferior good, and I still don't think multiplayer games will be much of a thing. But I do think that even pretty involved action titles (they tested with an Assassin's Creed title) will be okay. Not great, and I'd get mad at them, but I'm also a really demanding user. Most folks kinda aren't.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#266

Post by _v7gu » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

rasz wrote: post #184

devit wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the major difference that you can't "pirate" a single-player game that is only available remotely, and that you can access such games remotely from any hardware. So it could result in a renaissance of the classic AAA 3D single-player games, perhaps.

You already cant pirate current generation of console games.

Nope, Switch piracy exists thanks to Nvidia

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#267

Post by dragontamer » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

markdog12 wrote: post #212

justfor1comment wrote: post #176

I participated in the beta and was pleasantly surprised to see how the entire experience came together. I only experienced one small technical issue. The game runs in real time on Google's servers. If you have some lag on your network, the client will drop all the frames during that time. Instead I expected behavior like Youtube where you will see a small loader and the game will continue before the lag started. This…

> Lag was still a rare thing during my experience Anything more specific than that, i.e. lag would occur every 10 mins on avg?

In my experience, 2.4 GHz is congested. An entire room of wireless controllers at 2.4GHz (ex: Super Smash Bros. Setups with Wiimotes) would cause these "dropped packet" issues, even with local WiFi / Wireless. 2.4GHz shares Bluetooth, 802.11n, and many other protocols.

If this were an entire room of WiFi controllers hitting the same WiFi frequencies all at the same time, it could have been a local problem.

All in all, we can't read too much into the demo-conditions. There are too many variables at play here.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#268

Post by briffle » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

kllrnohj wrote: post #136

tcd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone copied Apple when they removed the headphone jack, whose to say consoles in the traditional sense will still be around in 20 years? Microsoft/Sony are NOT going to sit back and let Google win here. Expect replies from them (especially with Microsoft's Azure). The streaming services of gaming is coming.

> The streaming services of gaming is coming. It's already failed multiple times. OnLive tried & failed. Nvidia's has been in beta for years. Sony has one. Everyone in this area has tried this. Nobody has seen what could be described as "success", and the cost models so far have been ludicrous. Turns out renting Xeons and Radeon MI Instincts in a professionally staffed, maintained datacenter is way, way more expensiv…

A big difference would be that OnLive had space in 5 colo datacenters in the US. Google has 19 full datacenters around the world and are building more. Plus, google has their own very large fiber network from different POP's and ISP's around the world. The fiber backbone gives them lower, and more predictable latency, compared to multiple upstream ISP's with different connections, issues, etc.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#269

Post by jaimeyap » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

CountHackulus wrote: post #10

Ronsenshi wrote: post #5

This is not a first service that tries to do that. And as before it all ends up with how close the gamer is to the server node, how stable user connection and whether connection is metered or not. I just pinged my google.com server node - and it's over 16ms. Which means no 60fps.

No, it just means your input latency will be longer than 16ms.

If that's round trip latency. Then input latency will be 8ms right? Input action to Frame update latencies are reliably 12-13ms+ with a local console routing through a TV.

So if they can do something fancy with rendering frames to the network to sync with your monitor. We might see a minimal increase in actual overall latency.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#270

Post by kllrnohj » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

puzzle wrote: post #248

kllrnohj wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> plus they're very good at both running hardware with low overhead and packing it efficiently. You can't really pack the hardware here since it's latency sensitive. It's straight dedicated resources to an array of VMs. Dedicated CPU cache, even, hence the odd 9.5MB L2+L3 number. Bulk pricing only gets you so far here. You're still talking gear that's categorically way more expensive than similar performance consumer…

You can't do time slicing, no, but you can definitely reduce time to first frame in many ways. If you don't do that, you need to provision even more hardware. Packing is also part of the capacity planning phases of a service. The other costs (power, people, etc.) are amortized over Google's array of services. Last but not least, it would be very dumb of them not to run batch workloads on these machines when the gamin…

> The other costs (power, people, etc.) are amortized over Google's array of services.

Power doesn't really amortize, and neither does heat.

And capacity still had to increase for this. They didn't just find random GPUs under the table they forgot about, and now that they have a massive fleet of GPUs it's not suddenly going to start handling dremel queries.

This all still costs money. A shitload of it. Someone is going to pay that bill. More ads in YouTube won't really fund gaming sessions. So will this be ad breaks in the game? No way that's cost-effective for the resources used. Straight-subscription model? This seems most likely, but how much and how will you get people to pay for it?