As expected, it's running on Debian [0]. Ubuntu really messed up with their licensing, losing both Valve and Google...
I'm also curious why they're not stating the CPU manufacturer.
Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
301–310 of 577 posts
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
Current gamers already have gaming PCs, so there isn't much of a benefit. Even for people that don't have gaming computers or consoles, you can put a decent one together that costs less than one of Google's phones
Gaming PCs need to be upgraded on a 2-4 year basis if you want to keep near the top-of-the-line. One of Google's phones can cost $600-$1000, which is significantly more than a new console. So I'm not sure why you even bring that up, as if there were no economical difference between putting $500+ on your credit card, and trying out a $15-$30 month subscription.
Computer upgrades amortize pretty well. Over the last 8 years I've made 2 upgrades to my computer: A new SSD ($100 for 1TB) and a new GPU which is overkill for many purposes (~600 for a GTX1080). That setup can play many games at higher than 60fps, which beats the hypothetical max of Stadia (and I'll believe "4k at 60fps" when I see it— the Project Stream demo seemed to have a much lower framerate than that while still having noticeable artifacts on a 1440p monitor). Compared to that, $30 a month for streaming (if that's the price) seems as predatory as those companies that let you rent-to-own a TV. Although I'm not a fan of renting games vs owning.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#303"Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who says he plays FIFA 19 “quite a bit"
I just lost a lot of respect for Sunar Pichai all at once.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#304And the games will run on Linux using Vulkan. I find that pretty awesome.
But its a custom AMD GPU. I wonder how much will make it back to trunk.
The only part about it that looks custom is that it's lower spec than what AMD otherwise sells.
Stadia's specs per Google:
Custom AMD GPU with HBM2 memory and 56 compute units capable of 10.7 teraflops
16 GB of RAM with up to 484 GB/s of performance
Radeon MI25's specs:
16GB of HBM2 memory at 484 GB/s with 64 compute units capable of 12.29 TFLOPs
12.29 * (56 / 64) = 10.7.
So this is almost certainly just MI25 chips with 1 or 2 bad 'cores'. Aka, the reject pile. From last generation, at that, since the current gen MI50 & MI60 are both 1TB/s HBM2 memory.
The multi-gpu part maaaaay be custom using the Instinct's extra interconnects instead of what used to be consumer Crossfire. But multi-gpu in consumer space is almost entirely dead, and nothing seems to suggest any developer would do anything for multi-gpu in this platform, either.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
F2P games are the incarnation of grindy.. and more of them is the worst thing that could happen to gaming.
For some people, the grind is the main attraction, especially if it's well balanced. Look at Path of Exile, that's one hell of a grindy game and people absolutely adore it.
Is the grind an integral part of the gameplay, flow and pacing of the game? Fine.
Is the grind a way to slow progression in order to make micro-payments more desirable? Fuck. That.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 goi…
Maybe it wasn't AMD, but they already had a massive fleet of GPUs. It wasn't running Dremel, either. Or maybe they found a way to do that, too, I don't know, but there are already enough workloads at Google to keep GPUs well fed.
I know from experience that Google is very cheap. You tell Urs you saved a million dollars and he'll ask you why you didn't save two. Or five.
If this takes off, the pricing of the service will pay for the hardware (assuming they did a reasonable job there of baking it in). Even if it doesn't, organic growth from other, much larger Google services can make use of the idle hardware.
For the record, I was involved in a couple of projects that required a lot of new hardware. One of them even ended up saving the company a lot of money in a very lucky, definitely unintended way.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#307Honestly, there's got to be a better solution than full-on streaming. Has anyone seen the demo where there's >2 seconds of input lag? Even with around a 0.1 input lag, what can I play comfortably? Any kind of action games or platformers are out of question. Ironically, those games are the ones which usually demand high processing power. Most other games are toaster-compatible and I can run them without paying(?) Google a streaming premium.
I also like being able to play games when on the bus or the subway, so the whole always-online thing is a bit of a bummer.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it tied to only 1 screen? You can use Steam or Nvidia Shield to stream to just about any screen or tablet in the house and it works great. My gaming system is headless and I play all my games streaming to one system or another.
Steam and Nvidia don't have the stellar 11 9s kind of reputation Google has. Also, you have to actually buy those games first, so your library is a tiny fraction of what Stadia offers.
> Also, you have to actually buy those games first, so your library is a tiny fraction of what Stadia offers.
What makes you think games would just be included in Stadia?
Competing streaming services here are around $10-20/month without any games included. Origin's game access is $15/month without any game playing hardware included.
So... what will stradia end up being, and at what price? Would you pay $30/month for this? When a PS4/Xbox is only $300-400 in the first place, and has a lifespan of ~5 years?
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#309So, no AAA or famous indie games announced ?
No exclusive games but they revealed that Doom Eternal will come to the service with 4k, HDR and 60 FPS.
Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service
#310Former PSN eng here.
So, it will be very interesting to see what is going to happen. I feel we were not very successful with Playstation Now. It requires a lot of money to even start scaling, you need a powerful (read expensive) machine which can be fully utilized by just 1 AAA game. And for any competitive gaming experience - latency is a big one. If you want to play multiplayer as you going to have latency to Google's machine and then to the game server.
Anyway, I'm not in gaming business any more, so I wish G good luck in disrupting the industry. It is just they were not really that sucsessful in disrupting anything they didn't acquire (read copied and tried to improve), but maybe this time...