Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service • Hacker News Board

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#491

Post by bobthepanda » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 2:25 AM UTC

nsfmc wrote: post #455

pier25 wrote: post #233

Sounds great on paper but I'm skeptical. Not only you will need a really good internet connection and wifi, but also being close to a Stadia data center. The best possible case scenario will probably be a latency of around 50 ms, but I'm guessing the average will be closer to 100 ms which is too much for many types of games (specially competitive games the streamers play). Heck, even streaming in your local network i…

i tried this and found it to be pretty satisfying. i played entirely on a macbook while traveling during my winter vacation. It worked surprisingly well even with mixed wifi, i would compare it to the experience you get from using PS4 Remote Play or Steam Link over ethernet. The only time i found it lagging was similar to the times when both of the above lag: during particularly complex visual scenes (i.e. you're cir…

I guess my question is; how would something like this scale? With Netflix and Spotify, the media is the same every time you play it, and even stuff like the Black Mirror CYOA have a limited number of combinations, so it's very easy to cache.

Every game has an extremely high number of potential combinations and outcomes, so it's effectively uncacheable. Fan that out to Steam level popularity and diversity of games and it sounds a bit nuts.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#492

Post by bitL » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 2:33 AM UTC

ajacksified wrote: post #408

fhood wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or worse, a hybrid like Assassin's Creed Odyssey: a $60+ game that gets super grindy, but reminds you that you can opt into micro-payments to get a little experience or coin boost... I really enjoyed it for the first 20 hours or so.

Morrowind was way more grindy than Odyssey (make 50 steps, a monster attacks you, repeat until the end of game). Odyssey just made all enemies within +/-2 levels of your own character, contrary to Origins, where levels were preset for each area.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#493

Post by mav3rick » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 2:44 AM UTC

odessacubbage wrote: post #444

013a wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's so much that this will hurt in the gaming industry. Some of my thoughts: 1. As subscription services take over, the upfront revenue game studios see will drop. This is just simple math: Xbox Game Pass costs $10/month, which means its the total cost of a AAA game over 6 months. In a traditional model, many gamers would expect to buy, lets say, 2 AAA games per year. In this new model, I can play as many as I wa…

honestly none of this even matters until they can offer a service with comparable input latency to local play, and so far every indication is that they can't. the whole service falls apart if it feels like shit to play.

Yes you've played the service ? It surely sucks when no reviews are out ? Look for people who have dogfooded and raved about it.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#494

Post by muststopmyths » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 2:48 AM UTC

ulkesh wrote: post #434

eanzenberg wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you smoking foo? >>The entire reason this is happening is because Google has successfully captured what once was the holy grail of markets, education, and is doing things like this to keep people on chromebooks. Care to share how this tidbit is true? >>The most important thing to realize is that they are focusing on gamers as a trial, the people who are price sensitive and who have to move first off of Windows 7…

> What gamers are still on Win7? Most are already on 10. Care to share how this tidbit is true? Sorry to use your words against you, but I'm not so certain. I'd like to see real statistics from a few sources. I agree that Windows 7 is surely phasing out, but anecdotally (which is where most conjecture like yours and mine come from), I know a number of people who specifically stayed on Windows 7 for two reasons: 1) Co…

>Care to share how this tidbit is true?

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

I would say 60+% qualifies as most. On the other hand, ~25% is not negligible. So you both win ?

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#495

Post by kipchak » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 2:50 AM UTC

ulkesh wrote: post #434

eanzenberg wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you smoking foo? >>The entire reason this is happening is because Google has successfully captured what once was the holy grail of markets, education, and is doing things like this to keep people on chromebooks. Care to share how this tidbit is true? >>The most important thing to realize is that they are focusing on gamers as a trial, the people who are price sensitive and who have to move first off of Windows 7…

> What gamers are still on Win7? Most are already on 10. Care to share how this tidbit is true? Sorry to use your words against you, but I'm not so certain. I'd like to see real statistics from a few sources. I agree that Windows 7 is surely phasing out, but anecdotally (which is where most conjecture like yours and mine come from), I know a number of people who specifically stayed on Windows 7 for two reasons: 1) Co…

Steam's hardware survey is probably the best measure available, and puts W10 at 68% and W7 at 27%.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#496

Post by 013a » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 2:51 AM UTC

mav3rick wrote: post #418

013a wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's so much that this will hurt in the gaming industry. Some of my thoughts: 1. As subscription services take over, the upfront revenue game studios see will drop. This is just simple math: Xbox Game Pass costs $10/month, which means its the total cost of a AAA game over 6 months. In a traditional model, many gamers would expect to buy, lets say, 2 AAA games per year. In this new model, I can play as many as I wa…

This is such a parochial and short-sighted view. Let's block new technology because "game studios will die". Businesses need to adapt. And if people still like games that don't rely on microtransactions or multiplayer, studios will make them. There is a place for both. Also, to point 7. guess what billions of people can't afford a console or an expensive PC rig. Yet, in developing countries data is already very cheap…

Do you really think data is delivered to people in those countries in any sort of latency that would make a service like this remotely enjoyable to use? A massive number of people in the US don't even have internet that could support something like Stadia, let alone developing countries.

By comparison, shipping "edge devices" (aka, uh, COMPUTERS) running an 845 Snapdragon or Tegra (like the Switch) is cheap and getting cheaper. What makes more sense: asking someone in a developing country to pay $200 one time for a general purpose computer useful for everything including 1080p gaming, or $10/month in addition to, uh guess what, some computing device they'd already have to own to access Stadia.

The adage goes: never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes barrelling down the highway. I mean, the follow up is usually "but never forget the latency", though in this case that doesn't apply. Point being: the internet isn't the answer to everything, but if the only tool Google has ever known is a hammer then every problem is going to look like a nail.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#497

Post by bbradley406 » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 2:51 AM UTC

ulkesh wrote: post #434

eanzenberg wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you smoking foo? >>The entire reason this is happening is because Google has successfully captured what once was the holy grail of markets, education, and is doing things like this to keep people on chromebooks. Care to share how this tidbit is true? >>The most important thing to realize is that they are focusing on gamers as a trial, the people who are price sensitive and who have to move first off of Windows 7…

> What gamers are still on Win7? Most are already on 10. Care to share how this tidbit is true? Sorry to use your words against you, but I'm not so certain. I'd like to see real statistics from a few sources. I agree that Windows 7 is surely phasing out, but anecdotally (which is where most conjecture like yours and mine come from), I know a number of people who specifically stayed on Windows 7 for two reasons: 1) Co…

Re: the survey - the type of person who remains on Windows 7 due to concerns about 10 would be more likely to opt out of the survey, or not use Steam in the first place. I would put the number for Windows 7 a little higher at maybe 30%.

I expect the number of Windows 10 players to increase as DX 12 becomes a common requirement, but we're not quite there yet.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#498

Post by alexandre_m » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 2:54 AM UTC

RIMR wrote: post #358

alexandre_m wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video files (even live stream HTTP based protocols like HLS) can be cached very easily on CDN infrastructure. However, a gaming session means to have a dedicated daemon running for you somewhere. I doubt this can be deployed anywhere on the spot, but perhaps they have some amazing technology for that.

Yeah, but the video file has to be the same video streaming to lots of people. CDNs aren't helpful if every stream is unique.

That's the point, there's no cache possible for interactive gaming sessions. It's a different architecture altogether.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#499

Post by alexandre_m » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 3:01 AM UTC

shereadsthenews wrote: post #484

kec wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you edge cache games though? Edge caching youtube requires a giant pile of hard drives, Edge caching games requires a giant pile of hard drives and a giant pile of compute power.

If you don't think Google can drop-ship racks of GPUs to major cities, I think you are underestimating them.

All these additional CPU/GPU require additional power and cooling capacity.

It's the challenge of edge computing datacenter design.

Re: Google unveils Stadia cloud gaming service

#500

Post by 013a » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 3:02 AM UTC

ajacksified wrote: post #409

013a wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's so much that this will hurt in the gaming industry. Some of my thoughts: 1. As subscription services take over, the upfront revenue game studios see will drop. This is just simple math: Xbox Game Pass costs $10/month, which means its the total cost of a AAA game over 6 months. In a traditional model, many gamers would expect to buy, lets say, 2 AAA games per year. In this new model, I can play as many as I wa…

You hit every single point I tried to make to my friend about half an hour ago. On one hand, I'm terrified that all of this will come to pass; on the other, if this is like any of Google's other projects, it's going to evaporate in two years anyways. Whatever happened to OnLive?

It wasn't the right time for OnLive. The tech wasn't there, in networking infrastructure (the internet), compute infrastructure (DC tech), or hardware (graphics cards).

To that last point; it is impossible to understate how fundamentally important Nvidia's Pascal architecture has been to the development of both gaming and AI. In my mind, its the most important computing chipset invented in the 2010s, and belongs among the "world's greatest" chips next to the Intel Core architecture, Apple's A-series, Pentium, and the 8086. It put Nvidia, quite literally, 5 years ahead of the competition almost overnight; AMD is still catching up, three years later, to the perf-per-dollar and perf-per-watt of the GTX 1080.

That chipset, and the cards that were made with it (GTX 1080/1080Ti namely) were the first indication that DC rendering with a stream-to-client architecture was actually possible for video gaming. Before that it was hard to make an economic case for it.

OnLive was purchased by Sony, and its easy to conclude that they repurposed their tech for their Playstation Now service. So it lives on.