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Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

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Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#101

Post by Nagyman »

shmerl wrote: post #26
skohan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a huge fan of the fact that Google is embracing a Linux + Vulkan stack for gaming, but I also want them to have meaningful competition. Yes it would be a dream scenario if MS & Sony started supporting Vulkan, but it would also be a nightmare scenario if Stadia started dominating the gaming market, and gaming technology stagnated for a decade at Vega56-class GPU's because there is no competitive pressure to push t…

Sure, competition is good. But it doesn't mean it should come with lock-in problems. MS learned not to mess things up on the Web (remember ActiveX and Silverlight?). But when it comes to gaming, they are still as nasty as in the '90s. And Sony is even worse in this regard. I agree about Stadia in general. I wouldn't want it to become too dominant, especially since it's like DRM on steroids - you can't back up anythin…

In the long term, streamed games (Stadia or similar) are definitely going to become dominant. Steam, et al, can still be storefronts, if they position themselves as such – we still need content curation.

All one needs is a screen with support (e.g. smartTV, chromecast, steam box), internet, and controllers. Classic game systems might be needed for another 5-10 years. Controllers & form factors matter (e.g. Switch, VR), but the "power" of PCs & game systems are no longer differentiators.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#102

Post by guidedlight »

neilv wrote: post #65

I didn't think this would ever happen. Sony execs presumably know the history of how alliances like that have gone (i.e., you almost invariably get backstabbed, sometimes first being given an offer you can't refuse, of a buyout).

Sony is the biggest backstabber of them all

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#103

Post by Faark »

dmitriid wrote: post #77
davemp wrote: post #56

It seems like all the major players are taking game streaming seriously. I'm still not very sure about the viability. There's the obvious DRM win. Accessibility will be higher with way lower or non-existent hardware costs. These probably look very enticing on a cooperate slide deck. Not to mention the subscription model. On a more technical side game streaming is only really desirable for games that don't run well on…

Outside of most FPS and some really tight-action platformers streaming pioneered by OnLive is more than enough especially for the casual gamer. When OnLive was operational I had no trouble playing Batman (something something Arkham?) on their American servers from a MacBook Air in Sweden. I had a similar experience later with LiquidSky which was running regular games downloaded from Steam in their cloud and streaming…

I remember using Gaikai a bit. It was quite usable with non-reflex based games like From Dust. But that's quite common these days. I sometimes RDP over wifi to my gaming PC when to lazy to transfer saves for games like Factorio or KSP.

Still I have a hard time imagining first person games, since I despise those with significant input lag. Even just on a local PC some games have a horrible delay unless you run very high frame-rates (quite a bunch of those Unreal Engine) and I always have a hard time getting into those.

Now with an additional 20-30ms network latency... for this to be close to acceptable, they would have to get the on server delay close to nothing at the very least. I doubt that will happen while games are still release on multiple platforms.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#104

Post by duxup »

shmerl wrote: post #18

Google finally advances Linux+Vulkan gaming using a side door that bypasses the market share blocker altogether. MS and Sony don't like it and plan to mirror Google. Instead, they should stop being lock-in jerks, and should support Vulkan as well.

Do we feel like Google's efforts are a ... viable thing yet?

Not really sure the Sony and MS thing are a reaction, and I'm not sure Google's thing is so much a thing.

Some of Google's PR about how whatever it is they're doing is going to be all things (their statements have been strange IMO) could just be unfocused PR, or just an unfocused product.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#105

Post by cwyers »

acolumb wrote: post #100
cwyers wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Xbox One has an NT kernel and DirectX as the graphics API. Stadia's use of Linux and Vulkan are probably about as helpful for a port to desktop Linux as an Xbox One game is for a Windows port.

That analogy is the biggest thing to happen for Linux porting since Valve's Proton SDK - all future MS-funded Xbox One games do come to Windows (albeit as UWPs) and run great.

I think "MS-funded" is doing a lot more of the work there than the kernel and graphics API are.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#106

Post by Loughla »

kn0where wrote: post #96
mattlondon wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20-30ms seems high? At least in the UK a typical home broadband latency is 6 to 9ms in my experience.

USA has no (local) competition for internet, it’s almost all regional monopolies or duopolies where one (cable TV company) is expensive and ok and the other (copper wire phone company) is slow and unreliable.

Some places (mine) are, by local ordinance, unable to receive high speed internet because the company that owns the rights/stupid ass poles that they run everything on along the road offers high speed internet access ALREADY. . . .

SO COOL!!

How do they do it? By defining high speed as dial-up speeds in the ordinance they helped the local small, technologically inept government craft!

God Bless The USA

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#107

Post by shmerl »

cwyers wrote: post #80
shmerl wrote: post #18

Google finally advances Linux+Vulkan gaming using a side door that bypasses the market share blocker altogether. MS and Sony don't like it and plan to mirror Google. Instead, they should stop being lock-in jerks, and should support Vulkan as well.

How does Stadia advance Linux+Vulkan? The games run in a data center (and they're not running a standard Linux port, the presentations I saw made it sound like they were running basically another console port).

More gaming developers becoming familiar with Linux+Vulkan, more games ported to Stadia's Linux, all that means more potential releases for normal desktop Linux as well. Not all who target Stadia will clearly do it, but potential is surely better than without Stadia. So I see it as net positive for Linux gaming.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#108

Post by alwaysdoit »

manfredo wrote: post #74
iandanforth wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Stadia trial convinced me that streaming is a near-term viable option. Latencies were not an issue. Bandwidth was, but when I got to play on a 50Mbps+ connection any issues I had encountered disappeared. Moreover I was able to play a AAA title on my 2011 Macbook Air and that was fantastic.

What kind of games were played? Whether or not latency is an issue is hugely dependent on the title. A game like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice where the bulk of the game play revolves around precision timing is going to be killed by any significant amount of latency. Unless it does something smart like trying to compensate for the latency on the client end (e.g. make a block succeed even if it was late, if it suspects th…

For a networked multiplayer game, the total amount of network lag is effectively the same, except that the network lag is moved from between client and server to client and "display". Now that the server and client are now just one instance, there is zero lag there.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#109

Post by ManuelKiessling »

davemp wrote: post #56

It seems like all the major players are taking game streaming seriously. I'm still not very sure about the viability. There's the obvious DRM win. Accessibility will be higher with way lower or non-existent hardware costs. These probably look very enticing on a cooperate slide deck. Not to mention the subscription model. On a more technical side game streaming is only really desirable for games that don't run well on…

Honestly I just don't get why every single time there is discussion about game streaming, the topic of lag as a potential show stopper comes up, and every time it's a hypothetical discussion, which doesn’t make sense at all - the solutions are out there! Don’t assume - just verify it.

And when you do, you will find out that there isn’t any actual issue. I’ve played games like The Witcher 3 via streaming over three years ago.

Input/output lag simply isn’t an issue, and I’m your average German VDSL user, nothing special.

From my point of view, there is no sense in any further discussion - the empirical data is already in.

Re: Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance

#110

Post by shados »

davemp wrote: post #56

It seems like all the major players are taking game streaming seriously. I'm still not very sure about the viability. There's the obvious DRM win. Accessibility will be higher with way lower or non-existent hardware costs. These probably look very enticing on a cooperate slide deck. Not to mention the subscription model. On a more technical side game streaming is only really desirable for games that don't run well on…

When playing online against other opponents, having the gaming machines be very close to each other might make up part of the latency introduced by the distance between the player and the gaming machine. Maybe.

Your first point is key though. Piracy is a big deal. People can say until they're blue in the face that it "helps", or that "they wouldn't have bought the game anyway", and for some unknown percentage its true, and for some other unknown percentage its a straight lie.

If they go from "optionally play a game via streaming", to "this game MUST be played via streaming" eventually, they get the second group (the ones who WOULD pay if they couldn't get it for free) instantly.

Only if it doesn't suck, obviously.

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