Sony and Microsoft set rivalry aside for cloud gaming alliance • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by pathartl » Thu, May 16, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

alwaysdoit wrote: post #108

manfredo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except, that's not actually the case as you still have latency between servers.

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

#112

Post by ehsankia » Thu, May 16, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

Xixi wrote: post #90

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…

I have no idea how reliable it is, but quoting wikipedia [1]: "Testing has found that overall "input lag" (from controller input to display response) times of approximately 200 ms are distracting to the user. It also appears that (excluding the monitor/television display lag) 133 ms is an average response time and the most sensitive games (fighting games, first person shooters and rhythm games) achieve response times…

You can probably do even better than 20-30ms round trip if you're one of the large Cloud companies with data centers everywhere. Amazon so far doesn't seem interested, but Google and Microsoft definitely have the infrastructure to pull it off.

Sure you won't get high end PC gamers, that's not really the target demographic here. It's the millions of console and mobile gamers.

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

#113

Post by ancientworldnow » Thu, May 16, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

shados wrote: post #110

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 tru…

They also lose everyone not interested in streaming games (like myself). I'm sure they've run the numbers, but I know plenty of people who actively purchase games and are not at all interested in streaming them.

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

#114

Post by ehsankia » Thu, May 16, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #109

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 ye…

Yeah, speed of light is actually a lot faster than people think. Honestly things such as controller and display lag are probably bigger than the round trip latency. And experimentally, anyone who has tried Stadia at GDC or I/O has said that latency wasn't an issue.

The bigger limiting factor I think will be bandwidth, especially in America with the awful internet provider situation.

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

#115

Post by shados » Thu, May 16, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

ancientworldnow wrote: post #113

shados wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tru…

They also lose everyone not interested in streaming games (like myself). I'm sure they've run the numbers, but I know plenty of people who actively purchase games and are not at all interested in streaming them.

For sure, I'm in that camp too. I was in the anti-Steam camp back in the days too, and well...that didnt work out for me.

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

#116

Post by TheOperator » Thu, May 16, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

Xixi wrote: post #90

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…

I have no idea how reliable it is, but quoting wikipedia [1]: "Testing has found that overall "input lag" (from controller input to display response) times of approximately 200 ms are distracting to the user. It also appears that (excluding the monitor/television display lag) 133 ms is an average response time and the most sensitive games (fighting games, first person shooters and rhythm games) achieve response times…

Actual video gamers right now go out of their way to get displays with very low input lags. 1080p144hz TN low input lag displays are used quite a bit in esports to shave a few msec. You literally win more often if you react faster. People aim to get TVs with sub 16ms input lag.

However that's not most of the market. The appeal of cloud gaming is for single player non-competitive games. These are the most pirated games and the games where input lag matters the least.

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

#117

Post by neilv » Thu, May 16, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #95

neilv wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be happy if Valve became a middleperson for AAA titles native on Linux+Vulkan. They have SteamOS and a decent controller ready to resurrect, and everyone to slap on PC hardware consoles again, given a makeover. (Things like Wine are effectively sabotage.)

I'm not convinced they have the core competencies required to pull it off. It seemed like they had the hype and market positioning to pull it off the first time around, but just expected 3rd party hardware vendors to do the work and make SteamBox a thing via the magic of the free market. I think it might have worked if they put together an excellent 1st party product and gave it a real marketing push.

It would've helped if the top titles were there. (If you bought/built a SteamOS box, you have a rough-looking thing that doesn't play top games, when you could instead just run Windows+Steam, or get a Sony or MS console, any of which would play most things.)

Valve seemed to not make the final marketing push on Steam Machines, that I could see. Maybe because they realized that it wasn't coming together. And/or maybe it was intended as a warning, to not be forced out when MS was grabbing the app store.

Your idea of Valve in making a console themselves is interesting. They did get some limited experience with hardware, with the controller and the thin device. I don't know what all would go into some kind of manufacturing and branding partnership.

One thing that I think didn't happen is an initial loss-leader on the console, to bring people into the lock-in ecosystem, like the console companies might do. I don't see how the third parties had that incentive. And I don't know how loss-leader works if whatever anyone builds is just a commodity PC.

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

#118

Post by TheOperator » Thu, May 16, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #109

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 ye…

Witcher 3 is a single player game and the users who care about lag by far the most are multiplayer gamers.

Certain games like rhythm games would also be pretty miserable with jitter...

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

#119

Post by ancientworldnow » Thu, May 16, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

shados wrote: post #115

ancientworldnow wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also lose everyone not interested in streaming games (like myself). I'm sure they've run the numbers, but I know plenty of people who actively purchase games and are not at all interested in streaming them.

For sure, I'm in that camp too. I was in the anti-Steam camp back in the days too, and well...that didnt work out for me.

The other consideration is bandwidth. Streaming a game is far more intensive than just playing it and many US households are under tight data caps (not to mention throttling under peak hours). I just am not convinced by the advantages, for much of the gaming demographic.

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

#120

Post by manfredo » Thu, May 16, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

alwaysdoit wrote: post #108

manfredo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not entirely true. Many networked games use client side prediction, and collision detection (at least for collisions against terrain and walls, weapon hits are often computed on the server to curb cheating).

If you have a 100ms latency to a stadia server, then there's a 200ms latency between pushing forward on the stick and your character moving forward. This is not the case on a networked game, the client would start moving your player immediately (even if there is a 100ms delay to send those updates to the server).