"Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it" • Hacker News Board

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#141

Post by buddylw » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

I actually think there's real potential for these services, especially among kids in the enthusiast gaming community. I don't necessarily think we'll be throwing out our PC's for stadia, but I think there is a market if someone can deliver a cost effective product.

A bit ago Fortnite went from requiring DX 10 to DX 11 support in Windows. Kids with old hardware were devastated. Out of nowhere they couldn't play their favorite game until they saved up for a new video card, or worse, an entire laptop. PC gaming is a really expensive hobby that's completely out of reach for many.

You can point to consoles as a lower cost answer, but $400 is still a lot of money for some people, and PC gaming is still preferred by many enthusiasts for the keyboard/mouse experience and the ability to multitask with Discord, Spotify, etc. Consoles are closing that gap in functionality, but they aren't quite there yet.

Some people were saved in the above fortnite situation by GeForce Now, a competing service to Stadia that's been around a while. You can pick at the technical problems with streaming games vs PC, but at the end of the day, kids with reasonable internet that signed up were able to play fortnite in their PC's again. It solved a real problem.

If you add to all this the fact that so many kids interact with the world through a Chromebook or iPad issued by their school, one can see a world where a stadia gaming app or a GeForce Now app is their most convenient gateway to big games.

Stadia could still flop if Google doesn't develop and promote it properly, or if people aren't willing to pay enough for the service. I do believe there are people that want stadia, though, and outside of slow internet connections, I don't see why the sharing economy can't extend to gaming PC's.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#142

Post by raxxorrax » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #108

eternalny1 wrote: post #14

Stadia to me may not be ready yet, but I have no doubt in the future this is how we will be gaming. Once bandwidth is ubiquitous enough to stream 4K games at 60 FPS without having to INSTALL anything or even OWN A GAMING PC/CONSOLE, this is a no brainer. Why shell out for a new 2080TI card when you can just pay another month to Stadia and let them handle all the hardware to run Red Dead Redemption 2 at 4k 60 FPS? No…

The 4k 60 fps bw requirement is just 35 Mbps, is there really catching up to do unless we're talking about mobile hotspots? Netflix 4k is 25 Mbps.

If everyone would use that bandwidth simultaneously, that can put huge loads on the net.

Imagine you suddenly have 3 kids. You would need to tell your least favorite kid that it needs to play outside because your connection is too slow.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#143

Post by rahimnathwani » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #95

This is the sort of product that the Big Tech Companies build because they happen to live in the one place on earth where it will work. There is evidently a small area centered around the San Francisco Bay Area where internet connectivity is ubiquitous and perfect. You get unlimited 5G coverage with 2ms ping times and hundred gigabit fibre into every habitable structure. And Google, Apple, etc. all have their offices…

Your general point is valid, but FYI not every place in the Bay Area has access to fibre optic internet. Where I live, the options are:

- ADSL, around 5Mbit/s down and 0.5Mbit/s up (with AT&T or Sonic)

- Cable, around 80Mbit/s down and 10 Mbit/s up (Comcast Xfinity)

- Roof antenna, around 100 down and 50 up (MonkeyBrains)

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#144

Post by siffland » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #94

ArmandGrillet wrote: post #36

I want Stadia. I've read reviews yesterday and was amazed by the lack of a long term vision from the reviewers. If Google doesn't drop the ball (which is a huge if knowing the company's history), Stadia makes a lot of sense. I want to play Red Dead Redemption 2, the cheapest way to do that as I don't have a console nor an expensive computer is Stadia. And when I will want to play Cyberpunk 2077, Stadia will be the ch…

> I've read reviews yesterday and was amazed by the lack of a long term vision from the reviewers. In my experience you should should never buy a product for what it might be one day and instead only pay for the what you're getting on day one. That way you're never disappointed/always get what you paid for. For example I recently purchased an Oculus Rift. I waited until enough games released so that I couldn't be dis…

cough Nintendo Virtual Boy cough

Imagine buying that and only getting 22 Games total.......Good call on waiting on the Oculus Rift

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#145

Post by d--b » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

I work remotely. My computer is in New York and I live in Paris. It works very well. I don’t understand the long rant about explaining why people don’t want remote computers.

Then Stadia, as a casual gamer I’d be more than happy to pay $2 every now and then rather than paying 300 for a device I don’t buy $60 games for.

There you go

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#146

Post by developerdylan » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

Crinus wrote: post #113

ArmandGrillet wrote: post #36

I want Stadia. I've read reviews yesterday and was amazed by the lack of a long term vision from the reviewers. If Google doesn't drop the ball (which is a huge if knowing the company's history), Stadia makes a lot of sense. I want to play Red Dead Redemption 2, the cheapest way to do that as I don't have a console nor an expensive computer is Stadia. And when I will want to play Cyberpunk 2077, Stadia will be the ch…

> the lack of a long term vision How about this for a long term vision: any game you buy now will be totally lost in the future ("long term") when Google decides to shut down the service (which happens all the time) or deactivate your account (which also happens all the time) while developers will have moved on and/or closed and wont give a second thought about. In the meanwhile, while Stadia exists, any games will b…

You're making a lot of assumptions with a clear bias there. Just because you don't want this model for games, doesn't mean nobody does. I tried Stadia with Assassin's Creed in the Alpha and it was a wonderfully low bar to entry. I was able to play the new Assassin's Creed on my Macbook. There's a lot of value to that.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#147

Post by Ninn » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

Crinus wrote: post #113

ArmandGrillet wrote: post #36

I want Stadia. I've read reviews yesterday and was amazed by the lack of a long term vision from the reviewers. If Google doesn't drop the ball (which is a huge if knowing the company's history), Stadia makes a lot of sense. I want to play Red Dead Redemption 2, the cheapest way to do that as I don't have a console nor an expensive computer is Stadia. And when I will want to play Cyberpunk 2077, Stadia will be the ch…

> the lack of a long term vision How about this for a long term vision: any game you buy now will be totally lost in the future ("long term") when Google decides to shut down the service (which happens all the time) or deactivate your account (which also happens all the time) while developers will have moved on and/or closed and wont give a second thought about. In the meanwhile, while Stadia exists, any games will b…

>I do not want to rent my computer nor i want to rent my gaming device

It's almost like you fully ignored the previous comments.. A lot of people may want to do exactly that, and are less bothered by other aspects, which you may appreciate and prioritise?

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#148

Post by fbelzile » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

ArmandGrillet wrote: post #36

I want Stadia. I've read reviews yesterday and was amazed by the lack of a long term vision from the reviewers. If Google doesn't drop the ball (which is a huge if knowing the company's history), Stadia makes a lot of sense. I want to play Red Dead Redemption 2, the cheapest way to do that as I don't have a console nor an expensive computer is Stadia. And when I will want to play Cyberpunk 2077, Stadia will be the ch…

Exactly, they have other motivations to make this work. Imagine only needing a ChromeOS laptop or Android phone to play the latest exciting games. I feel like Stadia might be the tipping point to make general computing a 100% streamed experience.

People would no longer need to buy expensive devices to: 1) browse the web 2) do basic office work 3) watch TV/video 4) edit/store images and, 5) gaming... leaving traditional desktops and laptops marginalized for only those people that need special custom software.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#149

Post by iv42 » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #110

birdyrooster wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not well known but AT&T and Nvidia partnered to use hardware encoding/decoding (Shield) and fiber internet with compute at the last mile and they still couldn’t make a product that wasn’t laggy and have distracting artifacts. I am sorry to say Google‘s demonstration was more of the same and customers will not overlook this. Imagine how bad VR titles would get you motion sick with all of that latency and compress…

It depends on where you're located. With FiOS in NYC I can get to AWS Virginia in 18ms. I don't have any Google Cloud servers to test with. When I use Steam/NVidia in home streaming with my GTX 1080 card, I can render a 1080p frame in about 10-12ms and decode it in 10ms on my 4K FireTV. (I beat Witcher 3, TombRaider, and Hitman with it over a 50Mbit powerline ethernet setup and they all looked fine BTW.) Even if the…

https://projectstream.google.com/speedtest

Bandwidth test only though; latency not reported.

Re: "Google Stadia is not a product that exists because people want it"

#150

Post by odessacubbage » Tue, Nov 19, 2019, 3:56 PM UTC

ArmandGrillet wrote: post #36

I want Stadia. I've read reviews yesterday and was amazed by the lack of a long term vision from the reviewers. If Google doesn't drop the ball (which is a huge if knowing the company's history), Stadia makes a lot of sense. I want to play Red Dead Redemption 2, the cheapest way to do that as I don't have a console nor an expensive computer is Stadia. And when I will want to play Cyberpunk 2077, Stadia will be the ch…

you could get red dead + a used ps4 for probably less than 150 and resell it when you're done without much of a loss, or just give it away as a gift. you could even rent both the game and the console for probably less than the cost of playing a degraded version with stadia (9.99 + the cost of the game+ bandwith caps)

>Stadia will be usable on my Mac in the kitchen or the bedroom steam and ps4 both support remote play, i assume xbox has something similar as well.

and besides all of that, once you beat red dead and cyberpunk, how many similar big ticket games are being pumped out at a fast enough rate for you to justify maintaining a subscription? assuming it takes you maybe one month to slowplay through a game, is the AAA machine even putting out enough(computationally intensive but not greatly affected by poor latency) titles to keep people around?