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

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

#481

Post by corodra »

delecti wrote: post #475
corodra wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, like eating a salad and a Big Mac are the same class of food as well. Feels so weird since it's so obvious. A salad and a Big Mac. They're both food, thus they are both equally nutritious. Go out and get some sun.

Maybe you don't view video games as being "as nutritious" as your personal preferred forms of entertainment, but that doesn't make those preferences universal. I've brought handheld gaming devices on virtually every trip I've made in the past decade, whether for work or pleasure, and I doubt I'm an outlier.

I know people that bring cigarettes to every trip they've had in more than 10 years. Doesn't make it right either.

Always having to rely on video games and the internet is a problem. You seriously can't mature through being alone in your own thoughts? People gladly, even smugly, say I'm a bad guy because on the weekends I treat myself to a cigar. Yea, I know it's bad and I don't push that habit off as some glorious thing to be protected. I have my vices. But I don't let my vice control me or become my identity. Everyone is on the kick the last 10 years like "video games define me". Y'all need to stop and go outside to hug a tree.

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

#482

Post by vvanders »

jfim wrote: post #453
vvanders wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All it takes is someone turning on a microwave down the block from you to drop 4-5 packets in a row and you get close to the 100ms number. Channel congestion in dense urban areas approaches the same limit, heck Ars was just talking about a technique today[1] that because it doesn't respect channel slots drops throughput of any router within 60m by 20%. 100-200ms is an upper bound, however they were reliably doing cli…

To be fair, network connections have significantly improved since the 90s. Your point still stands though, on a wireless network, it only takes some interference from other devices to cause latency spikes that make latency sensitive games frustrating to play, even if the actual upstream connection is of high quality. I've had quite a bit of issues with playing games on wireless networks in urban areas that go away ma…

Yeah and wifi is already pulling out all the tricks like FEC, CSMA and the like just to scale with usage.

At the end of the day the internet is a packet switched and not circuit switched topology despite telecom pushing hard for circuit switched in the early days. Preference is given for throughput and not latency(although network-next is working to address some of that).

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

#483

Post by krlx »

turtlebits wrote: post #293

"Gamers" don't want Stadia. And all the negative reviews of Stadia are by people who already have console/gaming PCs. It's targeted for those that don't have either, like me. I carry my Pixelbook everywhere and would be nice to play games on it. I don't want another device to carry around and don't have the time or patience to wait for patches/updates or the ridiculous storage requirements games have nowadays. The on…

The additional hardware would also block me. For a 4 months trip in Europe I used a service similar to Stadia: Shadow.tech that runs on your regular pc. Made able to rank up on For Honor quite nicely, even if it was not as nice as my too expensive gaming PC. You definetly should have a look at it.

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

#484

Post by sixothree »

corodra wrote: post #351
turtlebits wrote: post #293

"Gamers" don't want Stadia. And all the negative reviews of Stadia are by people who already have console/gaming PCs. It's targeted for those that don't have either, like me. I carry my Pixelbook everywhere and would be nice to play games on it. I don't want another device to carry around and don't have the time or patience to wait for patches/updates or the ridiculous storage requirements games have nowadays. The on…

I'm seeing this a lot and don't understand... where the hell are you people travelling where bringing a console/game system is a concern? I travel for work or for vacation. If for work, I'm there hitting "Spit money out for me" at an ATM. Not gaming. I'm not home so I can make much better money in a short timespan to enjoy home time more. End of days is visiting restaurants/bars and either socializing or schmoozing c…

More importantly, where are people going on vacation where they have bandwidth and latency enough to play video games over a streaming service!?

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

#486

Post by ukyrgf »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #349
bathtub365 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When buying a game on Stadia is the same price as buying it on other platforms but with the downside of a total loss of control or ability to play offline it becomes less attractive.

"Same price" if you already have a solid computer with a multi-hundred-dollar GPU.

You don't need a "multi-hundred-dollar GPU" to play modern games. I built my first computer 15 years ago for $500 using a $120 GPU. 10 years ago I upgraded it with a $120 GPU. 4 years ago I upgraded that with a $120 GPU. It should support VR, but I imagine when that tech has matured I'll want to pick up another $120 GPU.

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

#487

Post by on_and_off »

catalogia wrote: post #474
on_and_off wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$130 does not really shock me for controller + chromecast, it sounds in the right ballpark if I bought both of these separately. I already own a ps4 and a switch so I guess I count as a gamer. I still preordered Stadia because the tech demo was on point and it sounds like a good way to run games with high requirements. It is probably not going to happen (at least not in the first years) but the ability to handle mods…

> "$130 does not really shock me for controller + chromecast, it sounds in the right ballpark if I bought both of these separately." A chromecast and a PS4 controller purchased separately today would be closer to half that much.

dualshock 4 = 66 dollars (I know you can find it for cheaper, but that's the price on playstation.com) chromecast ultra = 70 dollars

so I am going to stand by my original comment ;)

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

#488

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

Lev1a wrote: post #403
playerqq wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 disagree that the reviewers lacked long term vision. Nearly all of seem to have been burned by the promise of videogame streaming before, and the current state of Stadia only inspires cautiou…

> Furthermore, with initiatives by Microsoft (Project xCloud) and EA (Project Atlas), there's no reason to accept Google as the standard bearer for game streaming. There's plenty of companies that could be coming up with the experience we've been waiting a better part of a decade for. Also, when those other streaming services are at least somewhat established there will most likely be content fragmentation soon after…

> Also, when those other streaming services are at least somewhat established there will most likely be content fragmentation soon after, i.e. Microsoft (published) games only on "Project xCloud" etc. like we're seeing in Video Streaming currently.

That's been the norm of the gaming industry for ages. Mario, Sonic, Halo, etc - its always been fragmented. You have to pay for an expensive console to get at the exclusives.

Streaming services have the potential to improve that situation - assuming most are easy to subscribe/unsubscribe as video streaming services.

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

#489

Post by lovich »

imtringued wrote: post #457
lovich wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wouldn't 2ms be <400 miles of travel? Youd have to be pretty close to the datacenter to get 2ms of latency when the computer needs time to do calculations as well

400 miles is pretty Pretty close? That's more than the distance between Paris and Amsterdam but yes you are right. Encoding a video and decoding it introduces additional latency even on the same machine.

I'm an American so maybe it's different. 400 miles max, reduced by however long it takes for the computations, doesn't seem like a large distance for me. My VPN provider's closest datacenter is 200 miles from me

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

#490

Post by corodra »

vvanders wrote: post #394
vel0city wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100-200ms latency seems a little extreme to me. Its an 8ms ping from my home to the nearest Google edge node (supposedly where Stadia nodes will live), 9-11ms on my WiFi. Compression and decompression of the video stream with hardware acceleration and tuned for speed over quality should only add maybe another ms or two. Where is the extra 80+ms coming from?

All it takes is someone turning on a microwave down the block from you to drop 4-5 packets in a row and you get close to the 100ms number. Channel congestion in dense urban areas approaches the same limit, heck Ars was just talking about a technique today[1] that because it doesn't respect channel slots drops throughput of any router within 60m by 20%. 100-200ms is an upper bound, however they were reliably doing cli…

Serious question, what about the general increase of bandwidth usage?

In my mind things like Stadia will increase the amount of data traffic exponentially, even at a low market penetration rate. I think I saw one estimate that it's going to be 120gb on average per hour. Even at 100gb, the extra traffic at scale is going to be insane.

Regardless of if current infrastructure can handle x% market penetration of that kind of usage in a, what, 1 year time? Should the infrastructure even be required for that kind of insanity? We're not talking about life-saving data transportation. We're talking about god damn video games. Or am I way off my whiskey fueled rocker?

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