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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"

#651

Post by mrguyorama »

taneq wrote: post #505
ukyrgf wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're not "running modern games" at any kind of acceptable frame rate and quality on a 15 year old CPU. And you absolutely aren't running VR on a 15 year old CPU even if you have a 4 year old GPU that technically fits within the minimum requirements.

I run VR with an i5 4440 and an RX 580 8gb. The CPU is 6(!) years old and the GPU is about 3. I have no trouble running VR games at 90fps consistently and 1.5-2.0 supersampling. Games like H3VR, VTOL VR, and I still have headroom to transcode video using OBS studio and stream to twitch and save locally. I also run Windows 7 meaning I am missing about a 10-20% performance bump from advanced features of the Windows 10 drivers.

While a 15 year old CPU is definitely hyperbole, if you bought the most expensive intel cpu 10 years ago, you could probably run VR on it.

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

#652

Post by EpicEng »

nhumrich wrote: post #476
shinteao wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>all the negative reviews of Stadia are by people who already have console/gaming PCs. I think most people who like playing video games would have some sort of video game playing hardware, yes. So, they might have opinions on what a good gaming experience is. And, if they have issues with Stadia (incl latency, graphical fidelity, and library), then it might be coming from an informed place.

> I think most people who like playing video games would have some sort of video game playing hardware, yes. False. Almost everyone who owns a smartphone plays videogames now. The mobile game market is huge. A lot of people dont own hardware specifically for video games, but still like to game. Its very possible stadia will work on android soon . Xbox has a similar service in brta that already works on phones.

The context here is obviously PC/console gamers. No one is clamouring for Candy Crush to be brought to Stadia. There may be overlap, but the mediums are completely different.

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

#653

Post by catalogia »

on_and_off wrote: post #608
catalogia wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people would just buy it at walmart who's selling it for $44, or amazon where it's also being sold for $44 ("by Playstation".) 3rd gen chromecast (is that not sufficient to stream video?) is $35. So $79 vs $130/136. That's quite a lot to many people. You can pick the more expensive options to make a point I guess, though I'm not sure what that point would be.

except that stadia requires an ultra You can pick the options that won't work to make a point I guess, though I'm not sure what that point would be.

What about it requires the more expensive option? If an entry level chromecast can stream from youtube, why can't it stream from stadia?

Maybe google is only willing to sell hardware equivalent to the ultra for use with stadia, but I don't see how that's a technical requirement. It seems like a business decision, and as such, is fair game for criticism.

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

#654

Post by cookiecaper »

xg15 wrote: post #601
ativzzz wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If games aren't art worth preserving, then neither is television, movies, music, etc They're not, unless you're willing to pay extra for them to be. Netflix is not preservable, DVDs are. Spotify is not preservable, CDs/MP3s are. Most of the stuff we watch/listen to is on non-preservable media, and for the most part, we don't care. If you really love a certain movie or song/album, you will buy it separately. Why not…

You're aware that DVDs are older than Netflix and MP3s are older than Spotify? They absolutely used to be preservable until an enormous technological effort was made to make them non-preservable. The amount of people curating their CD (or later MP3) collections showed they cared very much. > If you really love a certain movie or song/album, you will buy it separately. Why not the same with games? Because it's not cle…

> Or, to be more precise, you'll able to "buy" the game alright, but what you're buying is just access to the game on a streaming service, not an actual copy.

Which, to be fair, is also the desired effect of something like Steam. If Valve turns off your account, you lose access to all the games you've bought.

The last resort of tricking the DRM to retain access to the stuff you "own" is only possible due to the technical limitations that mandate distribution of the files to a user's local system. I'm sure publishers would love to be able to just stream blobs, making this type of thing much more difficult.

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

#655

Post by loco5niner »

drusepth wrote: post #353
reaperducer wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I get Stadia and want to keep playing my game in 4k a year from now, I have to sign on to a monthly fee. This past weekend I played Outlaw on my Atari 2600. Assuming I paid $40 when it came out, that means I paid 8¢/month for that game. Talk about value!

I would assume you wouldn't have been paying $0.08/month since 1976 (just like you wouldn't be paying monthly on Stadia when you weren't using it), so the monthly cost for the game would actually be significantly higher if you want to amortize its cost over months you've actually played. :P

> just like you wouldn't be paying monthly on Stadia when you weren't using it

Just like I don't pay for my gym membership when I'm not using it ;-)

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

#656

Post by Androider »

jowsie wrote: post #637
ativzzz wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If games aren't art worth preserving, then neither is television, movies, music, etc They're not, unless you're willing to pay extra for them to be. Netflix is not preservable, DVDs are. Spotify is not preservable, CDs/MP3s are. Most of the stuff we watch/listen to is on non-preservable media, and for the most part, we don't care. If you really love a certain movie or song/album, you will buy it separately. Why not…

The issue with this is that Netflix/Spotify are pay once monthly, and consume whatever you want whenever you want. With Stadia, you pay once monthly, and then you pay for the game on top of that cost. The same price you'd pay if you bought the game for any other platform, which also has the benefit of letting you own the game (physical copies, files downloaded to hardware you own). You're comparing apples to oranges.

That's just the current payment model, but that is orthogonal to the underlying technology. I can imagine a Spotify Free version of Stadia (yes, with ads or other limits) and a Premium all-you-can-play version. Game demos can be replaced by "Play now" buttons on YouTube, literally dropping you into the game in seconds.

What the platform promises is to match the ease of use of YouTube or Netflix. If it can actually deliver on that, I'm sure we'll see a lot of different business takes on the same technology. As someone who started gaming on an Atari and still maintains a top-of-the-line PC, I see a streaming model as inevitable since games need to compete with the Netflixes of the world for your attention. As a new dad, the barrier (timewise) to actually playing something these days is prohibitive, so Netflix wins by default for me when I have an hour.

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

#657

Post by benibela »

imtringued wrote: post #445
benibela wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany I have 8 Mbit/s

That's not the problem. You can have a "watchable" [0] video stream with 1mbit/s.

It is a problem with Stadia, because Google says you should have at least 10mbit/s

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

#658

Post by Faark »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #423
Shank wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most MMO stuff could easily pick a player to handle the processing of their immediate area on a background thread. This is how you get cheating. Decentralized hosting can work (look at CoD for an example of a highly successful game that used end user systems as servers), but an MMO is probably one of the least trusting environments you can have. It's not about immediate processing or anything, it's about having a t…

Yeah I said that. But cheating vs. not cheating has nothing to do with needing a 'serious' server. Edit: Okay I really need someone to explain why this particular comment got downvoted, I'm baffled.

Keep in mind MMOs have a persistent world. In CoD, meeting a cheater can ruin a 20min (? haven't played in a while) game session. In an MMO, it might screw up the entire economy. Thus off-loading authoritative work to clients is pretty much a no go.

To prevent clients from cheating, you have to run pretty much the entire game engine on the server. Sure, you can strip graphics, but not physics, cooldowns or inventory management. As an example: it sucks being killed by an enemy obviously behind a wall or in another room, so fired bullet should be checked against world geometry.

Pretending all this to be no big deal might be right for some specific (kind of) games, but generalizing it that much is... unrealistic at best.

Btw, dev time is valuable as well, so an overly engineered solution probably isn't a realistic option for many online games either.

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

#659

Post by loceng »

krick wrote: post #583
Crinus wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'll suggest a longer term vision: no individual consumer will be able to afford any hardware needed to use anything more than a thin client. Games of the future will require more powerful hardware than what you are using now, but even your typical gaming computer of today will be not affordable in the future, simply because it won't be produced for mass market anymore. In effect, all your computations will be run on…

Ready Player One movie comes to mind; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One_(film)

I had similar reaction when initially thinking through such a centralized architecture - and made me understand that a decentralized computational infrastructure ("personal computers") is a necessary failsafe to prevent against pitfalls of such centralization; similar reason as to why I think mesh network technology should potentially be everywhere, however not used as a default network.

These are the systems and failsafes, along with canaries we build into systems, that we need to educate everyone about - so the public can clearly understand and have a document available for them be able to refer to.

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

#660

Post by Tsarbomb »

playerqq wrote: post #124
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 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…

> there's no reason to accept Google as the standard bearer

This is pretty much it. Google is fundamentally an advertisement company and that scares me.

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