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Luna – Cloud gaming service

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Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#111

Post by vmception »

boardwaalk wrote: post #46

The Venn diagram for target audience and situational use cases of these services has always seemed very small to me. At least the subscription model and game selection seems better than Stadia. edit: Also, it seems to me like the target audience is for the same sort (and I’m not trying to denigrate) that watch movies on their TV with internal speakers or can’t fathom why you’d pay more than 30 bucks for headphones or…

The latency is the only “situational use case” to care about. This has been mitigated more and more. The rest is just gatekeeping gamers imagining what a larger group of wallets would care about and being strong. Chronic problem in that community. Isnt the biggest protest amongst enthusiast gamers based around at what point they will pay the company anyway? Hard to take any stance there seriously when there is zero power over what happens, companies dont get cancelled, 2% of their audience just doesnt preorder the thing they were going to buy anyway, amazing.

Hiccups and artifacts are largely solved and where they aren't, the market tolerates it just fine.

There has been a whole decade of this stuff. The arguments are literally from last decade and they weren’t issues even with the inferior infrastructure then.

I dont think any of these services have proven themselves as a profitable endeavor on their own yet, but as far as advertising or a competitive ecosystem for a larger brand, theyve done really well.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#112

Post by robbs »

mdoms wrote: post #109
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bear in mind: While very few consumers benefit from cloud-based gaming, the outcome of dragging consumers over to it for businesses is huge. Why sell software and hardware once when you can sell software, the hardware it's hosted on, and the support and services to manage that software and hardware every single month . It's why companies like Adobe and Microsoft have tried to push their main, relatively static[1] sof…

You may speak for yourself but you most certainly do not speak for every consumer, regardless of how many superlatives you use. I, for one, prefer the subscription model for some things. I like that I can dip my toes in and out of the Photoshop ecosystem without having to shell out hundreds up front. I prefer to rent Netflix for a month rather than purchasing DVDs or Blurays I may watch once or twice. And when cloud…

The nationwide fibre in NZ means that latency from Auckland to anywhere with fibre is very low. Cloud gaming could arrive in NZ just as soon as Azure does!

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#113

Post by lumost »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #92
boardwaalk wrote: post #46

The Venn diagram for target audience and situational use cases of these services has always seemed very small to me. At least the subscription model and game selection seems better than Stadia. edit: Also, it seems to me like the target audience is for the same sort (and I’m not trying to denigrate) that watch movies on their TV with internal speakers or can’t fathom why you’d pay more than 30 bucks for headphones or…

Bear in mind: While very few consumers benefit from cloud-based gaming, the outcome of dragging consumers over to it for businesses is huge. Why sell software and hardware once when you can sell software, the hardware it's hosted on, and the support and services to manage that software and hardware every single month . It's why companies like Adobe and Microsoft have tried to push their main, relatively static[1] sof…

I haven't used office products unless obligated too in ~6 years. cloud based options, even terrible cloud based options like quip are an order of magnitude better than word. It's faster to open the documents I care about, easier to share, easier to collaborate, and just plain faster.

The word docs I still use end up having 3 dozen copies in my downloads folder from different versions sent via email. It's a nightmare.

If it requires a $6/mo subscription for the cloud based equivalent of a $100 consumer software package, I'd gladly pay it.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#114

Post by outworlder »

alexwebb2 wrote: post #103
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bear in mind: While very few consumers benefit from cloud-based gaming, the outcome of dragging consumers over to it for businesses is huge. Why sell software and hardware once when you can sell software, the hardware it's hosted on, and the support and services to manage that software and hardware every single month . It's why companies like Adobe and Microsoft have tried to push their main, relatively static[1] sof…

> very few consumers benefit from cloud-based gaming > It's not a good way to do things, it's not good for any consumer or user of those things > no matter how impractical or stupid it is Hard disagree on this take. I would personally love a stable, smooth gaming-as-a-service experience - where I can pay based on my usage level, access any games I want to, pick up my saved game from any device, and never have to worr…

> and never have to worry about sitting around for hours waiting for updates or downloads

Here's the thing though. Those downloads and updates have a massive efficiency factor. Once you have downloaded your assets, they don't have do be downloaded again to be used.

With these game streaming platforms, it doesn't matter that you have downloaded 100GB in screen frames. They can only be used once and then are discarded. In some cases this is a benefit - on Flight Simulator 2020 the servers only have to send you a fraction of their terrain data. But that's a small part of it.

> stable, smooth gaming-as-a-service experience

Netflix and the like work because you can buffer. Is your connection a bit choppy today? Hit pause and let it buffer a bit, hopefully it will stabilize. But games do not tolerate ANY latency issues. Even things like Steam Link - using only your local network - can struggle if there's too much traffic or interference.

Then there's the business model. I don't want a 'subscription'. If I buy a game today I may be spending $60 upfront(if the game has been out for a while, often much less), but I can play as much as I want.

Do you have fantastic internet connectivity, an under-powered device, and you want to quickly shuffle through different games from an online selection? Ok, this could make sense.

Still, this sounds like a far better deal for corporations, as opposed to consumers.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#115

Post by nicoburns »

dyingkneepad wrote: post #30
QuixoticQuibit wrote: post #9

This feels like an appropriate place to rant on something that’s been bothering me for a while. It’s really disappointing to me to see every single form of entertainment becoming a subscription service. It’s also the same problem you see with various apps/software trying the SaaS model, even when it doesn’t make sense. Are we going to have exclusive games requiring multiple subscriptions to enjoy the content you want…

I feel the gaming industry is segmented in a few universes these days. There's the universe of high budget AAA games, where decisions made by corporate execs often ruin great ideas, or you get the same exact game re-released every 1 or 2 years under slightly different name. There's the world of mobile gaming, where every single game seems to be the same gacha experience that trains you to open the app every minute to…

It's basically how the music world works too. There's big-budget pop artists that are occasionally good but usually crap. And then there's a ton of smaller artists of all mixtures of talent, but are often amazingly talented, and can be found at your local pub or music venue (or could be pre-covid).

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#116

Post by hitchhikerr »

wayneftw wrote: post #93
scarface74 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither Microsoft nor Google are fighting Apple on either the 30% cut nor to open up the App Store. Why would they? They are doing the same thing. I thought Google was suppose to be a proponent of PWA’s?

Microsoft is. They publicly sided with and are helping to support Epic. Google didn’t do a mobile PWA for Stadia even on Android. I thought there was a comment about some technical limitations on iOS Safari in some previous thread but I can’t remember. They probably want the same experience everywhere.

Stadia is a PWA on desktop Chrome

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#117

Post by MikusR »

chaostheory wrote: post #99
MikusR wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hawe you actually tried Stadia or Geforce Now?

I don't have fiber, so I'm at the mercy of how much demand there is for Comcast at any given time. Sometimes it works great, other times not so much. I'd rather just install games locally like with Game Pass, Steam, or EPIC. My local computer can handle these games just fine. I'm definitely not the target audience since I can afford the hardware. The only place I can think of in the US with fiber are university dorms…

You don't need fiber. As for use cases, i just now played an hour of The Division 2 on my laptop (with intel integrated gpu) using 4g connection from my phone.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#118

Post by outworlder »

asou wrote: post #75

>Unlike streaming movies or music, cloud gaming can consume up to 10GB/hr at 1080p Jesus Christ. So of I want to go to game on my phone while I take the bus for an hour I've blown 10gbs from my data plan. The only thing keeping me on Xbox Gamepass is the fact I can download games locally. At first I really liked it, but then connection dropped so much games where unplayable ( on WiFi )

>Unlike streaming movies or music, cloud gaming can consume up to 10GB/hr at 1080p

Makes sense. It is also a problem on many internet providers (including Comcast), not just mobile.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#119

Post by nightski »

fartcannon wrote: post #41
nightski wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not too worried about it personally, the only tech company I think that has a competitive offering in this space is Microsoft (with Game Pass and potentially xCloud). All others are doomed to fail.

You're not worried that Microsoft has the only competitive offering? Shouldn't that kind of terrify you? Microsoft is not known to be a good corporate citizen when they have a monopoly.

No because I'm betting on the concept not being successful enough to become the dominant distribution method. I think it will have a successful niche, but not much more. I know that I never plan on using it, I already own over a thousand games and have barely played 10% of them. TBH I'm probably good for most of the rest of my life haha.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#120

Post by dx87 »

vmception wrote: post #111
boardwaalk wrote: post #46

The Venn diagram for target audience and situational use cases of these services has always seemed very small to me. At least the subscription model and game selection seems better than Stadia. edit: Also, it seems to me like the target audience is for the same sort (and I’m not trying to denigrate) that watch movies on their TV with internal speakers or can’t fathom why you’d pay more than 30 bucks for headphones or…

The latency is the only “situational use case” to care about. This has been mitigated more and more. The rest is just gatekeeping gamers imagining what a larger group of wallets would care about and being strong. Chronic problem in that community. Isnt the biggest protest amongst enthusiast gamers based around at what point they will pay the company anyway? Hard to take any stance there seriously when there is zero p…

It's not just people gatekeeping, developers are usually going to target whatever gives them the biggest return. PC games have been gimped for a long time because the developers make sure the game runs on consoles as well, and if cloud gaming takes off, it'll be even less likely that people develop games with PC players in mind. I can't blame people for wanting cloud gaming to fail; if it's succesful it could cause major changes to their hobby as games are developed for the lowest common denominator.
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