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Luna – Cloud gaming service

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Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you'd have to ask Microsoft’s chief legal officer Brad Smith. Also, game consoles aren't nearly as ubiquitous or important to society as smart phones. I'm all for treating them very differently! We certainly don't treat matchbooks the same as we treat flamethrowers.

Microsoft’s official position when it filed a brief in support of Epic was only with regards to the Unreal engine. Do you really think that MS is naive enough to think that if the courts force Apple to change their policy with iOS devices, consoles won’t be next?

> Do you really think that MS is naive enough to think that if the courts force Apple to change their policy with iOS devices, consoles won’t be next?

You seem pretty confident of the outcome. Are you a lawyer?

Seems to me that a lot of different things could happen. We certainly don’t regulate every mode of transportation the same just because they all transport people.

You are forcing an analogy between smart phones and consoles that is based on one facet of their operation. Someone could live their whole life without owning a game console. Meanwhile, smart phones are considered an absolute necessity by a vast, vast majority of people in the US.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#232

I'm not sure I would get back on one of these. I used OnLive back in the day, but now I can't play those games any more. It was a subscription with lock-in, and now that it's out of business I can't even choose to be locked in. Now, I have recently started playing on GeForce NOW, nVidia's offering. However there it's much closer to an EC2 model: I'm renting a machine, and I log into my Steam profile and play games th…

I'm an avid cloud gamer. I used GeForce NOW at first, but it had limited game selection. I use Shadow now and it is much better. I have full control over the PC/VM, and install whatever I want from anywhere. I'm also super impressed with the latency - I can play multiplayer competitive games no problem. I'm on a Mac so cloud gaming makes sense for me. I was going to build a PC but the cost was too high. Much cheaper…

I can highly recommend Shadow aswell, a friend of mine uses it and for online multiplayer it is a really nice option. It I didn’t own a decent PC I probably would choose that to play my Steam games.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#233
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary issue is the games catalog, something neither Amazon or Google can crack a dent in

Yes. All I want is a latency-optimized EC2 (I'm no twitch gamer, This is where NVidia went wrong. They're basically providing that sort of thing, but wanted to present it as their own game service as though all the other storefronts were just backend plumbing. Not a bad consumer experience, but also not what publishers are licensing when they stick their game on Steam.

25ms is a huge ask

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stadia needs roughly 20mbps, which these days is fairly average for most places in the world. Actually data transfer can become an issue if you don't have unlimited data transfer and play more than a few hours a day. 720p is 4.5gb per hour, whereas 1080p is 9gb. 4K is even higher.

Dang Outside of US you usually pay for the data I think this can be expensive for some people

It really depends. Some places like Canada and Australia it's a bit rough, but in europe and both internet speeds and caps are much much cheaper. Honestly even in Canada I have a 1TB cap, which would be a problem if I played a ton of Stadia, but a few hours a week is not an issue. 50 hours would be maybe half my cap.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#235
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've used GFN, then you know that most game use Steam Cloud so your saves aren't locked in. Stadia has also claimed they let you export your save files.

Except it's notoriously flaky. I've lost several save games and support has said everything from I'm lying, it's my router, and ghosting me. Can't use a provider that doesn't take data protection seriously.

That's strange. Do you properly shutdown the game and wait for it to sync before closing the instance?

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#236
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. All I want is a latency-optimized EC2 (I'm no twitch gamer, This is where NVidia went wrong. They're basically providing that sort of thing, but wanted to present it as their own game service as though all the other storefronts were just backend plumbing. Not a bad consumer experience, but also not what publishers are licensing when they stick their game on Steam.

25ms is a huge ask

Even locally, on a console, you’ll not get latency (input to visible response on screen) down to 25ms these days.

Some LCD TVs alone can add 40-60ms of latency, and software can add another couple of frames. Often 30hz frames, too...

Which kind of sucks if you grew up on CRTs and arcade games that often managed much lower latency.

But I guess it means that game streaming really could offer a console-like experience if as much non-network latency as possible was eliminated...

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tons of PC games I "own" but can't play anymore. One of my favorite tycoon games was Sid Meier's Railroads, but it can't run stable on any machine with more than 4GB of RAM. Sure I could spin up a Windows XP VM but that's not a reasonable solution in any way. Same thing with Full Spectrum Warrior, just doesn't run on modern OSes. I can play Unreal Tournament 2003 or older Call of Duty games or... if I can find…

PC gaming has always had an element of troubleshooting and workarounds to get them working on some systems. I play lot's of old games, and it's rare if ever that I can't find patches or workarounds to get them working. It's also not quite the same to compare something you definitely could get working with more effort (like spinning up an XP VM) to something where there is literally no way at all, like when OnLive wen…

I'm still playing some MMO-games that had their servers shut down thanks to people developing emulated servers and recreating the game world. Asherons Call is one, Planetside 1 another. I know similar efforts exists in a lot of MMO's.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why so many in the gaming community prefer to buy physical games as opposed to digital downloads. At least with digital downloads you can quick download all of your purchases before a store closes down. With gaming streaming that shit's gone forever.

The real problem with the Physical vs Digital divide these days is that a lot of content is cloud based. So even with standalone discs, there's a reliance on online services to succeed / gain content. It's by design. MS made it clear 8 years ago that they wanted Digital and to move on from Physical media. It's an inevitability, the question is how can we migrate licenses from platforms. I like how movies are handled…

As long as you can access the games, you can get around the server closures. There are active online communities for PSP Monster Hunter and DS Pokemon games even though the online services shut down years ago.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#239

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…

> encourage longer titles with lots of grinding/farming

This is a good point that worries me. Also is the anxiety that carries having too much choice, like when choosing what to see next on Netflix. Now if you pay 60USD for a game you are compelled to finish it. With thousands of games to choose from, and being able to instantaneously switch between them, then I guess it means videogames as we know them would be over. Probably split in seasons, becoming super addictive and shallow just to get you engaged.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#240
This pairing up with a library of free Prime games seems like it could draw in a big crowd of casual gamers.

Don't know if this is still the case, but I remember on Fire tablets getting third party apps for free that cost money on other platforms.

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