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When will Google kill Stadia?

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Re: When will Google kill Stadia?

#11

Post by brundolf »

cashewchoo wrote: post #9
2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote: post #3

People kept trying to convince me that Stadia is fantastic with its supposedly amazing tech. I live in a larger city and I am in the privileged position to have access to a top shelf internet connection, so I gave it a try. It was not "fantastic", I would describe it as barely ok. Latency was surprisengly good I admit, but absolutely noticeable and annoying. If this is some kind of "future of gaming", I have to say i…

I think perhaps a bigger issue is that, presumably their audience is "people who currently like AAA games with huge graphics requirements", which are going to be "core gamers". Which are perhaps some of the most notoriously hard to please people in the world (I say this with some amount of love). And they take tremendous pride in their hardware (see: pc building subreddits, pcmasterrace, etc) and companies (nvidia, a…

Not to mention: for the people who don't want to play AAA games, they almost certainly already have a local device in their pocket that can handle anything they might want to play, without latency or even a subscription

Re: When will Google kill Stadia?

#12

Post by brundolf »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #5

I've used Stadia on a 150ish Mb connection and it runs as fast as the game does locally. I multiplay borderlands 3 with friends and very rarely have issues. If there's speed issues, what Stadia seems to do is lower the resolution being transmitted, in order to maintain speed and low latency. So the worst is some very rare periods of minor lower resolution adjustment for a few seconds then it turns back to normal. It'…

The issue isn't bandwidth; Netflix can stream HD video over a 5Mbps connection, and Stadia should require about the same bandwidth as video streaming because that's essentially what it's doing (and sending input signals back the other direction, but those should be negligible)

What's much harder is latency. Who cares if your interactions with Netflix have a 500ms delay? For a video game, even 50ms is a problem. And you can't improve latency just by adding bigger pipes: there are unshakeable physical limits around how long it takes an electrical signal to go to and from a data center X miles away, and on top of that there's the rat's nest of routing that the signal has to go through along the way. The former can't be solved except by building out more datacenters so that more people are closer to them. The latter can be solved, at great effort, but I don't see ISPs having much motivation to do so. This is why individual experiences with Stadia are so hit-or-miss: it mostly comes down to luck, in terms of a) how physically close you are to a datacenter and b) how streamlined the network infrastructure around you happens to be. And I don't see a clear path for Google to significantly improve this over time.

Re: When will Google kill Stadia?

#13

Post by nickelcitymario »

zepto wrote: post #7
nickelcitymario wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, they're YouTube circa 2007?

Latency is not an issue with YouTube. And of course in 2007 there was no better alternative to youtube, whereas all alternatives to Stadia are better.

There are streaming gaming services that don't deal with latency issues?

(Not being sarcastic. To my knowledge, no one has cracked this yet.)

My overall point in comparing to YouTube is that the internet WILL get faster. More and more people will have the kind of broadband needed to make this a good experience. I'm sure it sucks today. But what about 10 years from now?

Streaming video used to suck. Now it doesn't.

Streaming games currently sucks. Tomorrow it won't, and for the same reason: The infrastructure will catch up.

Re: When will Google kill Stadia?

#15

Post by [deleted] »

fruzz wrote: post #10
Jkvngt wrote: post #8

Stadia’s terribly laggy. Also hardware is cheap, why wouldn’t I just run it all myself? Just yet another attempt to get people renting instead of owning.

What's considered cheap is relative. $12 a month is more accessible than lump sums of $500. It may be cheaper to have your own hardware in the long run, but not everyone is able to afford seeing that through. As for laggy, Cyberpunk runs orders of magnitude better through Stadia on my only computer - a dated Core i3 laptop - than natively. You're not wrong. Running it yourself is obviously better if you have the hard…

[deleted]

Re: When will Google kill Stadia?

#16

Post by zepto »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #13
zepto wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latency is not an issue with YouTube. And of course in 2007 there was no better alternative to youtube, whereas all alternatives to Stadia are better.

There are streaming gaming services that don't deal with latency issues? (Not being sarcastic. To my knowledge, no one has cracked this yet.) My overall point in comparing to YouTube is that the internet WILL get faster. More and more people will have the kind of broadband needed to make this a good experience. I'm sure it sucks today. But what about 10 years from now? Streaming video used to suck. Now it doesn't. St…

> There are streaming gaming services that don’t deal with latency issues?

No, but those aren’t the only alternatives - consoles, PCs etc, are. Youtube had no established, better alternative to compete with.

You may be right that streaming games won’t suck in the future.

I’m just pointing out that this is not like the YouTube situation at all. Also YouTube didn’t suck even at the beginning.

Re: When will Google kill Stadia?

#17

Post by ste11a »

fruzz wrote: post #10
Jkvngt wrote: post #8

Stadia’s terribly laggy. Also hardware is cheap, why wouldn’t I just run it all myself? Just yet another attempt to get people renting instead of owning.

What's considered cheap is relative. $12 a month is more accessible than lump sums of $500. It may be cheaper to have your own hardware in the long run, but not everyone is able to afford seeing that through. As for laggy, Cyberpunk runs orders of magnitude better through Stadia on my only computer - a dated Core i3 laptop - than natively. You're not wrong. Running it yourself is obviously better if you have the hard…

Stadia the service is free. It's a free console. If you pay $29.99 for Madden 2021, you can play it for free forever (as long as Stadia exists). The ~$12 is a subscription that adds games to your library and is completely optional.

Re: When will Google kill Stadia?

#18

Post by nickthemagicman »

brundolf wrote: post #12
nickthemagicman wrote: post #5

I've used Stadia on a 150ish Mb connection and it runs as fast as the game does locally. I multiplay borderlands 3 with friends and very rarely have issues. If there's speed issues, what Stadia seems to do is lower the resolution being transmitted, in order to maintain speed and low latency. So the worst is some very rare periods of minor lower resolution adjustment for a few seconds then it turns back to normal. It'…

The issue isn't bandwidth; Netflix can stream HD video over a 5Mbps connection, and Stadia should require about the same bandwidth as video streaming because that's essentially what it's doing (and sending input signals back the other direction, but those should be negligible) What's much harder is latency. Who cares if your interactions with Netflix have a 500ms delay? For a video game, even 50ms is a problem. And y…

Like I said, I've never noticed any significant latency playing multiplayer with friends.

It's seamless on a 150 meg connection.

Starlink has a 40 ms latency and that literally goes to SPACE and back THEN ALSO goes through all of the network routing issues that you're talking about.

So you may be overselling the latency problem.

You may have other issues going on? I don't know why you're getting 500 millisecond delays. I'm certainly not getting that.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsi...

Re: When will Google kill Stadia?

#19

Post by brundolf »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #18
brundolf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't bandwidth; Netflix can stream HD video over a 5Mbps connection, and Stadia should require about the same bandwidth as video streaming because that's essentially what it's doing (and sending input signals back the other direction, but those should be negligible) What's much harder is latency. Who cares if your interactions with Netflix have a 500ms delay? For a video game, even 50ms is a problem. And y…

Like I said, I've never noticed any significant latency playing multiplayer with friends. It's seamless on a 150 meg connection. Starlink has a 40 ms latency and that literally goes to SPACE and back THEN ALSO goes through all of the network routing issues that you're talking about. So you may be overselling the latency problem. You may have other issues going on? I don't know why you're getting 500 millisecond delay…

What I'm saying is that you must be one of the lucky ones who has a low-latency connection

(Whether or not you're playing multiplayer isn't really relevant, because those other people are talking to the datacenter, not your local client)

> You may have other issues going on? I don't know why you're getting 500 millisecond delays. I'm certainly not getting that.

I haven't personally tried Stadia, and 500ms wasn't intended as a representative example, it was just an extreme number for the sake of illustration.

I have, though, read reports from lots of people who have "good" internet connections, saying Stadia is noticeably laggy (just look at the top comment on this very post).

To get down to specifics, a latency of >16ms is a lagged frame at 60FPS (which is the standard expectation for the current gen of consoles, and has been the expectation on PC for many years). That time window also has to include actually processing and rendering the game state (you can throw hardware at this part, but only up to a point).

So, that Starlink figure of 40ms will still give you a pretty unideal experience.

Re: When will Google kill Stadia?

#20

Post by cwhiz »

The problem I have with Stadia is the target audience.

People who want to play AAA games, and

People who don’t care about latency, and

People who don’t want a console.

Honestly, who is this for? If you can’t afford a console there are options such as “Xbox All Access” which starts as low as $23/month. If you want to play AAA games and don’t want a console, you probably care about latency.

I just don’t get it.

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