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Microsoft gets green light in UK to buy Activision

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Microsoft gets green light in UK to buy Activision

#21

Post by johnnyworker »

junaru wrote: post #11
DanielHB wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is because regulators don't want a monopoly to be formed around an emerging technology. Sure cloud streaming is not big at the moment but it could literally be the default way to play games in 20 years. Heck Microsoft themselves point this out to their investors. Google's monopoly on search and online advertising today could have been easily prevented 20 years ago by some regulations.

> it could literally be the default way to play games in 20 years. No it couldn't. Its fundamentally inferior to local hardware and no amount of wishful thinking will change the laws of physics.

Remember when consoles were touted as having none of the disadvantages of PC (no patches, no loading times, "it just works"), but what we actually got was consoles that are suckier than PC in every way, but instead PC gaming being gimped by consoles existing? (e.g. Fallout 4 having four choices at any point in any conversation has zero to do with "writing" or "game design" and everything to do with a controller having 4 buttons)

So yeah, if it's shittier and allows even harder rent seeking, it'll be the standard in a few decades. Don't count on quality being a factor, gamers are the kings of Stockholm Syndrome and there isn't any hoop you can't get them to buy and then jump through.

Re: Microsoft gets green light in UK to buy Activision

#22

Post by monlockandkey »

mathieuh wrote: post #2

They keep talking about cloud streaming, is anyone except executives at these companies taking cloud streaming seriously? Every time I've tried it it's been a mess of latency and fuzzy graphics. If I were at the CMA I'm not sure that's a factor in this deal that I would have given much thought at all.

I used Stadia extensively and it was truly truly a mind boggling experience. People rag on about latency and "how you can't beat physics and the speed of light". But that was simply not the case. Even with a 20mbps down and laptop WiFi, I could instantly jump into triple AAA games and play it. Had lots of fun completing Metro Exodus back then.

Is it a flawless experience? Of course not, it will never match a native PC. But that is not the point at all. The image was a reasonable quality and the latency whilst ever so slightly noticeable, you get used to it after 5 minutes as you get lost in the game. Even played a bit of Destiny 2 and fast paced rhythm games without any issue.

It's not meant to "takeaway muh PC". It's an alternative to those who don't have the horsepower to run these games. Your expectations need to run with this.

Re: Microsoft gets green light in UK to buy Activision

#24

Post by gambiting »

mathieuh wrote: post #2

They keep talking about cloud streaming, is anyone except executives at these companies taking cloud streaming seriously? Every time I've tried it it's been a mess of latency and fuzzy graphics. If I were at the CMA I'm not sure that's a factor in this deal that I would have given much thought at all.

Try GeForce Now. I think Streaming is nonsense and it's a complete waste of time, but every time I tried GeForce Now I was massively impressed with both the quality and the latency of the experience.

Re: Microsoft gets green light in UK to buy Activision

#25

Post by gambiting »

johnnyworker wrote: post #21
junaru wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it could literally be the default way to play games in 20 years. No it couldn't. Its fundamentally inferior to local hardware and no amount of wishful thinking will change the laws of physics.

Remember when consoles were touted as having none of the disadvantages of PC (no patches, no loading times, "it just works"), but what we actually got was consoles that are suckier than PC in every way, but instead PC gaming being gimped by consoles existing? (e.g. Fallout 4 having four choices at any point in any conversation has zero to do with "writing" or "game design" and everything to do with a controller havin…

>>e.g. Fallout 4 having four choices at any point in any conversation has zero to do with "writing" or "game design" and everything to do with a controller having 4 buttons)

That's an extremely weird argument. Literally no one at Bethesda was being stopped from writing compelling dialogue choices for that game because controllers only have 4 buttons - it's a choice they made conciously, they wanted to simplify the dialogue trees and that's what they ended up with. To even suggest that it's because of consoles is........just odd man. Like, it's not a thing. I've worked in video games for long enough to tell you that the number of controller buttons would never even make it into a discussion about these things, unless it was coming directly from Todd Howard or something.

Re: Microsoft gets green light in UK to buy Activision

#26

Post by WithinReason »

junaru wrote: post #11
DanielHB wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is because regulators don't want a monopoly to be formed around an emerging technology. Sure cloud streaming is not big at the moment but it could literally be the default way to play games in 20 years. Heck Microsoft themselves point this out to their investors. Google's monopoly on search and online advertising today could have been easily prevented 20 years ago by some regulations.

> it could literally be the default way to play games in 20 years. No it couldn't. Its fundamentally inferior to local hardware and no amount of wishful thinking will change the laws of physics.

Let's check the laws of physics then: Typical latency in games is about 25-80 ms [1]. What's your ping to the closest GeForce Now server? For me it's 10 ms.

[1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/393646/tested-how-nvidia-ref...

Re: Microsoft gets green light in UK to buy Activision

#27

Post by gambiting »

Lammy wrote: post #9
mathieuh wrote: post #2

They keep talking about cloud streaming, is anyone except executives at these companies taking cloud streaming seriously? Every time I've tried it it's been a mess of latency and fuzzy graphics. If I were at the CMA I'm not sure that's a factor in this deal that I would have given much thought at all.

The intent is for your entire computer to work that way eventually. If they can get gaming to work under that model, everything else will work too.

>>The intent is for your entire computer to work that way eventually.

Who has that intent, exactly?

Re: Microsoft gets green light in UK to buy Activision

#28

Post by kdwikzncba »

mathieuh wrote: post #2

They keep talking about cloud streaming, is anyone except executives at these companies taking cloud streaming seriously? Every time I've tried it it's been a mess of latency and fuzzy graphics. If I were at the CMA I'm not sure that's a factor in this deal that I would have given much thought at all.

Obviously the point of cloud streaming is not that it's better for the consumer, but that it gives the provider more power.

Re: Microsoft gets green light in UK to buy Activision

#29

Post by gambiting »

WithinReason wrote: post #26
junaru wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it could literally be the default way to play games in 20 years. No it couldn't. Its fundamentally inferior to local hardware and no amount of wishful thinking will change the laws of physics.

Let's check the laws of physics then: Typical latency in games is about 25-80 ms [1]. What's your ping to the closest GeForce Now server? For me it's 10 ms. [1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/393646/tested-how-nvidia-ref...

The GeforceNow client has its own delay in processing your input, just like the game does. So you have to wait for your input to be captured by the client, processed, sent to their servers, where it has to be processed again, then given to the game process and then used there. And then the visual output has to be sent back, where again it has to be processed and displayed, with all the latency of the local client and display device.

Like, I work in video games for a large publisher - we have done a lot of testing on this technology, both on GeForce Now and our own internal solutions. Without getting into details I probably shouldn't talk about - the lowest latency you can see when streaming is around 150-200ms, and that's in absolutely perfect conditions where you have a data centre super close to you. Unfortunately, 150ms is visible to your average player, and in our testing the enjoyment of the game is directly related to what kind of game it is - strategy games, action games, even driving games? Mostly fine, not really noticable. First person shooters? Extremely noticable, in our testing there is a noticable drop of player performance in online PvP when streaming. We have been experimenting with improving it(by giving the player just a touch of auto-aim assist when they are streaming), and we were able to bring the numbers back up to where they were for non-streaming players. But then you get into a debate about whether that is fair or not.

Either way, like OP said - you can't beat physics.

Re: Microsoft gets green light in UK to buy Activision

#30

Post by dageshi »

junaru wrote: post #11
DanielHB wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is because regulators don't want a monopoly to be formed around an emerging technology. Sure cloud streaming is not big at the moment but it could literally be the default way to play games in 20 years. Heck Microsoft themselves point this out to their investors. Google's monopoly on search and online advertising today could have been easily prevented 20 years ago by some regulations.

> it could literally be the default way to play games in 20 years. No it couldn't. Its fundamentally inferior to local hardware and no amount of wishful thinking will change the laws of physics.

Smart phones are fundamentally inferior for playing games on than consoles or PC, that hasn't stopped gaming on mobile from being huge, they're mostly just different games than you get on PC/console.

Developers will adapt their games and how they play to suit the medium based on the mediums popularity.

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