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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"

#391

Post by tus88 »

gamblor956 wrote: post #305
turtlebits wrote: post #293

"Gamers" don't want Stadia. And all the negative reviews of Stadia are by people who already have console/gaming PCs. It's targeted for those that don't have either, like me. I carry my Pixelbook everywhere and would be nice to play games on it. I don't want another device to carry around and don't have the time or patience to wait for patches/updates or the ridiculous storage requirements games have nowadays. The on…

Good luck finding public WiFi with sufficient bandwidth and latency to let you play Stadia out and about...

It's actually neither bandwidth nor latency (alone). Its variability - the reason you can play a 4k video on YouTube smoothly is because of buffering, which smooths out dips in mbps. Stadia can't buffer for obvious reasons, meaning every frame has to be delivered with minimal latency.

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

#393

Post by vocatus_gate »

jshaqaw wrote: post #297

Stadia interests me. I haven’t played games in a long time because dabbling back into them after decades I don’t want to make a major commitment to buy equipment and keep it up to cutting edge. Plus I really like my iPad form factor for games. At the end of a long work day sitting at a desk in front of a computer I really don’t want to be sitting at a desk in front of a computer.

I know you said you don't want to purchase equipment and keep it up to date, but the progression of CPU's and GPU's has slowed drastically in the last decade. I easily get 5-6 years out of my gaming rigs now, and build them fairly well specced for $800-1000. Keeping current is significantly less hassle or cost than it was ~10 years ago.

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

#394

Post by vvanders »

vel0city wrote: post #360
vvanders wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, also if you look at people who write or have written netcode for a living, it's been pretty obvious where Stadia was heading for a while. You need to be able to reliably hide ~100-200ms of latency for any number of reasons. If you're talking about something that runs over wifi you're fighting against the laws of physics and no back-end infrastructure is going to save you. The way you do that is with client side…

100-200ms latency seems a little extreme to me. Its an 8ms ping from my home to the nearest Google edge node (supposedly where Stadia nodes will live), 9-11ms on my WiFi. Compression and decompression of the video stream with hardware acceleration and tuned for speed over quality should only add maybe another ms or two. Where is the extra 80+ms coming from?

All it takes is someone turning on a microwave down the block from you to drop 4-5 packets in a row and you get close to the 100ms number.

Channel congestion in dense urban areas approaches the same limit, heck Ars was just talking about a technique today[1] that because it doesn't respect channel slots drops throughput of any router within 60m by 20%.

100-200ms is an upper bound, however they were reliably doing client-side latency prediction back in '96[2] over 300-400ms dial up connections with little fidelity loss including servers supporting 200+ concurrent players.

I'm sure there's a niche of people for which streaming is usable, however we would design games with latency in mind(and how we'd deal with it) as a part of fundamental mechanics of the game. Here they're just slapping them on a video stream and hoping it works.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/where-the-wi-fi-suck...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game)

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

#395

Post by benhurmarcel »

buboard wrote: post #379
benhurmarcel wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a casual gamer that likes PC/console games. You don't have to be a serious gamer to like something else than Candy Crush.

but then you've probably already invested in some game pc/console. not one of the mythical people referenced here

Yes, but I can see myself considering streaming services when it's time to replace it. I don't need a €2k+ machine most of the time. I could buy quite a few years of streaming service with the saved cash.

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

#396

Post by dzhiurgis »

turtlebits wrote: post #293

"Gamers" don't want Stadia. And all the negative reviews of Stadia are by people who already have console/gaming PCs. It's targeted for those that don't have either, like me. I carry my Pixelbook everywhere and would be nice to play games on it. I don't want another device to carry around and don't have the time or patience to wait for patches/updates or the ridiculous storage requirements games have nowadays. The on…

Plus the cost of the game, purchased outright doesn't make sense to me either. I wanna be able to pay by the hour.

Make barrier of entry like $20 with subsidised controller and then millions will jump in.

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

#397

Post by drusepth »

Iv wrote: post #120
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 could see playing RTS or tactical RPGs, but it is a very poor idea to propose FPS. It is already hard to have a reactive system locally, proposing remotely is. You need to react in 16ms if you want a snappy 60Hz. 1000 km from the server is adding 6 ms of ping. At one point, proposing this kind of service has the speed of light as a "technical constraint".

Last I saw, Google had something like 7,000 edge nodes in ISPs running Stadia servers specifically for this problem. Instead of running the games in big G's big datacenters, they'd be more likely running significantly closer, more like your nearest ISP.

Some people have recommended using GCPing to estimate a worst-case latency (since that pings one of their ~20 data centers instead of the edge nodes they set up), but even then I'm seeing avg ~20ms on refresh. I'd expect a Stadia server significantly closer than one a full state away (Missouri to Iowa) would run faster than that.

I don't think this will make things any better for anyone living in the Last Mile, but those of us in the city (especially big cities) should see huge improvements over previous services like OnLive that didn't implement something like this.

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

#398

Post by rifung »

perennate wrote: post #136
tonmoy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This FAQ page DOSE NOT have this quote right now! From this FAQ page: > Do I need to use your Controller? (Stadia Controller) > No, you can use many popular HID compliant controllers when playing via USB cable on Chrome or mobile. To play on your TV you will need to use the Stadia Controller and Google Chromecast Ultra.

It is under "Which Chromecast devices are compatible with Stadia?". I refreshed and still see the quote. Is there a difference between playing in Chromecast vs playing in Chrome browser? And why do you need a controller at all if you're just playing desktop games?

> Is there a difference between playing in Chromecast vs playing in Chrome browser? And why do you need a controller at all if you're just playing desktop games?

Playing on Chromecast is for playing on TV. Chrome is for playing on PC.

You need a controller presumably because you need a way to provide input if you're playing on TV. On PC you can use keyboard and mouse but Chromecast doesn't have a way to connect to keyboard and mouse as far as I know

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

#399

Post by dzhiurgis »

FussyZeus wrote: post #390
hombre_fatal wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post makes sense if the only travel you do is your 2-week vacation you get every year while always returning to a permanent living fixture, like a house you own. Or if you just don't mind owning a bunch of appliances. I'm someone who lives abroad and doesn't like hunkering down with any equipment, not even a bookcase. I don't like staying in one apartment for a long time. The only cooking appliance I own is a si…

> I'm someone who lives abroad and doesn't like hunkering down with any equipment, not even a bookcase. I don't like staying in one apartment for a long time. The only cooking appliance I own is a single cast iron skillet. Something like Stadia interests me if it can deliver. But that's the rub innit? The only people who are going to be really interested in this product are the hypermobile, and I don't know about you…

> but my LTE can barely keep a YouTube video in decent quality going

You'd be surprised how better internet can be outside of USA. My LTE can probably keep up four 4K streams going.

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

#400

Post by corodra »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #357
corodra wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seeing this a lot and don't understand... where the hell are you people travelling where bringing a console/game system is a concern? I travel for work or for vacation. If for work, I'm there hitting "Spit money out for me" at an ATM. Not gaming. I'm not home so I can make much better money in a short timespan to enjoy home time more. End of days is visiting restaurants/bars and either socializing or schmoozing c…

Your post makes sense if the only travel you do is your 2-week vacation you get every year while always returning to a permanent living fixture, like a house you own. Or if you just don't mind owning a bunch of appliances. I'm someone who lives abroad and doesn't like hunkering down with any equipment, not even a bookcase. I don't like staying in one apartment for a long time. The only cooking appliance I own is a si…

Because xyz-as-a-service is anti-consumer. Unless you've been under a rock the past decade, there are many flaws with the model when it comes to consumers. It's great for business. Terrible for the user. As-a-service puts the consumer at the mercy of a company. Along with their privacy data. Steam at least is setup in a way where if they were to end, the games you have can be downloaded and unlocked. Just make sure to back it up. Stadia isn't setup for anything like that at all. If google put Reader out to pasture, something that cost them jack-dick-all to keep running, something as expensive to maintain as Stadia when it flops... "Oh, sorry, it didn't work out. Sucks for all of you."

Just because you can't see how a trap will be sprung, doesn't mean the trap doesn't exist. This will bite people in the ass a year or two down the road. Then everyone will cry, "How could this happen? We need legislation to protect us!" No, you just need to be quit being a baby and start being an adult and understand that minor comfort and convenience can come at a heavy cost.

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