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Luna – Cloud gaming service

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Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#91
Ubisoft obviously has some kind of special deal to be able to sell their own subscription “coming soon”, does anyone know what the profit share for game developers is for this kind of cloud gaming? Or will it only be large publisher titles available for these kind of services with behind closed door deals?

I get that this type of services reduces friction (somewhat) for playing graphically demanding games at the cost of network bandwidth (10gb/hour), but trying to work out what kind of possible Epic vs Apple shit fights this kind of silo platforms might start if it is rolled out to all AWS regions around the world and becomes dominant platform.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#92

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] software packages like Office and Creative Suite over to a rent-seeking model. And it's why selling cloud services is all the rage.

It's not a good way to do things, it's not good for any consumer or user of those things, but it prints money on a stable and continuous basis in perpetuity, because people lose everything they paid for when they stop paying.

That's why cloud gaming is going to keep coming up year after year, no matter how impractical or stupid it is.

[1] For the vast majority of users, the difference between any given version of Office or Creative Suite and one released five or six years prior is nearly zero. Almost nobody needs to continually buy these.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because they rightfully feel that they shouldn’t have to resort to that and they would rather just fight Apple. As a consumer, I hope they win. It’s my pocket computer, I paid for it and I own it, so I should be able to do whatever the fuck I want with it.

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.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence that Amazon is using some secret Safari API that Google and Microsoft can’t use? Netflix and Hulu had the same deal from day one reportedly. Do you think any business makes the same deals with other big players that they make with small players? If so, you’ve never been in the room when CxOs are making enterprise deals with companies like MS and Oracle.

Clipped from the following article: https://www.engadget.com/luna-amazon-cloud-gaming-interview-... “We worked with the Safari team to ensure that some of the things that weren't there are there, and that allowed us to kind of get to where we are today,” Luna head of engineering and technology George Tsipolitis said. I don't know if these APIs are secret, so much as didn't exist before. I assume that Google and Micro…

Just for completeness. Apple also worked with Epic for years to make sure the Unreal engine worked well with iOS.

https://bgr.com/2020/09/17/fortnite-lawsuit-apple-epic-games...

Apple has also worked with Adobe, Microsoft and Amazon and given them pre-release hardware and access to software.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#95

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.

Microsoft specifically sided with Epic with regards to Apple trying to deny Epic from developing the Unreal engine on iOS. Nothing else.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#96

Has anyone tried a Stadia before? I've remained doubtful about game streaming because it seems like the latency is such a hard problem to overcome. In any game that requires even a bit of precision and fast reaction, 30-100ms of latency can feel pretty bad. Seems to me like the only way this could possibly work is if the games are designed with streaming in mind, but even then it seems hard... Remote Desktop in Windo…

If you're curious, you can try out GeForce Now free of charge with any of its supported titles, they just limit your sessions to 1 hour and deprioritise you in the queue when there's high demand.

I've found it generally works very well, but with the occasional hiccup.

I can't comment on how it compares against the other services, I presume they're roughly as good as each other.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#97
I love waiting for an install, something in the mail, water to boil, etc. It’s a good time to slow down and reflect on anything else. I don’t want things now. I just want. Once I’m satisfied...the journey is over. People are so concerned with self optimizing time or the perfect experience that they forget you don’t have to hurry.

Having said that, in modern society you can have it all, but can you consume it all? Why would you want to?

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#98

Has anyone tried a Stadia before? I've remained doubtful about game streaming because it seems like the latency is such a hard problem to overcome. In any game that requires even a bit of precision and fast reaction, 30-100ms of latency can feel pretty bad. Seems to me like the only way this could possibly work is if the games are designed with streaming in mind, but even then it seems hard... Remote Desktop in Windo…

I was going to give Stadia a try when Doom Eternal came out because I wanted to play it in 4K and only have a PS4. Backed out because of their announcement that it was not native 4k, as originally promised, but actually upscaling. Whether or not I would have known the difference is another story but the backtracking on something they had been so adamant about left a bad taste in my mouth. I also don't like their subs…

This bewildered me - they advertised 4k gaming and then it turned out the vast majority of games were running at like 1080p and being upscaled. Sending 1080p video at 4k seems incredibly wasteful and pointless.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#99
post #79

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…

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.

Outside of providing a cheap substitute for hardware, the only other use case I can see this for is for MMO's that have drastically changing environments like Rec Room, VR Chat or anything like 2nd Life

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#100
post #86

I like strategy games and I enjoying modding / editing various aspects of these games. I don't think Cloud gaming will allow me to do these.

no, you're SOL on that one, but fortunately strategy games don't (usually) have very high spec requirements. I have geforce now and used Stadia before, and use them to play the high-end games I have on steam that I wanted to play but would never bother getting an actual machine for. A decent gaming rig is worth more than I'm willing to pay for, so this is a good compromise.
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