Epic Games Storefront - A Good Incentive for Piracy

Braen

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When Tesla came out.. All it had was the original roadster. Which was basically a Lotus Elise with an electric engine. It was barebones really. Just to get them name out there and to get a product out.

1549309004668.png


There wasn''t 17 inch touchscreen, over the air updates or a supercharger network.
 
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a_skeleton_05

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Utnayan said:
Now I’m looking for old time gaming stuff in my office. We should go back to this distribution method

View attachment 192732
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It would certainly be nice. But it is what it is. When Steam was first starting up, many areas had no access whatsoever to physical copies of PC games. Places like EB games/Gamestop/Similar stores had maybe one shelf of PC games if any at all, and that was in major areas. Nevermind foreign markets. I know the physical market is still strong in places like Germany, but they're an exception to the rule. I remember having to go to Wal-Mart to buy UT2K4 and it was with the only other PC games they had in a tiny little turnstile like what you'd be comics from.

Digital saved the industry, and Valve's timing towards digital played a huge part in that. The PC enthusiast market and players like Blizzard/SOE/Riot etc... bringing in the "normies" as well as DirectX being used in console games filled in the rest.

"PC gaming is dead! Consoles are all that matters!" Was shouted from the roof-tops by everyone from gamers to developers to publishers to hardware manufacturers, yet here we are, with PC gaming possibly overtaking console gaming in a pretty significant way.

The actions of companies hold a lot of sway over the course of things when things are either tentative or in fast growth, and this is why Epic should be scrutinized, because they have a really big dick right now and it's a'swinging.
 
Ravishing

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I think both PC & Console are in Jeopardy. Once Cloud computing can deliver gaming to your TV.
But the age old question will still be... can you replace Mouse+KB?
Some games just suck without M+KB, like RTS games, MOBA games, basically any point+click type game.

I only PC game, and I own 0 consoles, but mobile/console still seems to be way ahead in terms of revenue.
The big thing now is cross platform.
Epic are releasing tools in 2019 to allow devs to take advantage of their cross platforming tools.

I know it was posted somewhere on these forums/this thread, but can't find it.. so here's an article:
Epic’s opening up Fortnite’s cross-platform services for all developers

I never thought PC gaming was terrible, or needed saving, but it hasn't been mainstream in ages.

PC Gaming Accounts For 25% Of 2018 Gaming Revenue, Mobile Gaming On Top With 47% | SegmentNext
PC: 25%
Console: 28%
Mobile: 47%

Another Graphic/Source:
1*GK3FzPprogyVAOB7xoA8AA.png
 
Utnayan

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The day they get cloud gaming actually on par with local console/PC input and precision, is the day that won't matter because I will be long gone from this Earth.
 
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Kiki

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But see that's the thing. Tesla became competitive by having good products. Not by buying out Prius and slapping touchscreens on it.

I gave Bucees as an example. It's blowing it's competitors (which are gas stations) out of the water just by having 100 urinals and a full time cleaning staff, let alone the rest.

I'm not saying epic games can't be good, but it should try and gain market share through being good, not by backroom deals. The only reason I am against it is exclusives. Other than that I could care less.
 
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a_skeleton_05

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Utnayan said:
The day they get cloud gaming actually on par with local console/PC input and precision, is the day that won't matter because I will be long gone from this Earth.
Click to expand...

Cloud gaming will run into the bandwidth & latency issues that will make VR gaming through it all but improbable long before you shuffle off.
 
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Ravishing

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Utnayan said:
The day they get cloud gaming actually on par with local console/PC input and precision, is the day that won't matter because I will be long gone from this Earth.
Click to expand...

You must be old!

I give it about 20 years. Probably see it localized in 10 years.
Small countries with good infrastructure and urban USA areas could see it ~10 years.

I bet they'll find a method or innovation that reduces the latency. It's obviously already being worked on.
Biggest challenge is the bandwidth for the graphics, how will they choose to stream it?
Do they do it with vectors/geometry or flattened images?
Flattened images seems impossible and unlikely.
I'd think they would need to stream out 3D geometry/vectors/whatever so you can interpolate the game on the client side, which would mask the input lag. Making it basically the same as PC/console game.
And if they are streaming out 3D, you can basically do anything you can already do by downloading the full game, except the footprint is much smaller/temporary.. ie: you arent keeping a copy of the game anywhere.
 
Utnayan

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Ravishing said:
You must be old!

I give it about 20 years. Probably see it localized in 10 years.
Small countries with good infrastructure and urban USA areas could see it ~10 years.

I bet they'll find a method or innovation that reduces the latency. It's obviously already being worked on.
Biggest challenge is the bandwidth for the graphics, how will they choose to stream it?
Do they do it with vectors/geometry or flattened images?
Flattened images seems impossible and unlikely.
I'd think they would need to stream out 3D geometry/vectors/whatever so you can interpolate the game on the client side, which would mask the input lag. Making it basically the same as PC/console game.
And if they are streaming out 3D, you can basically do anything you can already do by downloading the full game, except the footprint is much smaller/temporary.. ie: you arent keeping a copy of the game anywhere.
Click to expand...

Problem is even if they perfect it, with all these ISP's throwing 1tb bandwidth limits on our service, good luck selling it.

Watching one 4k Stream on Netflix for an hour takes 7gb. I cannot even imagine what the hike will be when streaming 4k games with input and responses.
 
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TJT

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Utnayan said:
Problem is even if they perfect it, with all these ISP's throwing 1tb bandwidth limits on our service, good luck selling it.

Watching one 4k Stream on Netflix for an hour takes 7gb. I cannot even imagine what the hike will be when streaming 4k games with input and responses.
Click to expand...

Netflix alone is over a third of all USA internet traffic.

Now add streaming interactive 3d media. Lul
 
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Ravishing

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Utnayan said:
Problem is even if they perfect it, with all these ISP's throwing 1tb bandwidth limits on our service, good luck selling it.

Watching one 4k Stream on Netflix for an hour takes 7gb. I cannot even imagine what the hike will be when streaming 4k games with input and responses.
Click to expand...

Thing is, games ALREADY have input+responses.. there is no difference here.
Cloud Gaming is meant to replace download+installation+system requirements.

ie: you don't need a specific device to play a game, just need something that can retrieve streamed data: any device.
It's a universal gaming platform.

All inputs & responses are the exact same bandwidth. But the cloud computing needs to be beefier now, as it crunches more data (instead of the client).
And bandwidth needs to be greater, since you're now streaming the graphics, instead of relying on clients to have them already downloaded/installed.

Inputs would be exact same bandwidth, the difference is if the interface has enough leeway to mask the input lag.

Right now the basic way games work is you click a button, there's latency to the server, but you keep clicking things anyway... eventually the server relays back to the client which clicks are valid and actually did something.

You really aren't changing that as long as you don't have a UI/visual delay for the client to click on.
 
Utnayan

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Ravishing said:
Thing is, games ALREADY have input+responses.. there is no difference here.
Cloud Gaming is meant to replace download+installation+system requirements.

ie: you don't need a specific device to play a game, just need something that can retrieve streamed data: any device.
It's a universal gaming platform.
Click to expand...

Missing my point here. 7-10gb an hour for a 4k HDR stream. We will want our games at 60fps in 4k HDR. That's without input signal bandwidth relaying that information to the server and pining back.

Let's do a real world example:

1tb cap (Which we all have by now)

One Game 4k/HDR- 30 hours game play in a month - 300gb of my bandwidth. That's more than 4 times the download of said game.

That's ONE game taking up 33% of my cap. And that's if I play one hour a day?? Not including all the other online games we all play, netflix, music streaming, household surfing, and other downloads.

1tb will be gone in a fucking week, and if it isn't thottled by then with the "Unlimited" up charge of $50 a month, as it stands today cloud based gaming will never, I repeat, NEVER take off unless someone gets in front of these ISP's and we get unlimited, non throttled, connections at over 50mb for everyone. (And that's after they figure out input reponse times and latency issues)

There are too many movinig parts for cloud based gaming and all manufacturers should quit going after it - the only reason they want to do it is throw more gaming service subscriptions at us while not having a loss lead hardware console for install base. Great for the companies. Horrible for the consumers.
 
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Folanlron

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Full Cloud gaming is not gonna happen for awhile(even Sony has up/down stats pasted all over when you sign up for PSNow and that is only a streaming service, cause they know how shit it actually is vs what it's suppose to do)
 
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Utnayan

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And just wait until Microsoft releases their Streaming Box. Azure Cloud based - half the price of the next gen console - it is going to be an unmitigated disaster.
 
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a_skeleton_05

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Cloud gaming is most certainly going to have its place and even likely will become the biggest outside of mobile, but it won't replace some sections of the market without technology that simply doesn't exist on top of the infrastructure to support it. There's a few dozen hurdles for it to get over before we need to worry about it replacing what most of us here spend our time gaming with.

Also keep in mind that video streaming is a whole different beast from streaming gaming content, as loading up twitch/youtube and then comparing it to the actual thing will show you. The bitrate needed for full-fledged gaming quality is far more than even a 4K video is as those tend to be compressed and artifact'd to hell and back and are more comparable to a dvd/BR 1080p video than a real 4K one. This is even before considering things like framerate.
 
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Folanlron

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Ya, reduce the the game to 720p(solution solved)..ohh that means Nintendo could do it easily..

If you think Cloud gaming is at that point, you might wanna call Al Gore, cause you just re-invented the internet.
 
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Ravishing

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Folanlron said:
Ya, reduce the the game to 720p(solution solved)..ohh that means Nintendo could do it easily..

If you think Cloud gaming is at that point, you might wanna call Al Gore, cause you just re-invented the internet.
Click to expand...

Posting on tablet fucked me earlier lol.

Anyway, if they can push geometry and textures separatley, you could reduce the bandwidth a ton, but no idea if that's feasible.
Google was streaming assassin's creed at 1080 60fps and recommended a 25 megabit connection.
 
Vorph

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Ravishing said:
Anyway, if they can push geometry and textures separatley, you could reduce the bandwidth a ton, but no idea if that's feasible.
Click to expand...
That's not how cloud games work. They take the video out and instead of sending it to a TV they compress the shit out of it for the stream. Anything besides that would require much more than a dumb client and would defeat the purpose.

Google was streaming assassin's creed at 1080 60fps and recommended a 25 megabit connection.
Click to expand...
Sounds about right. Netflix UltraHD is also 25 Mbps but they have the advantage of being able to use a far more efficient and CPU-intensive codec. Encoding in realtime is always going to be a lot more bloated.
 
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