Game Streaming Services - Stadia, Geforce Now, xCloud, PS Now

So I didn't get a price, no news if this is a sub service or you have to pay for the games or both? Probably a paradise for devs like EA where they just imagine they'll get a piece of the sub pie then make all their money off of micro-transactions on a game you don't even really own and can't play unless your internet is working well.

If it comes down to a choice of paying for a game on my computer, next gen console, or a streaming service I'm going to pick one of the first 2 options every time. So if this service isn't aimed at the average gamer like me, who is it aimed at, how will this gain enough traction to keep it going?

Next gen consoles will be playing native 4k and this will be promising the same but over the internet? After trying to watch 4k youtube videos on my 200 Mbps connection I have some serious doubts.

Like some magical world where the internet is always perfect and you never get any buffering and everyone doesn't have their own failure point with some piece of shit router.

Also funny timing on getting this email today

This is a reminder that on April 2, 2019 we’re shutting down consumer Google+ and will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts. Photos and videos from Google+ in your Album Archive and your Google+ pages will also be deleted.

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I don't doubt in the right circumstances this works well but oh man as soon as it doesn't good luck with the customer service on this one.

(I've officially spent too much time thinking about this today)

You don't need to be an ISP to put hardware inside their distribution centers. Netflix does this and its one of the reasons why they have the best CDN out there.

Also relying on other people infrastructure isn't exactly a new idea. MMOs? Single point of failure? You mean like any online multiplayer game to ever exist?

Yes it hinges on their infrastructure. In the video they were talking about 7500 edge nodes around the world. I don't know if that means caching hardware like what Netflix does, or if its something entirely different. Admittedly I didn't watch the whole video through just skimmed here and there. But it's entirely possible that if they can get local nodes processing your game in your metro area, you could only be dealing with 10-20 ms latency which is more then comfortable with non competitive games. I'll admit that in competitive input lag is going to feel weird, however maybe everyone being on an even playing field will make it better. I don't know.

Penance said:

You don't need to be an ISP to put hardware inside their distribution centers. Netflix does this and its one of the reasons why they have the best CDN out there.

Also relying on other people infrastructure isn't exactly a new idea. MMOs? Single point of failure? You mean like any online multiplayer game to ever exist?

Yes it hinges on their infrastructure. In the video they were talking about 7500 edge nodes around the world. I don't know if that means caching hardware like what Netflix does, or if its something entirely different. Admittedly I didn't watch the whole video through just skimmed here and there. But it's entirely possible that if they can get local nodes processing your game in your metro area, you could only be dealing with 10-20 ms latency which is more then comfortable with non competitive games. I'll admit that in competitive input lag is going to feel weird, however maybe everyone being on an even playing field will make it better. I don't know.

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I've had my 1080p Netflix buffer very recently, what next? (people put up with videos not being perfect because they aren't going to die and lose their progress)

But I agree it's headed this direction and innovation is great. I just think this isn't the time or space and it'll fail to gain real traction.

Also, most virtual desktop / app protocols are small, like PCOIP/BLAST/whatever citrix's is called.

For example, the bandwidth needed to play an online game is more or the same as a PCOIP stream generally. and all the "internet" traffic is now DC to DC

Daezuel said:

Is this not bringing up images of a dystopian future for anyone else? Google dominating your search, your gaming, your viewing. I wonder how much of your UBI they can get you to pay while you sit in your little hut with your one TV and google controller.

(S)earch
(T)urned
(A)gainst
(D)emocracy
(I)n
(A)ction

/tinfoil

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If Google used their analytics to identify feeders and throw them in the goog-lag I welcome our new overlords

Daezuel said:

I've had my 1080p Netflix buffer very recently, what next? (people put up with videos not being perfect because they aren't going to die and lose their progress)

But I agree it's headed this direction and innovation is great. I just think this isn't the time or space and it'll fail to gain real traction.

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I agree, and I don't think this will "kill" the hobbyist/consumer market for personal gaming (I guess that's a term?). Offline gaming is still very much a thing and I can see not wanting to tie your experience to a cloud. Especially if your ISP is garbage tier and lags you out a 200 mb/s. Also, buffering a constant, predictable stream is much different then a gaming stream which is dynamic and unpredictable. Streaming works now because ISPs burst traffic at set intervals. CID is only guaranteed average I believe, and if your a consumer you can get heavilyi fucked on throttling. What I'm wondering is if they have built in AI algorithms that help with some sort of dynamic buffering, or predictive behavior buffering or some crazy shit. I might be giving them too much credit but I could see the technology headed that way.

I do think this makes a helluva lot of sense for an MMO infrastructure where you're already forced online all the time. WoW2 being a service that can be played by anyone with a viewing device and internet makes more sense to me than single player games. (and obviously game companies are loving them the games as a service idea)

The other side is gamers go where their friends are, if you have the best exclusives like Sony then everyone already owns a PS4 and thats where you'll end up buying the game even if it is an inferior version ( Utnayan ). So if we're talking about this current culture most gamers have some kind of game machine already that just works unless the game they're playing is Anthem.

If Google's gaming machine actually doubled as your home router I'd have a lot more faith in the idea but that's a whole other can of scary worms to think about.

The only interesting thing I read about that whole announcement thing is the state share idea. I feel there must be some cool things to do around that.

EDIT: Note that it's an idea that can work in a way or another on platforms other than Stadia.

I dunno, thinking about it a lot more I think this could be a massive paradigm shift that feels overdue. Gaming hasn't felt like its really been growing for a while now, sure it does well and the big games make more money than movies but all the growth has been in Asia, mobile gaming, Nintendo doing its own thing, etc. Anthem, Destiny, Call of Duty, sports games, etc all have felt pretty stale for a few years now. Even Division 2, which I really enjoy, is just a refinement of a formula thats done really well but doesn't really do anything new.

Currently for any MP game you have a bunch of PCs and consoles all over the place and each one has to talk to a server and that server has to run all the plays between everyone. Lot of latency there as you have to navigate all over the place to get stuff done.

But with this new cloud gaming, everything sits at google datacenters and they all talk to each other near instantly. 100 player battle royales? fuck that, you could run a 1000 or 100,000 player battle royale across an insanely massive map that runs for 24 hours. MMOs could get a huge shot in the arm as they have a single virtual server that everyone plays on. Best of all, you see a game you want and you can play it 3 seconds later - no downloads, patching, connecting, etc.

Yeah not every game is gonna go well with this model but it could do pretty amazing things assuming it "feels" right when you play, and it felt 95% there when I played a few hours of the Project stream test of Assassins Creed Odyssey. If they do it in 4k/60fps I'd probably start playing some new games on my TV that way.

Bandwidth to stream is only a second concern, control lag is going to make or break things imo. Let's talk numbers (and please correct me if I'm wrong).
Hypothetical multiplayer situation. Some assumptions/speculation:
You have your local client (CL) - this is whatever runs on the device in your house, web browser, chromebook, whatever
Remote client (STA) - this is whatever is running the game and rendering it at the Stadia server.
Server (SRV) - Your WOW/CSGO/LOL/DOTA2/APEX/FORTNITE/whatever server (hosted by Valve/Epic/Riot/Whoever at a good and proper datacenter, but not the same one)

Let's say you're getting 60 FPS on CL and STA. Let's say you have a 30ms ping (round trip) to STA. Let's say STA has a 20ms ping (round trip) to SRV.
Let's assume your CL does input buffering and doesn't just fire off events immediately. At 60 FPS, that is 16.6ms per frame.

You want to do something like selling an item from your inventory.
-You already have the item selected. You press "Sell".
-CL takes up to 1 frame (16ms) to process input.
-CL sends message to STA. 15ms.
-STA updates its client. Renderer changes "Sell" button to "Selling...", sends back to CL, 15ms
-STA sends message to SRV, 10ms
-SRV processes message, converts to gamelogic, approves sale, sends message back to STA of sale, 10ms
-STA receives approval message, updates next render frame, up to 16ms wait time from message arrival to render.
-STA Renderer updates, streamed back to CL, 15ms
-Total time just to see confirmation that you clicked the "Sell" button: 16 + 15 + 15 = 46ms
-Total time for transaction, assuming messages arriving at worst time in update loops: 16 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 15 = 66ms

46ms is like playing at 21 FPS. So even though your local client is running at 60 FPS and the remote client is running at 60 FPS, your UI is essentially running at 21 FPS.

Let's say you don't have a 30ms ping, but instead 100ms ping. 16 + 50 + 50 = 116ms, just to see if you clicked "Sell" correctly (equiv. to about 8 FPS).

I think my math and logic is correct? If it is, is that going to be tolerable to play? Consoles still average 30 FPS these days? Is 21 FPS acceptable for input? What about for things beyond clicking selling, like aiming your crosshairs, or firing a weapon?

Let's say you're playing a hypothetical singleplayer game, so there's no SRV. Just CL and STA to deal with. Your input lag is still going to be the same, though the outcome of your input will be faster.

Add all the other issues, and the real world conditions of connections, and I just don't see it. Are there enough PC and console gamers willing to give up their beloved devices to use this, even with short comings? Are there enough mobile users who previously weren't interested in (or couldn't afford) AAA gaming who will now dish out $15+ a month for this?

I'm doubtful beyond them finding a few enthusiasts in a few select markets. As for getting game devs onboard to get software most optimized for this setup I imagine the service is going to have to be really popular, or Google is going to have to offer some really good money up front. Google's track record of dropping projects that they lost interest in is pretty rampant.

pretty sure google isn't just coopting a bunch of games and front ending the clients on their "game boxes", they are building everything nut to butt inside their datacenter. So latency would simply be CL to Stadia servers and internally they would handle everything, and rearchitecture everything so its not the current distributed client-server method of gaming. They are deploying 8500+ servers around the world as well colocated inside ISPs and stuff so latency will be insanely low. They certainly would want stuff like the Doom Eternal server right next to the Stadia servers, not deployed halfway around the world.

You would literally just be streaming a 4k video stream but also passing along input to the game server, they have even tried to optimize for this by having the google controller talk directly to their own servers rather than add more latency by having it go through your TV/phone/etc. Thats actually a fairly brilliant, out of the box idea too, the controller is a wifi device.

Really the question still is how many people have a good enough connection to do all this, but that number is a lot higher now than 4 years ago. and yeah, if people are pretty meh or the launch games are shit then will Google keep at it or will they just drop the whole thing like so many other google projects? The good thing is it should cost us, as users, virtually nothing. Maybe $50-80 for a controller. Although if they launch this as a steam/epic kinda thing where you pay $50+ per game then it might be DOA too, you have to make this a cheap monthly sub service to make it work for the first few years.

IF and i say IF the latency is good enough and that flex compute is true...

Do you think - since it can do 4k 60fps, can the/will the stream be good enough to do 1080p60fps x2 streams. lets do the math....

Quick Calc on my part 4k60fps is 530 million pixels a second and 1080p60fps is 124million pixels x2 streams is 248 million pixels or a bit under half of the 4k60 stream, so it SHOULD be doable..

So here is what i am thinking......VR MMO with say -if the world is big enough- 10k to 100k people per "world" only issue would be how to do the controls for combat-movement would be dual joystick probably (until we come up with the mental vr hookups in all the novels), and interacting with the npc's - player communication would be all 100% voice with built in voice changing software for those guys that want to sound like girls and vice versa) npc communication would also be voice via software similar to google/alexa. "target" npc, Ask the npc what he has for sale/ask question about a quest, etc....

Yeah, i've said this in other threads but bandwidth isn't the issue. We are reaching up to 200Tb/s on a single fiber these days which is insane. 1G up and down to your house is no problem for us. The problem will be latency. You are routing massive amounts of traffic for thousands of people and you are talking about 4k and VR. As it stands, the latency between you and them will kill you. Even as an ISP your hands are tied to the mercy of your provider and after it leaves your network you have no control.

Now gaming companies can avert this by forming their own network with fewer hops and more efficient routing, google probably has one of the better chances at this. It definitely needs to be a big player or a union of gaming companies. Basically make your own internet for games built for low latency and sign on every provider you can.

Google said you need a minimum of 25 Mbits for 1080p 60fps 30 mbits for 4k.

Google says that Stadia supports 4K 60 FPS gameplay, a stat repeated by id Software when it announced DOOM Eternal was coming to the platform. Google told Eurogamer that it expects 1080p streaming to be more likely for connections around 25 Mbps. If you're on a 15 Mbps connection, the resolution and frame rate will drop down to 720p 60 FPS. However, Google's Phil Harrison had a different take on Eurogamer's report. During the event, he said:

To get 1080p 60 FPS required approximately 25 Mbps. In fact, we use less than that, but that's where we put our recommended limit at. But with innovations that we've made on the streamer side and on the compression side since then, when we launch, we will be able to get to 4K but only raise that bandwidth to about 30 Mbps.

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Microsoft responds to Stadia:

Phil Spencer said:

We just wrapped up watching the Google announcement of Stadia as team here at GDC. Their announcement is validation of the path we embarked on two years ago.

Today we saw a big tech competitor enter the gaming market, and frame the necessary ingredients for success as Content, Community and Cloud. There were no big surprises in their announcement although I was impressed by their leveraging of YouTube, the use of Google Assistant and the new WiFi controller.

But I want get back to us, there has been really good work to get us to the position where we are poised to compete for 2 billion gamers across the planet. Google went big today and we have a couple of months until E3 when we will go big.

We have to stay agile and continue to build with our customer at the center. We have the content, community, cloud team and strategy, and as I’ve been saying for a while, it’s all about execution. This is even more true today.

Energizing times.

Phil

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MS Azure version?

This is where Sony just can't compete...

spronk said:

pretty sure google isn't just coopting a bunch of games and front ending the clients on their "game boxes", they are building everything nut to butt inside their datacenter. So latency would simply be CL to Stadia servers and internally they would handle everything, and rearchitecture everything so its not the current distributed client-server method of gaming. They are deploying 8500+ servers around the world as well colocated inside ISPs and stuff so latency will be insanely low. They certainly would want stuff like the Doom Eternal server right next to the Stadia servers, not deployed halfway around the world.

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Well if anyone can pull it off, it'd be someone like Google with their capabilities, and Jade Raymond could use a hit, it's been a while for her. It's not a product I'd use, but I'm old enough now that half the things coming out tech wise make me scratch my head.