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

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Needless

Toe Sucker
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Sorry, this project is currently open in the U.S. only

feels canadian man :( would be nice to see somebody actually pull this off well though, unlike the previous attempts lol
 

a_skeleton_05

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There seems to be a big push for this sort of tech lately. There's a lot of companies making a go at it, and Take Two's CEO was saying that the latency problems will be figured out within a few years. It could very well be the future of gaming further down the line when you consider that it would remove the need to buy hardware.

I personally don't think it's going to end up being a big thing anytime soon with how shitty the internet is in a lot of regions on top of caps & net neutrality bullshit, and that the struggles have been just to get 1080p@30/60 decently playable, but with 4K and higher refresh rates, it's going to be even more difficult.
 
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Dandai

Lesco Brandon
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I think it was PC Gamer that put out an article a while back talking about how “streaming” modern games will almost certainly never be a thing. Their reasoning was the technologies that improve bandwidth/latency to consumers can’t match and are extremely unlikely to outpace ever expanding bandwidth demands of data streaming/game engines.

I applaud these companies for trying to find a solution, but I’m skeptical that we’ll ever have a commercially viable cloud gaming service.
 

Soygen

The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
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I dunno. GeForce NOW on my ShieldTV works pretty damn well on my wired connection. Do you have a link to that article? I'm interested in the specifics. Aren't you just streaming the video and controller input. I don't see how advance in bandwidth/latency won't eventually make it close to perfect(at least for games that don't require super-twitch). No matter how advanced the games actually get, you still only need to stream the video output and controller input.
 

Ravishing

Uninspiring Title
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I think it was PC Gamer that put out an article a while back talking about how “streaming” modern games will almost certainly never be a thing. Their reasoning was the technologies that improve bandwidth/latency to consumers can’t match and are extremely unlikely to outpace ever expanding bandwidth demands of data streaming/game engines.

I applaud these companies for trying to find a solution, but I’m skeptical that we’ll ever have a commercially viable cloud gaming service.

They're dumb.
This tech might not be viable for a PvP game where minimal latency is necessary, but tons of AAA single player or multiplayer-PvE games could utilize this tech with little degradation. It's just the next step in evolution. Putting High Quality visual gaming in every living room and only needing a controller (or someday, maybe just your TV Remote), to play. No other hardware required except your TV & Remote.

For the eSports games/PvP games, we're still far down the road, but with 5G, fiber, etc, coming more widespread, it'll happen eventually imo.

Gaming is going to explode even harder once you remove the hardware barriers.
 

a_skeleton_05

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I dunno. GeForce NOW on my ShieldTV works pretty damn well on my wired connection. Do you have a link to that article? I'm interested in the specifics. Aren't you just streaming the video and controller input. I don't see how advance in bandwidth/latency won't eventually make it close to perfect(at least for games that don't require super-twitch). No matter how advanced the games actually get, you still only need to stream the video output and controller input.

Gotta consider that it's a double dose of latency. You have the controller > output device > servers > system running the game > servers > your display. Even a 50ms ping (pretty fair to consider that on the good side of things) would mean 100ms just in network latency alone. For reference, that's around the same amount you get in the entire loop of a vsync'd game @60hz on a good monitor, and this is before adding the other elements or possible bandwidth hiccups/bad hops and all the rest.
 
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Ravishing

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Gotta consider that it's a double dose of latency. You have the controller > output device > servers > system running the game > servers > your display. Even a 50ms ping (pretty fair to consider that on the good side of things) would mean 100ms just in network latency alone. For reference, that's around the same amount you get in the entire loop of a vsync'd game @60hz on a good monitor, and this is before adding the other elements or possible bandwidth hiccups/bad hops and all the rest.

Theoretically you could improve latency in some situations.
For example, 200+ characters in an MMO world, you can eliminate the latency/stuttering for the user since their hardware won't be crunching the data on all the players around them, it'll just be RGB data, like a TV signal. No processing of tris.
You might be able to eliminate other excess data to reduce latency, too... Like on the server end, it may be much more efficient just sending back RGB data to those 200+ players.
And the Server end won't need to display the geometry either, it'll just crunch data and transmit a TV signal back. In terms of latency it could potentially be faster if what's being sent back isn't as intensive as the constant player/game updates like usual.

It's definitely exciting and the implications of this working will change how games are developed & played for sure. It may also be the final death knell of the "gaming pc".
 

a_skeleton_05

<Banned>
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Theoretically you could improve latency in some situations.
For example, 200+ characters in an MMO world, you can eliminate the latency/stuttering for the user since their hardware won't be crunching the data on all the players around them, it'll just be RGB data, like a TV signal. No processing of tris.
You might be able to eliminate other excess data to reduce latency, too... Like on the server end, it may be much more efficient just sending back RGB data to those 200+ players.
And the Server end won't need to display the geometry either, it'll just crunch data and transmit a TV signal back. In terms of latency it could potentially be faster if what's being sent back isn't as intensive as the constant player/game updates like usual.

It's definitely exciting and the implications of this working will change how games are developed & played for sure. It may also be the final death knell of the "gaming pc".

My stuff was just with single player games in mind with current tech. I don't even know where to begin to try to understand how actual multiplayer latency stuff would factor into it.

I hadn't even considered that games could be developed specifically for this kind of tech with culling certain data in mind. Something fun to spend some time thinking about.

But for now, we're still limited by the hard limits of how fast data can travel. Heavily populated areas would probably get local servers so the latency is as low as ~5ms which would help a ton, but basing your user experience around that luxury would cut out a lot of people.

I have no doubt that it's going to end up being how we game (or our kids at least) but there's certainly a lot of hurdles to get past, and I will mourn the loss of enthusiast control over the experience when it happens.
 
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meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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Was invited to this today. Initial impression is really good.
 

Raes

Vyemm Raider
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People act as if is this is new tech, but it's been around for a while. I played OnLive - Wikipedia when it launched, and while performance varied, the handful of games I tried out had no noticeable input lag. The only one I really remember was a racing game and how surprised I was at how smooth and responsive it was. Sony bought them out, and cancelled Onlive, and then put up Playstation Now.

There's a ton of these services available. Cloud gaming - Wikipedia
 

Soygen

The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
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I got in to this last night and played a couple hours of Assassin's Creed Odyssey(the only game currently offered). It runs great. Loads up super fast in Chrome. I've used streaming on my network through Steam, as well as used it over the internet on my Nvidia Shield with GeForce NOW. The Google service is the best, so far. The game felt like it was running in 60fps, but I'm not sure. You can't fuck with any graphics settings. The graphics looked to be set to high to very high, but my 980ti could definitely run the game better looking if it was running on my PC. No lag on my wired connection.

It's cool, I just don't know if I'd pay money for it if I can't download the games and run them real-time.
 
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Blitz

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Just got into this today. Perfect timing as I finished God of War last night.

Sounds promising so far.

And essentially a free copy of Odyssey? Thanks G O O G L E
 
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Captain Suave

Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
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Accepted also. I have a 1440p monitor and it looks like I'm getting upscaled 1080p (30 fps), but it's acceptable. Plays surprisingly well. Works far better than Steam streaming over my local network.

Edit: With a little more time in, the framerate is on the bottom edge of tolerable. When making quick pans it's a bit painful.
 
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spronk

FPS noob
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yeah got the beta invite as well the email title is "You're in! Play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with Project Stream " if you wanna check your spam folders/etc.
 

Blitz

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Shit. This ran pretty damn well. Especially for a large, open-world game like this. Paint me impressed. Played with a DS4 controller, and zero issues at all.

Playing it on a 2560x1080. So sadly, it's not fullscreen though.
 
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spronk

FPS noob
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yeah i think when the game runs it goes at 1080p 30 fps, i'm playing on 2560x1440 and i notice the small difference but for the most part its pretty smooth, played a bit and enjoyed it with a controller, zero problems.
 

Chanur

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What happens when a hundred thousand people are trying to all play this for a new release? What about a million? What about 10million? What happens if you say something naughty and get banned from the service, no more video games for you? How do the gaming companies get paid?

There are a lot of questions and potential problems that would probably never make this palatable to me.
 
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Blitz

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What happens when a hundred thousand people are trying to all play this for a new release? What about a million? What about 10million? What happens if you say something naughty and get banned from the service, no more video games for you? How do the gaming companies get paid?

There are a lot of questions and potential problems that would probably never make this palatable to me.

I mean, I've already come out ahead! $70 game for freeeeeeee!

All valid concerns though. I wasn't really interested in this "streaming" option for myself, but I mentioned it to a group of friends who used to play games quite a bit and have found other ways to spend their money, and they pretty unanimously said they'd be interested in this and that it might allow them to dive into games that they'd never give any thought to.