Vapourware Google Stadia - "a game streaming service for everyone"

[Siobhan]

I doubt that Google will pull this off. Not because of the product, but because of their corporate culture. The reason Google has so many failed/discontinued projects is because they consider themselves a bottom-up company*. Small teams compete against each other for the attention of the higher ups. Each team comes up with its own projects fairly autonomously without external interference. Once in a while one of those projects looks promising enough to get some support from the top brass. But if the project runs into problems, as almost any project does, it can't expect much support because there's a trillion other projects vying for attention and resources. If you don't knock it out of the park within the first two or three years, they'll demote you back to company-internal toy building and give somebody else some time in the limelight. The only exception I know of is Google Glass, which had huge media buzz for years and hence was kept around despite enormous problems. Game streaming is not nearly as futuristic a concept as augmented reality, so I don't think Stadia will have much staying power if it doesn't make a huge splash right away --- which is a tall order considering that even mass market consoles with brand recognition can take years to really penetrate the market.

*This is a huge difference to the top-down culture of Microsoft: management decides the long-term plans, they allocate teams and resources to those plans, and they stick to those plans (partially due to the vanity of the managers who decided on those plans). Even money sinks like the first Xbox are acceptable if there's long-term potential. Even an unmitigated disaster like the Zune got 6 years to turn things around.

 

[fantadomat]

World's Fastest Internet™**** in the USA™
*cable only
*capped to 50 gb/mo
*$250/mo
*In the state of California and New York, the internet will arrive in the other 48 states in 2028.

Second world internet from Bulgaria
*all kind of cables....and wifi also
*No cap,you could steal from your neighbour as much as you want
*7 euro per month
*It will come to the rest of the world once they embrace superior Bulgar view of the world and the inner freedom of everyone!

 

[abija]

Also what sort of internet connection do you need to get a super fancy looking game streamed to you at 4k?

They laid out the supposed bandwidth for each tier of video quality before. I want to say 4k with HDR required 25Mb, but it could have been 35 or something like that. It's relatively low, unless you live in potato.

Not sure that's low bandwidth for the requirements. There is some difference between latency sensitive data and your usual high bandwidth shit. Taking JC's case as an example, I doubt it would work fine in datacenters that aren't located in Hungary or very close countries where his ISP has great peering.

 

[J_C]

Also what sort of internet connection do you need to get a super fancy looking game streamed to you at 4k?

They laid out the supposed bandwidth for each tier of video quality before. I want to say 4k with HDR required 25Mb, but it could have been 35 or something like that. It's relatively low, unless you live in potato.

Not sure that's low bandwidth for the requirements. There is some difference between latency sensitive data and your usual high bandwidth shit. Taking JC's case as an example, I doubt it would work fine in datacenters that aren't located in Hungary or very close countries where his ISP has great peering.

The problem with this service is not the bandwidth of the internet connection. A 30-50 mbps connection can deliver the data games need, but the latency between the data center and your computer is still there, and if that is noticable, it can ruin the feel of the game.

 

[abija]

How would you know? When was the last time you used low latency software at that kind of bandwidth? With my ISP at least, outside of their infrastructure and very few select routes it's not quite there.

 

[J_C]

How would you know? When was the last time you used a low latency at that kind of bandwidth?

Common sense?

 

[abija]

Common sense requires you have some knowledge in that area which you seem to lack. Google are being extremely facetious just listing those numbers. More important than the bandwidth you need a clean route towards their Skadia datacenters which I doubt would be in that many locations unless Stadia turns into a success.

Streaming video, torrenting, speedtesting, whatever the fuck you use your cheap gigabit internet for are not low latency. And I doubt they have that good deals to provide it across a couple of exchanges. You are close enough to the big EU nodes that it doesn't matter but for most of the world that's not the case.

The worst thing about it to me is how shady it is to bullshit the customer. Selling something as "up to 15mbit" and then they can provide 2mbit and say well it is UP TO.

Thing is, you can't really word it otherwise. Just imagine the amount of morons that click on some shady porn site 2 oceans away and can't get their gigabit guaranteed speed and call support...

 

[J_C]

Common sense requires you have some knowledge in that area which you seem to lack. Google are being extremely facetious just listing those numbers. More important than the bandwidth you need a clean route towards their Skadia datacenters which I doubt would be in that many locations unless Stadia turns into a success.

Streaming video, torrenting, speedtesting, whatever the fuck you use your cheap gigabit internet for are not low latency. And I doubt they have that good deals to provide it across a couple of exchanges. You are close enough to the big EU nodes that it doesn't matter but for most of the world that's not the case.

Wait, aren't we saying the same thing? You say that high latency could be a big problem for this service, and I say that the latency between the datacenter and your computer could be a problem.

 

[unfairlight]

More important than the bandwidth you need a clean route towards their Skadia datacenters which I doubt would be in that many locations unless Stadia turns into a success.

They're rolling it out per country to my understanding. Germany plays on German datacentres, Britain on theirs, et cetera et al.

 

[abija]

Wait, aren't we saying the same thing? You say that high latency could be a big problem for this service, and I say that the latency between the datacenter and your computer could be a problem.

No, I'm saying that even if you can play video game X with 30 ping from some UK datacenter you very likely won't be able to get same consistent latency at 25Mbps.

They're rolling it out per country to my understanding. Germany plays on German datacentres, Britain on theirs, et cetera et al.

Yeah, but I bet most of EU will play in few datacenters for a while.

 

[DalekFlay]

Worth noting Netflix and the rest also advise 25Mbps for 4k HDR streaming. It's the norm, not some crazy Stadia requirement. Those services certainly aren't hurting from lack of subscribers with decent enough internet.

As for latency fuck knows, haven't tried it, but again every report I've read about the Assassin's Creed public beta test said it ran fine. I'm as disgusted by the streaming future as anyone (not even just with games) but I think a lot of you are looking for reasons to assume it will fail in a world transitioning to streaming so fast people have whiplash. They're happily going to write-off the people with shit internet when millions who have decent internet flock to their stupid services.

 

[abija]

Yeah that's why I'm saying they are facetious, they are using streaming numbers when it's apples and oranges and they know it otherwise they wouldn't be so strict with all their demos.

Sure it might succed.. there are are experts at selling shit to masses. But stop throwing around values with such nonchalance when probably even top 1% of their accounts quality wise will be some blocky 720p mess and they're gonna love it.

 

[DalekFlay]

Sure it might succed.. there are are experts at selling shit to masses. But stop throwing around values with such nonchalance when probably even top 1% of their accounts quality wise will be some blocky 720p mess and they're gonna love it.

I don't think it'll be Stadia that succeeds necessarily, but one (or more) of these services will. Any cursory look at consumer behavior will bear that out. As for top 1% being a 720p mess, I think you're nuts. As said above, anyone who lives anywhere near a big city in the U.S. has ten times better internet than 25Mbps, if they want it. Mine is 300Mbps, unlimited, for $50 a month, and I live in your average Northeastern suburb. It's not a fucking white buffalo by any means.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

People overestimate the bandwidth required for streaming with modern compression IMO.
The real requirement will be getting a device capable of decoding said codecs at 4k/60 FPS in realtime. At that point you'd probably be capable of just playing the game itself on said device.
Also, I'm really not sure how this will be profitable for Google — the hardware requirement on their end will be insane.

One of the bigger issues I'm expecting is there to be noticeable lag anytime something major changes on screen.

Worth noting Netflix and the rest also advise 25Mbps for 4k HDR streaming. It's the norm, not some crazy Stadia requirement. Those services certainly aren't hurting from lack of subscribers with decent enough internet.

Streaming video isn't comparable, you can just take some time to buffer and then you're fine with video.

 

[anvi]

The worst thing about it to me is how shady it is to bullshit the customer. Selling something as "up to 15mbit" and then they can provide 2mbit and say well it is UP TO.

Thing is, you can't really word it otherwise. Just imagine the amount of morons that click on some shady porn site 2 oceans away and can't get their gigabit guaranteed speed and call support...

That happens already and they are set straight. An ISP can't guarantee the speed you get from servers out of their control. The issue I am talking about is deliberately misleading advertising, saying you are buying an upto 30mbit! connection. Yet even from the fastest server in the world, the best you can get is 5mbit. This is because the network is oversubscribed so they know exactly what you will be getting and it is more like 5, not 30. But they advertise it like that to con people.

The problem with this service is not the bandwidth of the internet connection. A 30-50 mbps connection can deliver the data games need, but the latency between the data center and your computer is still there, and if that is noticable, it can ruin the feel of the game.

The ping to the data center is a big problem but the bandwidth is a problem too, for people who only get several mbit where they live. Some people can't even get that. And it isn't just people who live in the middle of nowhere.

 

[anvi]

I have a 50mbit download but I struggle to stream youtube often. I suspect because youtube throttles some less popular videos, and/or its infrastructure struggles at busy times

Some people really need to get some education on internet infrastructure before making baseless presumptions.
YouTube doesn't have any issue with its internal infrastructure and it's a miracle a service that stores that many new videos on a daily basis can be sustained at all. What's happening for people like you who have issues with youtube streams is that your ISP are a bunch of scammers and refuse to get decent peering agreements with Google. I've experienced that myself, I used to subscribe to an ISP that was constantly trying to get Google to pay money to have the "privilege" of having good interconnectivity between Google's internal infrastructure and the ISP's own (they see google as competition to their own services like DSL/cable/fiber television). Of course it never worked because we have a competitive market here and there are other ISPs who have good peering and thus never have any lag on youtube and other google services. What happens with bad peering is, at the most busy hours when you have the most users from a ISP trying to access youtube, the ISP side of the interconnect to youtube is choking because the ISP doesn't have enough bandwidth to carry youtube's streams. The ISP is banking on the idea that most people will blame Google rather than the ISP.

'nyhow, ever since I switched ISPs, without anything else changing (same location/DSL infrastructure) I have never had any issue with any streams whatsoever.

Other than switching ISPs you could try using a VPN. A VPN that has good peering with your ISP can fix your issues with laggy streams.

I don't buy that argument because if I click on a Taylor Swift video it is fast as fuck even in 4k. If I click on a vid of some nerd with 2 subscribers playing a 1980s game, there is a chance it will run like shit.

 

[anvi]

Not bad, but it will exclude a hell of a lot of people. The average download speed of US is 5.1 (mbps) and the average upload speed was 1.1 (mbps).

This is because those averages count wide swaths of the U.S. that are very rural but also very sparsely populated. If you live anywhere near a major city, like a 90 minute drive or less, then 25Mbps is no big deal at all. These companies seem fine with writing off rural people.

Yes but it still means a lot of potential customers wont be able to use this because of their internet speed. With an Xbox/Gaystation/PC you can get by. Also even in cities some people struggle, especially if they live in an apartment block which doesn't allow you to get your own internet connection. Often they pay for a fast connection to the building and then split it to every apartment. This totally screws some people.

 

[DalekFlay]

You guys are acting like there hasn't already been a public beta test of Stadia that got rave reviews. It's depressing but it is what it is.

 

[anvi]

I wouldn't be surprised if it was a huge success. I can just see potential issues with the streaming idea, and it is something all other games platforms don't have to bother with. That could have an impact. Although MS and Sony being such terrible companies is a huge advantage. Also shitty internet infrastructure is always improving.

 

[LESS T_T]

The top engineer claims Stadia will be more responsive than local machines in a year or two, since, with machine learning and magics, it will be able to predict your next actions and pre-calculate them on server: https://www.pcgamesn.com/stadia/negative-latency-prediction

Google Stadia will be “faster and more responsive” than local gaming hardware

Google Stadia will be faster and more responsive than local gaming systems in “a year or two,” according to VP of engineering Madj Bakar. Thanks to some precog trickery, Google believes its streaming system will be faster than the gaming systems of the near-future, no matter how powerful they may become. But if the system is playing itself, does that really count?

Speaking with Alex Wiltshire in Edge magazine #338, Google’s top streaming engineer claims the company is verging on gaming superiority with its cloud streaming service, Stadia, thanks to the advancements it’s making in modelling and machine learning. It’s even eyeing up the gaming performance crown in just a couple of years.

“Ultimately, we think in a year or two we’ll have games that are running faster and feel more responsive in the cloud than they do locally,” Bakar says to Edge, “regardless of how powerful the local machine is.”


This would be achieved using Google’s homegrown streaming tech, which it’s been teasing ever since Stadia was first announced late last year with Project Stream. The company believes its tech is capable of overcoming the hurdles presented by over-the-web gaming, despite its extensive web of datacentres sitting potentially hundreds of miles away from a user.

Specifically Bakar notes Google’s “negative latency” will act as a workaround for any potential lag between player and server. This term describes a buffer of predicted latency, inherent to a Stadia players setup or connection, in which the Stadia system will run lag mitigation. This can include increasing fps rapidly to reduce latency between player input and display, or even predictive button presses.

Yes, you heard that correctly. Stadia might start predicting what action, button, or movement you’re likely to do next and do it for you – which sounds rather frightening.

So does that count as the fastest system if technically some clever algorithm is playing the game for you? I’m not so sure.

But Google is plenty confident Stadia will delight users, and in my own experience with the tech back at E3 I didn’t notice any actions going awry. However, that was in a Google-approved environment, and we’ll have to wait until Stadia’s launch this November to find out how efficient Stadia’s streaming algorithms are in the real world.

 

[taxalot]

You are all luddites.

Despise it if you want, game streaming is coming and is going to be widely accepted.
Netflix doesn't provide same picture quality as a good Blu-ray. Look how people are caring.

 

[Steamboat Willie]

The top engineer claims Stadia will be more responsive than local machines in a year or two, since, with machine learning and magics, it will be able to predict your next actions and pre-calculate them on server:

Why do they even need players?

You are all luddites.

Despise it if you want, game streaming is coming and is going to be widely accepted.
Netflix doesn't provide same picture quality as a good Blu-ray. Look how people are caring.

Yep. Said this earlier in another thread. People are in denial saying it's not going to happen and that "gamers will never go for it." Users on this site don't represent the majority of normies who just need to be told they can play Fortnite on their new TV without needing a console in order to be on board.

 

[Dexter]

The top engineer claims Stadia will be more responsive than local machines in a year or two, since, with machine learning and magics, it will be able to predict your next actions and pre-calculate them on server

Wow, it works like totally like magic and will be like, totally the future bro! Science is Awesum! We have certainly not heard anything like this before.

 

[Squid]

Dammit, I don't care if this is the future or not. I'll hold onto my GOG and Itch downloads and my physical discs as long as possible. Everything might want to be digital but they're doing it wrong.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

You are all luddites.

Actually we're neo-luddites, get with the times.