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

[Jimmious]

I'm a bit baffled by the negative reaction in here. The idea is amazing. It has the potential to obliterate all gaming hardware out there.
Not to mention how it would "free" developers from the constraints of designing software for specific HW requirements and so on.

It all depends on how the network code will fare obviously - but it's Google. I'm pretty sure they will work it out eventually.
I can easily see another huge monopoly coming

*To clarify, I'm not seeing my self being a fan of the service, I like my keyboard. But the idea is great and has crazy potential of success, admittedly

 

[unfairlight]

You're right, there is potential via having almost no hardware restrictions at all, but the price to pay for it is far too high and it will mean games will be lost to time forever.

 

[Jimmious]

You're right, there is potential via having almost no hardware restrictions at all, but the price to pay for it is far too high and it will mean games will be lost to time forever.

Is it high? You pay what, 50 bucks for the controller and then a subscription of 10-15 bucks per month? If that means access to a big library of games it's a good offer for a lot of people that won't bother with hardware or buying games etc

 

[DalekFlay]

Is it high? You pay what, 50 bucks for the controller and then a subscription of 10-15 bucks per month? If that means access to a big library of games it's a good offer for a lot of people that won't bother with hardware or buying games etc

There is no doubt this will appeal to the masses a great deal. There's no doubt that corporations won't benefit to an absurdly high degree as well, which means (like streaming video) it is destined to succeed and be the number one thing. Cheaper and more convenient are holy rites etched on the side of the capitalist success doctrine. That doesn't mean assholes like myself more concerned with quality and ownership won't bitch out it for decades and buy game downloads/discs whenever we can though.

 

[unfairlight]

I don't mean "price" as in the cost of the service, I mean it as the death of all the rights you have right now storing the game data on your own computer. Data dies, with Stadia at the whim of any developer, Google themselves or because of minor licensing issues, the game may become unplayable for eternity. It's all the negatives of always online amplified tenfold, since there isn't even the potential for pirates cracking the game and making it playable offline.

 

[DalekFlay]

I don't mean "price" as in the cost of the service, I mean it as the death of all the rights you have right now storing the game data on your own computer. Data dies, with Stadia at the whim of any developer, Google themselves or because of minor licensing issues, the game may become unplayable for eternity. It's all the negatives of always online amplified tenfold, since there isn't even the potential for pirates cracking the game and making it playable offline.

Yeah but no one cares.

I mean, we care, but in the grand scheme of things no one really cares. At all. There will be some Kotaku article someday about X game being pulled from everywhere and no longer being playable and people in the comments will say "that's a shame this sucks" and then in 12 hours there will be ten more articles about other things and no one plays old games so it'll be forgotten and no one will care. MMOs shutting down already offers a preview of this.

 

[cosmicray]

100ms ping means you need server 10000km away.

Show me where you get 100ms ping at 10000 km.

200km/ms * 50ms = 10000km
I meant that it's the lower limit theoretically. So the speed of light is not streaming's biggest problem.

 

[Dexter]

I don't really like the idea of Netflix style streaming service for games but I can see it's potential when it comes to VR. One of the main obstacles to experiencing high end VR gaming is the cost of owning a powerful gaming PC. But Stadia eliminates that requirement and all you'd need is headset capable of playing high res video stream and good internet connection. They say that at launch Stadia will run the newest games on 4K HDR on 60FPS and they have plans to upscale it to 8K on 120FPS in the future. So with Oculus Go style headset we could get amazing looking VR games for the price of the headset only and no need to fuck around with cables. The only drawback are the potential latency problems.

It's hilarious to me how the technologically illiterate believe that this works like some sort of magic fairy dust or whatever. VR Streaming for games is literally impossible (it's already bad enough when you're trying Wireless directly from your PC). You can move your head in real-time in VR and need ~90FPS and seamless rendering with instant response time for it to not feel off. This is not possible with a service that takes your input (from moving your head or pressing sticks/buttons on your controller), sends them over to some data center far away, tells its local GPU cluster to render the new image(s), then sends that data to a high-speed encoder and needs to send the data back to you to display and react again. It's a physical impossibility for VR. Even normal video-streaming is still troublesome in parts, with seconds long lags of live transmissions, disconnects, glitches and the likes and that's a lot easier to accomplish. Even on flat screen gaming you have to reckon with up to half a second of lag, compression artifacts (blocking and banding) that make the image look ugly and other problems.

I remember these same discussions of "hey it's not that bad, hey it doesn't look that bad", this is the future and whatnot back when this shit popped up first, and they're going to run into the very same problems that they did back then, because they haven't discovered a way to magically encode and transfer data instantly since then as far as I know: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/onlive-died-today.45644/page-11#post-1210837

 

[Jimmious]

I don't mean "price" as in the cost of the service, I mean it as the death of all the rights you have right now storing the game data on your own computer. Data dies, with Stadia at the whim of any developer, Google themselves or because of minor licensing issues, the game may become unplayable for eternity. It's all the negatives of always online amplified tenfold, since there isn't even the potential for pirates cracking the game and making it playable offline.

Honestly, no one really cares about that any more. Or to phrase it better, few people do. Plus with games being a service and not a purchase, you don't really need to care. You pay a subscription and you have access to X titles as long as you do that.
Yeah it won't be property any more but that's how the internet will be in general in a few years

 

[unfairlight]

The future beings with you. Stand against it actively and maybe one day another crash will happen and games will return to being niche with little mass market appeal. I don't like subscription services and I use none since I like having control over data, I intend to keep it that way and just play archived DOS games until eternity should everything go over to the cloud.

 

[DalekFlay]

The future beings with you. Stand against it actively and maybe one day another crash will happen and games will return to being niche with little mass market appeal. I don't like subscription services and I use none since I like having control over data, I intend to keep it that way and just play archived DOS games until eternity should everything go over to the cloud.

Principled stands are great and all, but often times you're just pissing into the wind and end up covered in urine. I ranted and raved about consumer rights and control for years when Steam was getting big and no one cared then, no one cares now, no one will care about this either. By "no one" I of course mean the vast majority won't, but they control things. Downloads will go on a while, just like discs for movies and music are going on a while, but it'll get more and more niche until it's gone. There isn't a debate or war to be had, it's over, they won. It is what it is.

Luckily most new games are shit, online services where this doesn't matter much anyway. The retro platformers and RPGs and such are the ones that will keep getting downloads for a long time, so whatevs. Even the singleplayer big corporate titles will eventually be streaming exclusives though, just you wait.

 

[unfairlight]

The average retard is a retard. I know, that isn't news. There will always be a niche circle who does care about the value of the medium, and will condense themselves together since cloud gaming services considered their game too niche. Cloud gaming is going to be a battle of datacentres and the only real competitors are going to be Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. No one else has a single chance to catch up to them. It also doesn't help that latency will ALWAYS be worse than a real PC running it, and with the most popular games in the world right now being twitchy competitive shooters I don't think the best case scenario 100ms input delay is going to be acceptable, even half that is going to be awful for mouse input.

 

[Dexter]

Principled stands are great and all, but often times you're just pissing into the wind and end up covered in urine. I ranted and raved about consumer rights and control for years when Steam was getting big and no one cared then, no one cares now, no one will care about this either. By "no one" I of course mean the vast majority won't, but they control things. Downloads will go on a while, just like discs for movies and music are going on a while, but it'll get more and more niche until it's gone. There isn't a debate or war to be had, it's over, they won. It is what it is.

I believe you people are getting a bit ahead of yourselves, given that you don't know if this "service" will still exist 5 years from now and Steam still has like ~70% of the Digital Distribution market on PC and console companies won't give up their preeminence either.

 

[baud]

Principled stands are great and all, but often times you're just pissing into the wind and end up covered in urine. I ranted and raved about consumer rights and control for years when Steam was getting big and no one cared then, no one cares now, no one will care about this either. By "no one" I of course mean the vast majority won't, but they control things. Downloads will go on a while, just like discs for movies and music are going on a while, but it'll get more and more niche until it's gone. There isn't a debate or war to be had, it's over, they won. It is what it is.

I believe you people are getting a bit ahead of yourselves, given that you don't know if this "service" will still exist 5 years from now and Steam still has like ~70% of the Digital Distribution market on PC and console companies won't give up their preeminence either.

Sony already has service like this one and Microsoft has just announced its own; so even if Google kill Stadia down the line, we can still be headed in that direction

I don't mean "price" as in the cost of the service, I mean it as the death of all the rights you have right now storing the game data on your own computer. Data dies, with Stadia at the whim of any developer, Google themselves or because of minor licensing issues, the game may become unplayable for eternity. It's all the negatives of always online amplified tenfold, since there isn't even the potential for pirates cracking the game and making it playable offline.

Honestly, no one really cares about that any more. Or to phrase it better, few people do. Plus with games being a service and not a purchase, you don't really need to care. You pay a subscription and you have access to X titles as long as you do that.
Yeah it won't be property any more but that's how the internet will be in general in a few years

Another issue is how the system (latency) and payement to devs (devs are paid depending on how long their game are paid) will result in pretty shitty game design.

 

[Ismaul]

I mean, we care, but in the grand scheme of things no one really cares. At all. There will be some Kotaku article someday about X game being pulled from everywhere and no longer being playable and people in the comments will say "that's a shame this sucks" and then in 12 hours there will be ten more articles about other things and no one plays old games so it'll be forgotten and no one will care. MMOs shutting down already offers a preview of this.

In a world where Stadia becomes the main way to play games, you only have to wait until people get a bit older and nostalgia kicks in. It only takes someone thinking "Hey I'd like to replay an older game" for them to see the limits of Stadia. And then Stadia will look like a huge mistake.

Everyone cares about their childhood and their memories.

 

[DalekFlay]

I believe you people are getting a bit ahead of yourselves, given that you don't know if this "service" will still exist 5 years from now and Steam still has like ~70% of the Digital Distribution market on PC and console companies won't give up their preeminence either.

The streaming shift with video and audio has happened incredibly fast. Once services like this have some exclusives and let Joe Schmoe play a high-end game on his TV without expensive hardware it'll start taking off like a rocket, same as other services have. That doesn't mean downloads/discs won't be available for some things for a long time, but where everything media is headed isn't a mystery.

In a world where Stadia becomes the main way to play games, you only have to wait until people get a bit older and nostalgia kicks in. It only takes someone thinking "Hey I'd like to replay an older game" for them to see the limits of Stadia. And then Stadia will look like a huge mistake.

Everyone cares about their childhood and their memories.

Sure, but that's more going to be a drive to re-release old shit or make shit similar to it. When licensing prevents that it's not gonna happen, nostalgia hasn't made a Goldeneye re-release or Star Wars Galaxies revival any more possible. People, by any large, take what they can get and don't sweat the rest. They'll watch youtube videos or whatever if they can't play it. They'll make a sad tweet about it and move on with their day. They're not gonna say "oh my, this technology which has taken over all forms of media all across the world is suddenly very suspect because I can't play X licensed game anymore!" No... no one cares that much, outside the passionate niche market corporations barely give two fucks about.

 

[Lutte]

and with the most popular games in the world right now being twitchy competitive shooters I don't think the best case scenario 100ms input delay is going to be acceptable, even half that is going to be awful for mouse input.

Not input lag, but people already put up with bullshitty gameplay like this due to internet latency issues on games with larger amount of players :


I don't believe the large masses playing those so-called 'twitchy' games are highly judgemental with that sort of thing. If anything, Stradia, while introducing a form of input latency for everyone, would have the potential to make what you see on the screen be closer to what actually happens by running everything, server and player clients, in a LAN.
Most of the popular online shooters have dogshit hit detection. The closest thing to acceptable among the mainstream games is CS:GO but that game has other issues of its own.
Heck need I remind you one of the most popular FPS series, the CoD, had PEER TO PEER hosting rather than dedicated servers? Same for Halo. Some of the CoD started going back to dedicated servers but basically the only people who care enough to make it a breaking issue is a fraction of the PC user base, and console gamers never cared. If you ever gave a try playing a P2P style FPS I can guarantee the latency issues felt during the game that break hit detection are worse than anything game streaming services like GFNow introduce to your input lag.

You are vastly overestimating the segment of gamers who care. Online shooters have long lost any semblance of being truly competitive since arena shooters died.
Games like Fortnite, Titanfall, CoD or Battlefield are not the paragon of what would be impossible to market on these things. At best 10% of their playerbase would bitch and the rest would still play it there.

I used to play online shooters, I don't even care about them anymore. The genre lost me aeons ago and it's not streaming that killed it.

 

[abija]

Not input lag, but people already put up with bullshitty gameplay like this due to internet latency issues on games with larger amount of players :
...

Most of that lag can be compensated. You can't ameliorate input lag, just design games around it. It's also added on top of it since if you want minimum latency for the stream, the game mp servers won't be in the same datacenters (think russian vs uk players, or us east vs west coast).

 

[unfairlight]

Fits here too.

 

[Modron]

Fits here too.

Can't watch video because of soyboy thumbnail.

 

[The Decline]

Fuck streaming games. That is all.

 

[taxalot]

Fuck streaming games. That is all.

We've been streaming fucking for a while now.

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[DalekFlay]

Too bad it's an evil Jaffar genie and not the cool Robin Williams one.

 

[baud]

Seems there's been some more info on Stadia (other than BG3)

From:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019...-130-upfront-10-per-month-at-november-launch/

Google Stadia requires $130 upfront, $10 per month at November launch
Free tier launches in 2020, but both require a la carte game purchases.
KYLE ORLAND - 6/6/2019, 6:20 PM

The hardware you get with the $129.99 Stadia "Founder's Edition."

Players will have to pay $129.99 up front and $9.99 a month, on top of individual game purchase costs, when Google's previously announced Stadia game-streaming service launches in November. A free tier will be available some time in 2020, as will a paid subscription tier that doesn't require the upfront purchase.



The Stadia Founder's Edition and its contingent Stadia Pro subscription will be the only way to get access to the Stadia service when it launches, Google announced today. That $129.99 package, available for pre-order on the Google Store right now, will include:

• A Stadia controller in "limited-edition night blue"
• A Chromecast Ultra
• Three months of Stadia Pro service and a three-month "buddy pass" to give to a friend
• First dibs on claiming a "Stadia Name"

After the first three months, Stadia Pro users will have to pay $9.99 a month to maintain their membership. For that price, they will get access to Google's highest-quality streams, at up to 4K/60fps with high-dynamic range (HDR) and 5.1 surround sound. In 2019, users will not be able to sign up for Stadia Pro without investing in the Founder's Edition hardware package, and Founder's Edition packages will only be available "in limited quantities and for a limited time."

STADIA SIDE-BY-SIDE
STADIA PRO/FOUNDER'S EDITION STADIA BASE
AVAILABLE November (only option at launch) "2020"
UPFRONT COST $129.99 None
INCLUDED UP FRONT Chromecast Ultra, Stadia controller, three-month subscription + three-month "buddy pass," Destiny 2 Nothing
MONTHLY COST $9.99 None
MAXIMUM STREAM QUALITY 4K resolution, 60 fps, 5.1 surround sound, HDR color 1080p resolution, 60fps, stereo sound
SUPPORTED DEVICES (AT LAUNCH) Chromecast Ultra; Computer w/ Chrome browser; Google Pixel 3/3a
ADDITIONAL GAMES Purchase a la carte on either tier
OTHER BENEFITS Discounts on game purchases; free games at "regular cadence"; early reservation of "Stadia name" None

COUNTRIES
At launch, Stadia streaming will be available in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Additional regions will be added in 2020.

Pro subscribers will also receive PlayStation Plus/Xbox Live Gold-style benefits, including discounts on game purchases and free games released at a "regular cadence." The first of these freebies, Destiny 2, will be available to Pro subscribers at launch in a package including all current and future expansions plus the ability to transfer an existing Guardian from the PC or Xbox edition (PS4 transfers are currently "pending approval by Sony"). These free titles will remain accessible as long as users maintain their monthly subscription.

Sometime next year, Google says it plans to roll out a free tier of Stadia service, called Stadia Base. Users on this tier will be limited to 1080p, 60fps streams with stereo sound.

Games and hardware support

A 10 Mbps connection is recommended for the lowest-end Stadia experience.

Alongside its pricing announcement, Google announced a lineup of 21 publishers and 31 games that will be available on Stadia in the "launch window" (see sidebar). It's a list that includes yet-to-release titles like Borderlands 3 and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint as well as the newly announced Darksiders: Genesis and Baldur's Gate III. That list will grow as new announcements are made leading up to the November rollout, the company said.

Aside from free titles on the Pro tier, all Stadia games will be purchased on an a la carte basis. Google was not ready to discuss individual game pricing, but Stadia VP of Product John Justice told Ars those prices will be set by the publishers themselves. "We're working with them to make sure it's competitive pricing to what you would see on other platforms," Justice said.

While there are no free-to-play titles amid the first round of announced Stadia titles, "you will see us start to include some on the platform" as time goes on, Justice said. Google also didn't show off the Stadia system or store interface, but Justice said the latter would be "as frictionless as possible, [needing] as few seconds as possible from finding out about a game to be[ing] able to jump in." Justice would not discuss revenue sharing arrangements between Google and its publishing partners.

Google is now recommending users have at least a 10mbps Internet connection to use Stadia. With that connection, users can expect to run games "at least" at 720p and 60 frames per second. Pro users who want the highest-end streaming experience should have a connection of at least 35mbps, Justice said, though streaming quality will scale seamlessly below that level.

While any any desktop, laptop, or tablet running a desktop version of Chrome will be able to use Stadia (with a required Pro subscription, at launch), mobile support will be limited to the Pixel 3 and 3a line at launch. Google says service will be "expanding to other phones over time."

Stadia users will also be able to stream games through a Chromecast Ultra connected to a TV if they use Google's proprietary Stadia controller. Extra Stadia controllers, beyond the one included in the Founder's Edition, will cost $69 in the US and be available in three colors: Just Black, Clearly White, and Wasabi.

As previously announced, Stadia games run on custom Linux-based server hardware maintained by Google, promising "10.7 teraflops of power in each instance." Game audio and video is streamed from those servers to a user's device, and inputs are streamed from the user to the server over a network of what Google says are "7,500 edge nodes" around the world. Users will be able to immediately jump into supported games without having to wait for downloads or installs, and they will be able to carry gameplay from device to device seamlessly, Google says.

Today's announcement does not mention any possible "first party" games produced by Google's internal gaming studios. Google's Phil Harrison has previously hinted to future Stadia games leveraging platform-specific perks like "distributed physics" processing in the cloud or the official Stadia controller's built-in microphone.


STADIA LAUNCH WINDOW GAMES/PUBLISHERS
Announced as of June 6, here are the titles early Stadia users can expect:

• Bandai Namco: Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2
• Bethesda: Doom Eternal+, Doom(2016), Rage 2, The Elder Scrolls Online, Wolfenstein: Youngblood+
• Bungie: Destiny 2
• Capcom*
• Coatsink: Get Packed+
• Codemasters: GRID
• Deep Silver: Metro Exodus
• Drool: Thumper
• Electronic Arts*
• Giants Software: Farming Simulator 19
• Larian Studios: Baldur’s Gate III+
• nWay Games: Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
• Rockstar*
• Sega: Football Manager
• SNK: Samurai Shodown+
• Square Enix: Final Fantasy XV, Tomb Raider Definitive Edition, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• 2K: NBA 2K, Borderlands 3+
• Tequila Works: Gylt+
• Warner Bros: Mortal Kombat 11
• THQ: Darksiders: Genesis+
• Ubisoft: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Just Dance, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint+, Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, Trials Rising, The Crew 2

* - No specific games announced yet
+ - Games not yet launched on any platform.

There's a few more pics of the controller in the article and the STADIA SIDE-BY-SIDE comparison is readable there.