twisty on 20/3/2019 at 10:17
(
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-20/google-to-launch-video-game-streaming-platform-stadia/10918900)
As per recent rumours in the media, Google have finally announced that they will be releasing a gaming streaming service that will (according to them) make the hardware console model obsolete. Gaming is certainly going through an accelerated growth period at the moment (if not a highly monopolized one), so am not suprised to see companies like Google throw their hats in the mix; their plan is very forward looking too considering the expected bandwidth increases subsequent to the advent of 5G in the coming years.
In other news, Steam will soon be releasing a beta that will allow remote streaming from a single PC to an internet connected device (previously LAN only). While this is currently completely different to the cloud based version mentioned above, it might be a first step to extend this later, given the other competition as well.
Malf on 20/3/2019 at 10:33
Best comment I've seen on this so far has been over on (
https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/google-stadia-sounds-like-a-bad-idea/141020/36?u=mungrul) BoingBoing:
Quote Posted by ZikZak
This isn’t just bad because it’s technically inadequate. It would be disastrous even if the latency was better than home rigs, because it represents the death of diy gaming.
Imagine the most restrictive console, one which prohibits homebrew creations, mods, or unsanctioned user content of any kind. Imagine that its graphics processing far exceeds anything else you could hope to buy, making it far and away the best platform for modern games to target. Then imagine that it’s impossible to jailbreak this console to remove the restrictions, because it’s physically outside your control. Imagine content or whole titles disappearing from this console irretrievably after the fact because of a decision by a publisher. This is what Google wants all our gaming experiences to be.
The real casualty of their business model isn’t milliseconds, it’s culture.
froghawk on 20/3/2019 at 10:41
I've been using Nvidia Geforce Now for some time now on account of owning a potato and no consoles, and it's great. It runs steam and battle.net, allowing you play unsupported games. That said, you can't modify any of the game files or run anything from, say, origin yet, so the above comment is true, but the alternative is not being able to play new games at all for me. It will probably be unaffordable for me once it properly launches, but I've been enjoying the hell out of the free beta for years.
I don't think it's going to remain unmoddable due to obvious problems with that. For instance, Dark Souls PTD is on there without DSfix. Obviously, it's unplayable. Remastered has fixed that, but let's say it hadn't. They haven't announced a final price, but they were throwing around $25 for 20hrs. Hourly billing is absurd for this kind of service. So if someone wanted to play Dark Souls, they'd have to buy the game then pay maybe $150 to get through it reasonably (though I'm sure hourly billing will change how people play and encourage less time). Point being, nobody is going to pay that kind of money to play unmodded PC dark souls. It's never going to happen. They need to allow mod support or their model will die. Though, hell, at those prices you may as well just buy a console even if it is moldable
There have been other issues. It uses 10GB/hr on average, so if you've got a data cap, good luck. I had latency issues for a while in the middle of using it, which is odd, because for about a year on either side of that I had none whatsoever and it was completely indistinguishable from a local installation. RE7, an ostensibly supported game, wouldn't recognize my mouse. Luckily, it ran fine off my local computer.
On the other hand, I've had pretty amazing luck running unsupported games. I thought I'd wasted my money on Devil May Cry 4 SE - it wouldn't run at all on windows 10, an apparently common issue that the developers never bothered to fix. I wasted my time with all sorts of fixes and none of them worked - I could never get into the gameplay. I tried streaming it and it worked perfectly immediately. I need to reinstall it every time, but that takes 5-7min, so it doesn't bother me. Similarly, I wasted a long time trying to figure out how to play the early Hitman games in unstretched 4:3 on my computer to no avail. I tried streaming them (unsupported) and it instantly worked. Using a Tesla P40 on this stuff is overkill, but I really am getting rather tired of having to mess around with ini files and hex editing for hours to get games to run properly - this is eliminating a lot of that work.
I like this model a lot more than streaming music and about as much as streaming TV, though it has a while to go before it's affordable and jank-free. That said, the nvidia model differs from the Google one in a core way - you buy and bring your own games. I know many of the other services have a predetermined library you're buying access to, and I don't like that model as much for gaming.
WingedKagouti on 20/3/2019 at 11:47
Quote Posted by froghawk
I don't think it's going to remain unmoddable due to obvious problems with that.
I think you're way too optimistic here. Any games that don't work without mods are just going to be listed as "unsupported" at best.
froghawk on 20/3/2019 at 11:51
They list it as supported, though. That's the puzzling part. I would have expected them not to. They haven't even removed it since Remastered came out.
Best case mod-free scenario is that this forces developers to actually fix their broken PC ports. If the community can't mod them into submission, they'll have no excuse. Not really holding my breath, though, mainly because Bethesda games are still inexplicably popular on consoles.
Nameless Voice on 20/3/2019 at 19:17
I think it's a really dangerous concept, probably the most dangerous thing to come to PC (and console) gaming for a long time, if they can manage to pull it off.
There are just so many problems with it. Forget about the lag for a moment.
People are kicking up the biggest fuss over Epic Game Store exclusives, because they require you to install a free piece of software in order to install your games - just imagine how many orders of magnitude worse streaming-exclusive games would be.
You never own the games, not even with the slightest pretence of owning them, since you have no copy of the game data yourself. If you want to play it, you have to pay, probably as part of a subscription. As soon as you stop paying, you can't play it any more. You can never play these games offline, never mod them, never manipulate them in any way.
Further, once one company manages to get streaming working, others will follow, each with their own sets of exclusives, trying to get you to subscribe to each service.
The normal release valve for this kind of anti-consumer behaviour - piracy - won't apply, because no one will be able to pirate these games, as no one even has a copy other than the service provider.
It gets worse. Subscription-based streaming services would take the bulk of the monthly fee for themselves, meaning that developers would earn even less money than they do now. This would be especially bad for indies, who can already barely make enough money to live on in today's market, but it would also change the nature of games.
If the subscriber pays per hour of game time, then games would get needlessly drawn out to keep the players playing boring content for longer. If they go for a more standard subscription model (e.g. fixed fee per month), then the game developers would be forced to go with other forms of monetisation - microtransactions, for a start, but also heavy doses of in-game advertising, which would be really hard to block since they would be injected into the game stream at the source.
Finally, as if that isn't dystopian enough, the service providers would obviously track everything you do in the games, to further profile you, and make more money selling your private information or using it to target you for advertising. Actions inside games are also far more personal than simply watching a video or listening to music, since you can actually make meaningful choices in those games which, again, the service providers can track to build up a better profile of you.
Sure, this is all the worst-case scenario, but I don't think it's all that far-fetched, and such I really hope that this technology fails to become mainstream.
Bucky Seifert on 20/3/2019 at 21:45
My prediction, this will be a hit with the more casual audience, but the more (I hate this term) hardcore audience will be resistant to it. Realistically speaking, I can't see this not being at least something of a success. I suppose if this was the case, one positive outcome would be that console and PC developers will start to gear their games more towards the hardcore crowd and less toward casual players. The PC and Console market has seen nothing but growth for a long time, and while I don't doubt Google's muscle will be able to get this to a lot of people, I'm not going to place my bets just yet on all games being played on the cloud forever and always. Especially considering that there are still a lot of people with unreliable internet connections, and I'm not even talking in developing nations, I'm talking in countries like the US.
Pyrian on 20/3/2019 at 21:49
Quote Posted by Buccura
Realistically speaking, I can't see this not being at least something of a success.
Why? Consumers have shown very little interest in game streaming.
Bucky Seifert on 20/3/2019 at 21:54
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Why? Consumers have shown very little interest in game streaming.
Based on what data? I'm not calling you a liar or BSer, I just wonder what data supports that?
Renault on 20/3/2019 at 22:03
It'll obviously all come down to how accessible it is.