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So last week at the GDC, Google announced their Stadia streaming service for video games... Sort of Netflix for pc gaming.

https://www.gameinformer.com/gdc-2019/2019/03/19/google-announces-stadia-a-powerful-new-game-streaming-service

I figured I'd link to the GameStop owner article announcing it for a few advertising pennies since it's get another nail in their coffin. I've always been a fan of physical copies of games but I'm not oblivious to the fact that the primary of that delivery method is over and, on pc, isn't even a thing at all anymore. I rediscovered console gaming back with the original Xbox after a decade of pc exclusive gaming but have sat out the current console generation for a variety of reasons (the shittyness of the Xbox one's original messaging and release being the catalyst) but planned to reenter with the upcoming next gen. The Stadia release puts a bit of a wrench into those plans. Luckily, it seems to be debuting this year BEFORE the ps5 and Xbox Two so if it's a fail I'll know in advance.

My current internet speed meets the minimum 25mb/s requirement for 1080p/60fps but I have no idea about the input latency of my connection though. I didn't try the project stream demo they did late last year so don't know if he total latency will be an issue. I suspect that the service will be better for slower paced titles like third person and adventure games rather than twitch-reflex intensive fps or fighting games... Which is ok as at my age I'm more suited to the former as my halo/cod headshot days are behind me. There are a lot of ways that this could suck but unlike with the previous attempt (OnLive) Google has the truckloads of money to throw at this to potentially make it work. Then we only have to worry about them capriciously cancelling it in a few years of its not mega successful...

Eh. Not interested in a 'streaming service' [they'd need a dedicated ad campaign to convince me why I'd want such a thing to exist at all, another (probably with bribes) to get me to buy into the idea, and a third to make me want to buy into theirs] and I think Big G is vastly overestimating the quality of internet infrastructure across large swathes of this country.

The numbers I heard on what they expected download times to be just made me giggle.

Things I dislike about this

1) It will require a good continuous internet connection with no interruptions in order to work. This might be great for a single person living in an inner city house; but if you're out in the countryside or there's multiple data users on the same modem then you might find that you don't have fast enough internet; or that other users result in a limit to your ability to play.

2) Unlike a film, you can't just pause it and let it buffer if you're on a slower connection or suffering issues outlined in point 1 - it got t obe live and its got to be constant.

3) Whilst they argue that they can update games fast and add new content and all these snazzy things they can do all that right now through patches and DLC. So its adding nothing for the player experience really.
The only bonus is 100% hardware compatibility (more or less) which is a boon for gamers on weaker computer (up to a point) however its more of a boon for the developer than the gamer.

4) It won't work if you don't pay your internet bill or have a change of situation that results in your net reducing in performance.

5) It can't be "patched out" if the developer folds or moves on and the game is turned off. Online all the Time is annoying but in games with ample singleplayer elements; it can often be patched out of most games. This can't so it instantly means that anything that might remove a game will remove it (movie licences expiring; the developer company closing etc...).

6) Lack of product ownership. It's not just that you own a licence to use; you 100% really don't own "anything" with this product. You can't even download and make an offline local backup copy or anything. Whislt there's a lot out there now on accounts like music, films and books; as well as games; many have options to run offline if the host company folds (it can happen to any - even giants like Amazon and Steam can fall)



Honestly I can see why developers would be interested in it; it gives them almost 100% control over their product whilst also cutting out a lot of support costs and also eliminating the bulk of piracy issues (the main one I can see is account hacking/data harvesting). Plus a developer can close support for a game and launch a new game and "force" gamers into the new game if they so wish.


Personally I'd welcome this for MMO type games, but I'd loath it for anything singleplayer. In fact I already don't buy "online all the time" games for singleplayer (which these days mostly means just no Diablo 3 on PC); this wouldn't just be a no buy from me on policy but also because I'm in the countryside and my net connection just wouldn't be fast enough to stream a full game.



I can see practical application for the technology and a market niche, I just really hope it never becomes "the norm"

There are definitely downsides and you covered many of them and I agree with them as well. Ownership has inherent value for me as does offline play but those are both beginning to be endangered qualities now in modern gaming even for single player experiences. I detest it but I can't pretend it's not happening. You won't own anything with game streaming other than a license that can be revoked at google's whim with no real recourse but that already is the case on Steam as well with many titles.

For me, at least, I have zero investment in the current generation of gaming (pc or console) so the idea of simply paying a monthly fee like on xbox live plus the cost of the game with no hardware costs (I have a 360/pc controller that I can plug into my laptop for free) is enticing despite the *MANY* downsides. If I wan't a PC or upcoming console that can do the same, I'd have to pay $500+ just to get access to the service potentially. That's not inconsequential IMO. That said, I'm considering the options with my eyes wide open and with the knowledge that the only person I know that tried a previous incarnation of game streaming (the OnLive service) said it sucked and never went back after buying one game.

I look forward to the announcement they are retiring this service in around 3 years or so.

 Overread wrote:
-snip-

Pretty much what Overread says. As one option among many, it's fine. Not appealing to me, but fine, with an obvious appeal for a particular market segment.

The trouble is it won't remain one option among many if it does well. They'll buy exclusives just like Epic is doing. And if it's successful, other companies will take notice and follow suit because it gives them the one thing they've all desperately - and until now, in vain - sought over PC gamers: control. No mods they don't vet. No offline play. No opportunity for crackers to get at your game code. Total and utter control over how long people are able to play your game and, thanks to the previous, zero chance anyone will be able to figure out a way to let people keep playing after you've turned off the lights.

It's bad enough today with multiplayer games that get "switched off" when publishers want to shuffle you across to the newshiny version, the idea that could become the norm with single player titles as well is horrifying. "Oh, want to replay that game you used to love? Well, that's no longer available in our Standard Package, but if you're willing to fork over an extra 5 quid a month for our Retro Premium package we'll allow you to play a barebones version without modding or DLC!" *shudder*

My suspicion is that this service will ultimately go nowhere.

The biggest impediment to PC gaming is hardware cost, but that's already gotten around by just owning a console. Consoles can be expensive too, but compared to a monthly fee? The console pays for itself after a year or two.

Really the only thing compelling cost wise is if Stadia functions literally like Netflix, with a one time subscription to play any game on offer... And I don't see that happening. The publishers will snub their noses at that entire concept. I don't see Google paying any hefty fees to offer new release titles. Maybe older games, but not new ones. Not in this model.

I'm not sure why they'd go this route. The much more intuitive model is "Steam but with cloud based hardware so you can play your games anywhere at anytime (that has a good enough internet connection)." The subscription part of this is the stumbling block, but maybe it won't be.

I just don't see much of a market for this (at least not one big enough to ever make it through the growing pains of establishing the business). It's a narrow band of people who want to play games on their computer but don't want to buy a gaming PC and won't just buy a console for ease of use.

Like every game system ever, it will depend almost entirely on the availability and quality of exclusive titles.

Lord of Hats - I can see a market for it; its the same market that goes for game rentals and the like. There's a lot of casual gamers who game quite a lot but don't stick at games long term. They play them for a week or two and that's it they move on.

A rental service for games that doesn't come with the same upfront cost of a game; has no "download wait" and which might even offer dynamic and updating content is ideal for that drop in and out market segment.


Of course the questionable issue is that they'd need a fast net connection to run the service, at which point even big 25GB or greater games are only a modest barrier to them in download time.

 LunarSol wrote:
Like every game system ever, it will depend almost entirely on the availability and quality of exclusive titles.

I think that's entirely debatable.

Especially for this, where the main selling point is probably cheapness and ease of use, no one is looking for "that one game I can only play on Stadia."

And frankly the gaming market should have already learned that exclusive titles are mostly just a bonus from the console wars. Dreamcast had amazing games that could only be played on Dreamcast, except no one wanted to buy a Dreamcast. Sure Halo CE arguably made the XBox work as a product, but Microsoft was the first company to realize there's no profit in game systems themselves. All the money is in licensing to third parties, at which point all you really need is to sell consoles so people want to license the development kit from you.

Stadia will live or die by exactly what kind of deal Google manages to work out with game makers. A $15 a month fee to play any game straight up? That would probably be windfall if the service survives the growing pains. I don't see that happening though. If people have to buy their titles the entire concept is dead in the water. Nevermind that gaming is following the same trend as TV and movies, with producers of content increasingly hogging their material into their personal fiefdoms and refusing to share. Then what will Stadia have? Stadia Originals? I don't think Google is producing this thing to have to foot the bill for making original content, not when their closest guide post has spent most of the last few years struggling to keep their finances in order.

I really don't see them not charging for games. That all in one subscription price is fine for older titles that have already made 90% of their sales ala the xbox game pass model but I can't see an upside for 3rd party developers and publishers to adopt that with new games. I think there will be a general monthly charge for the service similar to how Xbox and Playstation have their fee for multiplayer (I think Nintendo charges now for online multiplayer too but I can't be sure) but obviously in Stadia's case it'll be for basic access and not just multiplayer. Then you'll have to buy the individual games (or more accurately the license for access to the game since you won't own anything). I'm ok with that as long as the input lag doesn't suck and the service is actually good since I don't have to shell out for any hardware.

 Overread wrote:
Lord of Hats - I can see a market for it; its the same market that goes for game rentals and the like. There's a lot of casual gamers who game quite a lot but don't stick at games long term. They play them for a week or two and that's it they move on.

A rental service for games that doesn't come with the same upfront cost of a game; has no "download wait" and which might even offer dynamic and updating content is ideal for that drop in and out market segment.

Except Gamefly attempted this and failed miserably, because there was no market for it. I'm not sure how Stadia intends to succeed where the general concept in it's most basic form already went nowhere.

Of course the questionable issue is that they'd need a fast net connection to run the service

That's part of the issue to me about "where's the market."

Who has enough money to have a good internet and not afford a console or PC? Hell someone who foots the bill for really good internet probably does it because they play a lot of games and stream a lot of TV, the opposite of a casual user. I'm not saying that there's noone who would want this service. I'm saying I don't see there being enough people who simultaneously want it, can afford it while not affording other options, and has internet speeds to use it once they have it.

This whole thing might just end up as another one of Google's pie in the sky dreams that starts then just fades into obscurity because there was never any profit to be made.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 warboss wrote:
I really don't see them not charging for games. That all in one subscription price is fine for older titles that have already made 90% of their sales ala the xbox game pass model but I can't see an upside for 3rd party developers and publishers to adopt that with new games. I think there will be a general monthly charge for the service similar to how Xbox and Playstation have their fee for multiplayer (I think Nintendo charges now for online multiplayer too but I can't be sure) but obviously in Stadia's case it'll be for basic access and not just multiplayer. Then you'll have to buy the individual games (or more accurately the license for access to the game since you won't own anything). I'm ok with that as long as the input lag doesn't suck and the service is actually good since I don't have to shell out for any hardware.

See to me, there's a much more sensible model here and I don't know why no one is going after it. Just rent hardware. Dozens of companies already do it. People rent servers to host websites and services all the time. Just make that a direct service to users and provide the infrastructure to facilitate streaming the hardware's output to a user. There's still the internet speed issue, but it's a much simpler and more straightforward model than building "Netflix for games." The reason no ones done it is because there's no market for it. Repackaging the idea into a service doesn't imo change that.

And if they can't get new titles, then they're even worse off. No one is going to pay regular fees to play a game from 5 years ago whose 4th sequel hits shelves next week.

 LordofHats wrote:
See to me, there's a much more sensible model here and I don't know why no one is going after it. Just rent hardware. Dozens of companies already do it. People rent servers to host websites and services all the time. Just make that a direct service to users and provide the infrastructure to facilitate streaming the hardware's output to a user. There's still the internet speed issue, but it's a much simpler and more straightforward model than building "Netflix for games." The reason no ones done it is because there's no market for it. Repackaging the idea into a service doesn't imo change that.

Just an FYI, Microsoft did attempt that last year (rent to own if you agree to buy our services for X years similar to cell phone contracts) and it didn't exactly set the market on fire.

https://stevivor.com/news/xbox-all-access-lets-you-rent-to-own-in-the-usa/

Companies in the US like Rent-A-Center have long offered something similar although I've never stepped into their stores so can't comment on the price. People have done it but it's just not popular. Digital services are however so I don't think they're equivalent in the space of gaming at least. YMMV. I'd never consider console renting personally (I'd rather just buy it and if I can't afford it at the moment just pay it on my credit card and own it immediately) but I would consider Stadia if it doesn't end up sucking.

Pre-E3 presentation... Watching now...






No point in writing more as it's all here and more including a list of games
https://Stadia.com/faq

All I can say is - thank jeebus for that. If they had actually used all their clout and cash to run a "Netflix for games" subscription service, rather than this "cloud PC and you get some freebies" thing, this would have taken off like a rocket and it would have been pretty much the end of the traditional ownership model for games.

As it is - Google Plus'd in less than five years IMO.

Yeah, it's not a slam dunk for me either although I might try it on a f2p title of they get one I like in the future. I'm planning on buying a pc/Xbox controller soon regardless so it would be zero extra cost for me as I don't own any 4k screens that would require the subscription. All in all, my enthusiasm has actually waned slightly with the presentation as I'm not really interested in any of those games myself.

I'm just very skeptical that cloud gaming services like this will ever be able to produce a latency that allows players in all parts of the world to be able to play twitch-style games.

They claim in this video that the latency is quicker than the perception from the human eyes to the human brain, but people that have gotten hands-on with this system have said it absolutely is perceptible.

So I think a system like this could be good for single-player experiences, especially turn-based RPGs and such. But I'll have to see it myself for things like FPS before I'd even consider getting involved.

I mean, I'd LOVE to play Destiny on this, but I really have doubts it will be any good with any perceivable latency.

For me the big issue is that if I want to play a singleplayer game part of the attraction is that I don't have to worry about my internet connection.

I don't want to have to get sudden lag because whilst my connection is good enough, someone else in the house is now watching something on Amazon Prime and another is streaming games etc.... I don't want my game to die because I've not got the internet for a few months; or because I've moved to a region where the internet is slower than ideal (lots and lots of places, esp any where there isn't the middle of very developed urban areas) .


It's a neat idea, but I hope it always remains optional for singleplayer games. Heck for me I never buy any singleplayer game that requires online-all-the-time DRM. As a big Diablo 2 fan its painful that I can't play D3 on the PC but (yes I know its sort of multiplayer all the time but it works for single) I try to stand firm by my convictions (or at least until such time as Bliz discounts it to below a few £s)


Of course all this is academic for me, my net isn't good enough to run Stadia in the first place. So its currently not an issue for me to even consider it. An interesting game idea, but one I hope that remains optional. A game isn't like a movie or TV show; yo ucan't just leave it buffering and come back later or like a game where you can log-in-download and then take it home to activate it on your home account (ergo taking advantage of a friends better internet connection) etc...

So.. this is out now. Did anyone actually get it? I was initially excited about it but my enthusiasm has been progressively extinguished as the months went by and it seems like the rollout is a bit of a clusterfeth from the reviews.

I was interested, but I've seen a few YT videos about how it basically doesn't work at all right now and is probably the worst console launch ever. I'll wait 6 months and see how it is after a while

I think this is likely the future of gaming, but from what I have seen so far, the future isn't here yet.

Shadow tried already and couldn't make it work.
If French people cannot make it, noone can!
https://shadow.tech/



(b8!)

If you thought Fallout 76 was a disaster grab the popcorn because Google is about to make history.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
If you thought Fallout 76 was a disaster grab the popcorn because Google is about to make history.

Aye but one difference is that the games on Stadia can be regularly bought outside of it. It's purely a delivery service and Google has at least not been aggressive with it like Epic has been with their store an approach to entering the game market.
Fallout however is a self contained game and you can't get the "none bedethsa broken" version of it.

So Stadia might have an even worse result, but on the flipside its an optional niche service for a product that is already sold through other formats.

Besides so many technological issues that Stadia is encountering during its launch (latency, having to buy games specifically for Stadia on top of paying for their service, etc), services like these still keep ignoring the fact that US telecoms and ISPs seem to be moving towards data caps and other methods of monetizing heavy data usage, which is essentially the antithesis of what these streaming services will require.

Until the corporations stop seeing high data usage as piggy bank (or government regulation eventually steps in), I don't see how this will ever really work. You essentially have to be on an unlimited data plan as well as having pretty damn good, reliable internet speeds to have any chance of playing any kind of action game.

And of course the real killer application for this kind of service would be getting to play games when you're traveling and staying in a hotel, your parents/friend's house. But of course internet in US hotels is typically abhorrent, and if you're at your parents/friends place, then you have to worry about the massive data usage and if they have any kind of data cap issues.

So in short, no matter how they're able to tune their service to iron out the technological hiccups they're having now, the service is still going to be doomed in the US until the ISPs change their goals of milking high data usage users of all their $$$.

I'm confused. I've never encounter data usage caps or high data use charges anywhere in the US, and that's from living in multiple states with different service providers. Not for internet anyway. Phones, yes, but not internet.

Latency and kind of crap connections, on the other hand...

Voss wrote:
I'm confused. I've never encounter data usage caps or high data use charges anywhere in the US, and that's from living in multiple states with different service providers. Not for internet anyway. Phones, yes, but not internet.

Latency and kind of crap connections, on the other hand...

Most people who don't have their heads up their *explitives* expect that ISP providers will start pushing toward data cap models for internet usage in coming years. They're just waiting to see how certain political winds blow before they go in on it. I actually hadn't considered this at all until Yakface pointed it out, but I'd suggest an alternate possibility where technology like Stadia ends up pushing against such business models. Nothing sparks fierce reactions like mild inconvenience in our day to day entertainment, which disgusts me but I'll take what I can get.

Voss wrote:
I'm confused. I've never encounter data usage caps or high data use charges anywhere in the US, and that's from living in multiple states with different service providers. Not for internet anyway. Phones, yes, but not internet.

Latency and kind of crap connections, on the other hand...

Big companies like Time Warner (now apparently called Spectrum after merging with Charter) and AT&T for sure had or possibly even still have data caps of 150 or 250 gb on their home internet. If you reach them, you're charged more. It's unlikely to reach those numbers unless you're streaming lots of 4k content like stadia or UltraHD movies. A simple web search that I just did brought up an article and comcast's own page stating they raised their cap from 300 gb to 1 Tb in 2016.

I'm not going to fact check every entry on this page but you can if you like. Data caps are a thing and you probably did have one (whether you knew or crossed it or not) if you've had multiple providers across the US.

https://www.highspeedinternet.com/resources/which-internet-service-providers-have-data-caps

 LordofHats wrote:

Voss wrote:
I'm confused. I've never encounter data usage caps or high data use charges anywhere in the US, and that's from living in multiple states with different service providers. Not for internet anyway. Phones, yes, but not internet.

Latency and kind of crap connections, on the other hand...

Most people who don't have their heads up their *explitives* expect that ISP providers will start pushing toward data cap models for internet usage in coming years. They're just waiting to see how certain political winds blow before they go in on it. I actually hadn't considered this at all until Yakface pointed it out

Coming in the future, yeah, that was part of the package when the idiots crushed the net neutrality rules, but he was talking about them as if they were already common place.

They are in some places. I've only lived in one area that had data caps (as far as I know).