Google Stadia

strumjoughlamps

Discuss 

Blaendulais

No thanks

FX_Munkee

At present it won't work in the US, only a fraction of the population have fast enough broadband.I suspect this maybe another "hangouts".

strumjoughlamps

FX_Munkee said:

At present it won't work in the US, only a fraction of the population have fast enough broadband.I suspect this maybe another "hangouts".

Yeah this is a problem I see, some are calling it Netflix for gamers but its far more complicated than that, lag issues my main concern, especially as they are quoting 60fps 4k with 120fps 8k in the future. 

It would be great if it works tho. 

RaymondLin

It’s the future, like streaming.

no more hardware upgrade.
no more console generations.
no more loss of game saves.
no more upgrade hardware in your pc or console.
no more unable to play old games.

however

companies will have you tied and pay forever, don’t subscribe, lose everything.
you no longer own anything, rent everything.
can’t lend or borrow games.
can’t sell your old games.
can’t play it everywhere.

i can see why they do it, it gives them a consistent source of income and there is no spike and dips in their profit and loss.  Shareholders like that.

however I like physical media but I can see the advantages of this, if it’s cheap enough like £10 a month, it’s the cost of 2 games A year  so that will pay for itself for most people.

vasselmeyer

I'm on the beta test for the Nvidia version. Using my Nvidia Shield TV, it works surprisingly well. Currently it only has  older AAA games on it, but they play perfectly with little lag and at full detail. Tomb Raider (the 2015 vession), Batman Arkham Asylum etc are great.

Google is clearly a different scale to a limited Nvidia trial and they'd need to throw way more datacentre cycles at it than Nvidia are currently using, but in principle, the model is technically possible. I can see many people who are not mad keen gamers, taking up the subscription  model. However, I can't see it replacing console gaming yet or high-end PC gaming, especially for multiplayer fps games  which rely on ms reaction times.

People, especially the younger generations who grew up with Netflix, iTunes, Spotify etc are programmed to accept everything as a service. I think it could be a success, but then Google have a well-known habit of killing stuff off before it ever reaches maturity. It's more likely we'll see similar services from Microsoft or Sony using an Android phone as a screen into games.

FX_Munkee

Other people have tried and failed, remember OnLive? I don't see the might of Google changing the eventual outcome.

stickyfiddle

It'll be shit. It will also become normal, but not for another 15 years. 

FWIW here in the UAE I have supposed 50Mbps internet but I never get a ping below 100 so almost anything online is pointless

strumjoughlamps

My mate has an Utomik subscription and says it works very well so I think it can be achieved. 

FX_Munkee

Sony already do it for PS3 games, have done for a while. Nobody seems to know about it, which seems quite telling to me.

https://www.playstation.com/en-ca/explore/playstationnow/

strumjoughlamps

FX_Munkee said:

Sony already do it for PS3 games, have done for a while. Nobody seems to know about it, which seems quite telling to me.

https://www.playstation.com/en-ca/explore/playstationnow/

Quite a selection of PS4 titles too, I got a year on a deal last year to use on PC, hardwired connection 214mb bband. It not a great experience I will not be renewing. 

ThePrettyDamned

stickyfiddle said:

It'll be shit. It will also become normal, but not for another 15 years. 

FWIW here in the UAE I have supposed 50Mbps internet but I never get a ping below 100 so almost anything online is pointless

This is it - I play call of duty on WiFi with reasonably fast broadband but with a ping that hovers around the high to very high mark. It just makes games... Inconsistent at best, and dreadful at worst. 

Looking forward to wiring it in .. 

MattW

FX_Munkee said:

Sony already do it for PS3 games, have done for a while. Nobody seems to know about it, which seems quite telling to me.

https://www.playstation.com/en-ca/explore/playstationnow/

Tried that when it first came out but the lag made it unplayable. Chalked it up to my poor net speeds at the time but a friend gave it a go more recently and despite a reasonably fast connection couldn’t get on with it either.

As Stadia is planned as a subscription service I’d be surprised if they aren’t offering a 30 day free trial at least when it launches so i’ll give it a go, not expecting much for it though.

RedRabbit

FX_Munkee said:

Sony already do it for PS3 games, have done for a while. Nobody seems to know about it, which seems quite telling to me.

https://www.playstation.com/en-ca/explore/playstationnow/

Tried it for a while late last year to go back and play Fallout 3.  My broadband connection is a reliable 40Mbps with a low ping - in theory more than good enough to get decent results.  Lag was very noticeable, stream quality dropped constantly and game play would occasionally just pause for a few seconds.  In the end I ditched it, bought the game for PC and use Steam Link to stream it to my front room.

If Google can make it work then I think it'll be great but my experience with Playstation Now makes me think we just don't have the infrastructure to support it yet.

digitalscream

ThePrettyDamned said:

stickyfiddle said:

It'll be shit. It will also become normal, but not for another 15 years. 

FWIW here in the UAE I have supposed 50Mbps internet but I never get a ping below 100 so almost anything online is pointless

This is it - I play call of duty on WiFi with reasonably fast broadband but with a ping that hovers around the high to very high mark. It just makes games... Inconsistent at best, and dreadful at worst. 

Looking forward to wiring it in .. 

The thing is, this'll be taking advantage of Google's local presence everywhere - they're making a lot of noise about how they've upgraded their edge network nodes specifically for this, so if you're using those...you should have much lower ping than just about everybody else. Even Amazon's latency with AWS is (anecdotally) higher than Google's.

TheMarlin

I have worked on building a games streaming platform, licensing all the content, and putting it all together. It can be very profitable.

Giants will be created, much as with Uber in the taxi industry, and AirB&B in the hotel industry. 

The games industry is very worried about this recent turn of events.  They’ve seen how the move to streaming has dramatically changed the music industry and impacted the revenue to creators.

I’ve believed for some time that that the move to streaming is inevitable. I believe that devices will get dumber in time, as all information will be cloud based. It makes more sense to create one game and stream versions of it that are receiving device compatible than to create many different specific versions for various devices.  I also believe that the next console ( PS5) etc will possibly be that last of traditional consoles as we know it, and games will become digital delivery only, which will have a dratic effect on retail. But it’s inevitable, nobody cares about digital only on mobile. 

Problems. 
All of these problems will be solved in time, but gameplay will not be transferable from system to system, so if you want to play online with mates, you’ll need to join the same system as your friends. 

Ping rates. Streaming adds about 7ms of ping (best case) to your existing ping rates.  If you have a good ping, then fine, but if not, games will play terribly. 

Solo racing games work well, but multiplayer games like Fifa are a nightmare, as it’s multiple  pings ontop of your ping. It’s almost unplayable, plus EA’s servers are crap!

Another issue is Virgin Media.  They’re historically a cable based service, so the way they package up data is different to the likes of BT. You need more packets from Virgin than you do from BT based services, so this adds more lag and ping. Virgin will need to do some serious tweaking to their service to get a service working well for their customers. 

Long term, the majority of people will play games like this, with only hardcore gamers using dedicated hardware. Much like serious hifi fans still like Vinyl and CD’s while the majority use Spotify and Apple Music etc.

It’s mass market, not niche market. 

Will be crap at first, but the big boys have the money to make this work. 

monquixote

Just bumping this as I got a free Stadia in the Google offer.

It works really well as a technology. I was playing Destiny 2 and it looks pretty close to what you would expect on a PS4 possibly a bit better even.

As it stands the selection of games available is pretty crap (and really expensive) so I think they need to do something about that if they want people to use it, but technically it's super impressive to be able to be able to play a AAA game on a Chromecast on my TV and then switch to my Chromebook and continue seamlessly.

strumjoughlamps

monquixote said:

Just bumping this as I got a free Stadia in the Google offer.

It works really well as a technology. I was playing Destiny 2 and it looks pretty close to what you would expect on a PS4 possibly a bit better even.

As it stands the selection of games available is pretty crap (and really expensive) so I think they need to do something about that if they want people to use it, but technically it's super impressive to be able to be able to play a AAA game on a Chromecast on my TV and then switch to my Chromebook and continue seamlessly.

Good bump, was gonna post this.

Got 5 coming (family account)

Axe_meister

It is a technology that needs to mature. I think it was released a little too early. You kind fix the speed of light to Latency will always be an issue so certain games will never work with streaming.
The infrastructure behind it at google is very impressive however.

RedRabbit

Got mine setup and running.

It seems to work reasonably well, certainly better than I expected.  Audio was a bit iffy at times and had the occasional stutter and one freeze on the video.  My broadband is being temperamental today so I'll reserve final judgment until that settles down.

Biggest issue is the games library.  There's nothing included with the subscription that I'm that keen to play and I don't want to pay full price for games when I'm paying for the subscription.  Think Google need to have a look at home Microsoft are doing the Xbox game pass.

vivalacoulter

I’ve just ordered one to play Red Dead Redemption 2. After seeing videos of it running on an iPad I’m hopeful.