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2019 will be the year that sees some of the biggest tech companies in the world diving into the cloud streaming business for games. Google announced its Stadia platform at the Game Developers Conference 2019 for a launch scheduled later this year, Microsoft confirmed plans to publicly test Project xCloud in the coming months and even Amazon is rumored to be readying its own cloud-based streaming service.
With competition often comes strife, and in an interview with the Telegraph (locked behind the publication's paywall), Microsoft's Chief Marketing Officer for Xbox Mike Nichols didn't pull any punches when he discussed the weaknesses of the upcoming cloud-based streaming platform.
While he admitted that Google has the infrastructure (7,500 edge node locations) to pull it off, Nichols pointed out that unlike Microsoft they don't have strong ties to game developers and publishers to deliver the content that fans expect.
[...]Microsoft CFO Mike Nichols also went on to reiterate that regardless of the availability Project xCloud, the 'local' experience users can get on an Xbox console or Windows PC will remain superior to the cloud in terms of quality.
Previously: Google and Microsoft Eyeing Streaming Game Services
Google Announces "Stadia" Streaming Game Service
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @08:51AM (5 children)
I'm skeptical Stadia will take off, for two reasons:
(1) For fast paced games, you can't get around physics. Latency to the nearest data center will always be a thing, no matter what. If you thought seeing another player character rubber-banding due to latency was bad, then oh boy.. Wait until not only that but also your every action and movement input takes some 50-100 milliseconds for the server to register and send a video frame with your character's response back to you. (This problem will be magnified for those living in rural areas, far from the cities and and large data centers, or those with crappy ISPs and bad network routes.) And that's not just the AAA shooters. Even opening a menu in a game will suffer that round-trip penalty, so any type of game is impacted. So for real gamers this will never work well. These people will not be the target audience.
(2) Some simple games are not hindered by latency. (e.g. the average mobile match-three game) But those games are already heavily optimized by the developers so that even a potato phone can run them well. So casual gamers are not the target audience either.
So who really is the target audience? Perhaps game developers are the target audience. Deploying a new binary to a server to change functionality is a lot easier than pushing an update to the app/play store and waiting for everyone to update, and you don't need to worry as much about compatibility with many devices.
(Score: 2) by J_Darnley on Saturday April 13 2019, @09:27AM (1 child)
People who hate their own property rights? Why do you think devs will be interested? Why does a dev care what version I am running? Oh you mean online games! Yeah, they'll want to force everyone to run the same version. I mean they have done away with standalone servers so they can control people inside and outside of the game.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 13 2019, @09:54AM
People these days don't care about "property rights". If they can get X dollars of enjoyment out of something, they will pay it. All the better if the experience can't be easily pirated.
Then you can factor in the advantages of streaming games: portability, no lengthy updating process, modest hardware requirements, etc. The main disadvantage will be shitty ISP service.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 13 2019, @08:22PM (1 child)
I stated this in the last discussion: the target is chromebooks. Most chromebook platforms are underpowered, especially when compared to gaming laptops. Plus, the killer app for a huge chunk of the population is whatever AAA game they want to play at the moment. If Stadia takes off and works "good enough" on most chromebooks, then Google's percentage of the laptop market could potentially increase by a huge margin. Plus, the money from the service itself could become self-reinforcing with enough market buy-in, thanks to the vertical integration.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday April 13 2019, @08:41PM
Chromebook performance could be trending up soon:
https://chromeunboxed.com/new-chromebook-zork-takes-amd-to/ [chromeunboxed.com]
The AMD 15 Watt chips should be cheaper than Intel versions, with halfway decent integrated graphics (and could become much better yet again on "7nm" or later nodes). I'm not too interested because I prefer fanless, which means <10 Watts.
But you are right. The majority of Chromebooks will continue to be lower-powered, yet supporting 802.11ac or better connectivity, suitable for being thin clients.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday April 13 2019, @09:21PM
I have seen a lot of people theorize about latency, ignoring the fact that people have already used the underlying technology, which was open for beta testing last year as Project Stream. People have already tried it. It works. Yes, there are limitations: professional competitive gaming is a no go. You need a decent Internet connection. But for most games and most players it doesn't matter.
One of the most popular games at the moment, Fortnite, can be played on a mobile device, which is objectively a horrible controller interface. Most people don't give a shit about a few dozen milliseconds of latency.
Some benchmarks showed that Stadia's latency is roughly equivalent to an Xbox with a TV screen (slower refresh/latency than a gaming monitor). Again, you're not winning any competitive tournaments on it, but for most games and players it's fine.
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