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Raide

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
16,596
Again with this perception of Google. Where does this come from? Google is not Apple, which likes to close things up in favor of a guided experience. If you look at their line of products, many are highly configurable/customizable on several different levels. Curious how you arrive at this perspective.
Could people alter the graphical settings during the beta test? Did we have anyone changing settings on the show floor? It's not like they are PC version Right?
 

Serious Sam

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,354
This is probably one of those threads where we look back in a few years at the edgey replies such as; "digital only? Pass." and laugh.
What? All the games that I bought for the last 10 years or so have been digital. I have never had a disc inserted into my PS4 and Xbox One. But what does this have to do with game streaming though?
 

Raide

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
16,596
So because they didn't show any of that in the beta or demo, your conclusion is that in general Google don't want that kind of stuff.

Well, it's a streaming service, how much control do you thing they will give clients? If they don't show it off, presume Google won't give you options since they are pushing this a a console rival, not a PC.
 

No Idea

Member
Mar 18, 2019
335
I doubt there will even be a performance v graphics selection. I'm 100% expecting every game to run on the Stadia instance at 4K60* and then you just choose your resolution like you do on YouTube nowadays or leave it on "Auto".

*And if a game can't hit 4K60 on a single instance it will use a second instance.
Doubt it. Streaming isn't for PC side tinkering.
Probably not. Tinkering means changing things, which Google don't want.

PC it is then. Though I find that strange they wouldn't allow it. I understand having Stadia closed to protect against cheating/hacking, but something like adjusting FoV, graphics settings, shadow quality, etc., is only there to let us customize games to our preferences.
 

Deleted member 38397

User requested account closure
Banned
Jan 15, 2018
838
PC it is then. Though I find that strange they wouldn't allow it. I understand having Stadia closed to protect against cheating/hacking, but something like adjusting FoV, graphics settings, shadow quality, etc., is only there to let us customize games to our preferences.

It's because the platform is a fixed spec and games will be tailored towards that exact configuration. PC games only have settings because of the huge range of GPUs out there. FOV is something desirable but certainly not things l8ke shadow quality, SSAO, texture quality, etc.
 

Raide

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
16,596
PC it is then. Though I find that strange they wouldn't allow it. I understand having Stadia closed to protect against cheating/hacking, but something like adjusting FoV, graphics settings, shadow quality, etc., is only there to let us customize games to our preferences.
It seems like Google is taking up their all singing and dancing spec for the Stadia, so it would seem there is no reason to change settings if they can push the 4k60 all the time.
 

Nintendo

Prophet of Regret
Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,383
The question is if publishers will be willing to pay for the use of more than one Stadia instance or what they're called. Considering how few are willing to pay for larger cards on Switch, I'm not holding my breath.

Because publishers would love it if they could make people buy games digitally. No reason for them to invest in physical media. Stadia is all digital, it would be worth it.
 

Unknownlight

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 2, 2017
10,572
Because aside from the fact I knew the public would love a hybrid console I also knew that the industry was growing at a pace to where you could have all three major console makers selling 50+ Million units each when that was not possible 10 years ago.

What? 10 years ago we had five different consoles (Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, Nintendo DS, PSP) all sell 80+ million units. The console market has shrunken dramatically since then.
 

riotous

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,341
Seattle
What? 10 years ago we had five different consoles (Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, Nintendo DS, PSP) all sell 80+ million units. The console market has shrunken dramatically since then.

As of March 2009, I don't think either the PS3 or 360 had even broken 30 million sales.

edit: edited to 30 million, I think that's accurate, PS3 was more like 23 million at that point but MS broke 30 in May of 2009 so was getting close
 

Unknownlight

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 2, 2017
10,572
As of March 2009, I don't think either the PS3 or 360 had even broken 30 million sales.

edit: edited to 30 million, I think that's accurate

That's fair, I was conflating "10 years" with "the previous generation".

Considering the successors to the PS4 and XB1 will be arriving soon, I don't think my general point is inaccurate. The Xbox One isn't going to double its lifetime sales in the next year, and pure-portable consoles are extinct.
 

riotous

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,341
Seattle
That's fair, I was conflating "10 years" with "the previous generation".

Considering the successors to the PS4 and XB1 will be arriving soon, I don't think my general point is inaccurate. The Xbox One isn't going to double its lifetime sales in the next year, and pure-portable consoles are extinct.

Yeah hardware sales have defnitely shrunk; but interestingly enough both are doing better financially lol
 

EricTheCleric

Member
Oct 27, 2017
185
Sweden
This announcement has made me put my plans on getting a new gaming computer on hold. IF I can play new AAA games and resource hungry strategy games on my old computers via Stadia I see no reason to get a new computer or upgrade my current one since it manages just fine as a regular computer.

And if the above becomes true then Stadia will become a much much bigger threat to Steam than Epic ever can be.
 

Thatguy

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
6,207
Seattle WA
This announcement has made me put my plans on getting a new gaming computer on hold. IF I can play new AAA games and resource hungry strategy games on my old computers via Stadia I see no reason to get a new computer or upgrade my current one since it manages just fine as a regular computer.

And if the above becomes true then Stadia will become a much much bigger threat to Steam than Epic ever can be.
I kinda feel like Stadia is a threat to everyone except Nintendo. Nintendo 1st party is just so unique. But for core gamers who really want fidelity especially on a box thats always connected to a hot internet connection, Stadia is just so good, at least the promises made.

Early indicators are that latency is on par with consoles. But for VR, that might not be good enough. PC/console box makers might have to go all in on VR to combat Stadia.
 

cnorwood

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
3,345
I think we are close that point anyhow. Microsoft is about to launch a digital only console and the reactions to it are nowhere to the level of the XBone reveal with its always online. World already moved a lot in the last years.

So people who complain about digital only are already like dinosaurs.
I don't get these comparisons to the always online Xbone reveal. Do people not realize that there is a huge difference between your physical/local hardware requiring always online and something from the consumers point of view only existing on the internet requiring always online?
 

shark97

Banned
Nov 7, 2017
5,327
I don't get these comparisons to the always online Xbone reveal. Do people not realize that there is a huge difference between your physical/local hardware requiring always online and something from the consumers point of view only existing on the internet requiring always online?


Basically The only game I play the last 5 years, Destiny, already requires always online and I dont care.

In fact if it didn't it couldn't be as fun.
 

Traxus

Spirit Tamer
Member
Jan 2, 2018
5,197
Being able to play any game instantly in high quality from any internet-capable interface sounds pretty revolutionary if widely adopted.

Aside from that, I'm hyped to see what kinds of unique new games come out of this setup. Like, with no client hardware restraints could we potentially see online game environments on a scale never imagined before?
 
Feb 10, 2018
17,534
Being able to play any game instantly in high quality from any internet-capable interface sounds pretty revolutionary if widely adopted.

Aside from that, I'm hyped to see what kinds of unique new games come out of this setup. Like, with no client hardware restraints could we potentially see online game environments on a scale never imagined before?

I wonder when we will see exclusive games for it.
It would be cool seeing a game made using 2 gpus.
 

Bojanglez

Member
Oct 27, 2017
375

Unknownlight

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 2, 2017
10,572
"How id Software went from skeptical to excited about Google Stadia streaming"

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019...-to-overcome-ids-stadia-streaming-skepticism/

Crazy article.

More recently, Land said Google came to the id offices to set up a "Pepsi Challenge"-style blind test between Stadia and local hardware "to keep themselves honest and really drill down on eliminating perceivable differences in the play experience. They also wanted to demonstrate that Stadia could be superior to a local experience in certain eyes."

In that blind test, you could "hardly tell what was local and what was remote," according to Land. The results were strong enough to get non-gamers in the company excited, he added, and convincing enough to get Google's executives to greenlight the whole project for production, leading to this week's announcement.
 

Geens

Member
Mar 14, 2018
106
I wonder if Stadia could potentially get rid of loading altogether.

Even for games that I already have on my Playstation's hard drive, the games take a minute or two to load from the launcher to the title screen and then more time to load into a the part that you actually play. In the Stadia demo they said that you could be ready to play in as little as 4 seconds, so I'm imagining that they already have ready-to-play instances of the game already pre-loaded that you can just jump into.

If that's the case, then the organization of a Stadia game could potentially be that there are ready-to-go instances of each mission or world or whatever, and you just jump between them with your save data as necessary. No more waiting for loading at all! I would like to see that.
 

JackLinks

Banned
Mar 21, 2019
353
"Gamers" told us that vita would outsell 3ds and psp would outsell ds. They told us vr would be a home run. They told us wii and kinect were insane ideas that would fail to gain traction.

Streaming is the future, whether people want to admit it or not. The question is whether Microsoft or Google will resonate with the public more
 

Toni

Banned
Nov 13, 2017
1,983
Orlando, Florida
This announcement has made me put my plans on getting a new gaming computer on hold. IF I can play new AAA games and resource hungry strategy games on my old computers via Stadia I see no reason to get a new computer or upgrade my current one since it manages just fine as a regular computer.

And if the above becomes true then Stadia will become a much much bigger threat to Steam than Epic ever can be.

Steam is the number one PC Store in the world. And Valve has been looking into Streaming tech as well.

Playstation Store is the biggest console store in the world and already is the market leader in Game Streaming.

Google owns the biggest Mobile store in the world (Play Store). Set to release Stadia in the Fall.

In the future, if either Sony or Valve feels like Stadia is amassing staying presence and growing substantially in the minds of many...both can easily prevent or reduce that by ramping up their own existing Streaming solutions or composing one and introduce it to their gigantic respective userbases and literally watch it get consumed by the numbers and catch up to Stadia. At least, in Valve's case, this could happen if Valve feels like they are losing mindshare of the high-end distribution to Google Stadia.

And Stadia is already at a grand disadvantage with PS Now not only having vast chunk of the Streaming market, but by also having a vast library of video game content. To add to that, the service itself is very profitable. Showing signs of staying power and growing thanks to it being attached to the Playstation brand and being the first Streaming service out.

People underestimate the impact of game libraries.

Both Sony and Valve have multi-millions of users locked up to their ecosystem majorly because of their video game libraries.

I doubt Google Stadia is going to have the dominance or power to sway people to their platform's ecosystem if they don't have the competitive software content, be it exclusive or multiplatform, to have Stadia stand out compared to its competition.
 
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Thatguy

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
6,207
Seattle WA
"Gamers" told us that vita would outsell 3ds and psp would outsell ds. They told us vr would be a home run. They told us wii and kinect were insane ideas that would fail to gain traction.

Streaming is the future, whether people want to admit it or not. The question is whether Microsoft or Google will resonate with the public more
Games library will be important. I'm also really curious if Microsoft or Sony will allow their cloud offering to out-perform their console. So far, they haven't. Because Google has already stated 8K 120 FPS (though not at launch) and CPU/GPU stacking and huge online multiplayer counts. Next gen consoles won't keep up with that. So they have to choose to either make the console only crowd feel like second class citizens by streaming superior experiences, or watch Google tout the most premium experience. I think they need to go all in on premium cloud only games or they're going to be left in the dust by Google.
 

Windu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,630
I wonder if Stadia could potentially get rid of loading altogether.

Even for games that I already have on my Playstation's hard drive, the games take a minute or two to load from the launcher to the title screen and then more time to load into a the part that you actually play. In the Stadia demo they said that you could be ready to play in as little as 4 seconds, so I'm imagining that they already have ready-to-play instances of the game already pre-loaded that you can just jump into.

If that's the case, then the organization of a Stadia game could potentially be that there are ready-to-go instances of each mission or world or whatever, and you just jump between them with your save data as necessary. No more waiting for loading at all! I would like to see that.
it sounds like their hardware has pretty beefy storage solutions so loading should be kept to a minimum from just a hardware perspective. with separate instances yeah I could see further reductions. but having multiple instances like that for one user doesn't seem economically feasible yet. It definitely seems doable to have games up and running already and you just log in, so loading on game boot will probably be hidden from the user.
 

cnorwood

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
3,345
"Gamers" told us that vita would outsell 3ds and psp would outsell ds. They told us vr would be a home run. They told us wii and kinect were insane ideas that would fail to gain traction.

Streaming is the future, whether people want to admit it or not. The question is whether Microsoft or Google will resonate with the public more
Lol gamers hate VR and have been sceptical outside of enthusiasts like myself. Where have you been?
 

TheUnseenTheUnheard

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
May 25, 2018
9,647
"Gamers" told us that vita would outsell 3ds and psp would outsell ds. They told us vr would be a home run. They told us wii and kinect were insane ideas that would fail to gain traction.

Streaming is the future, whether people want to admit it or not. The question is whether Microsoft or Google will resonate with the public more
No one told you vr would be a honerun. No one who knew anything about VR would say that.

Discredited.
 

JackLinks

Banned
Mar 21, 2019
353
I doubt stadia will have much exclusive content or the ability to purchase games. That will be microsoft's forte

What i do expect is that stadia will be cheaper and more ubiquitous. Playable on chromecast and weaker laptops
 

score01

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,701
I don't get these comparisons to the always online Xbone reveal. Do people not realize that there is a huge difference between your physical/local hardware requiring always online and something from the consumers point of view only existing on the internet requiring always online?

Not only that, but a digital only console is a choice. There is still an option for a console with a physical drive, with games you can buy and sell/trade. I don't think anyone was ever against a choice of digital but being forced to go digital. I'm pretty sure their next gen machines will also have physical drives.
 

Sidewinder

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,191
I think we are close that point anyhow. Microsoft is about to launch a digital only console and the reactions to it are nowhere to the level of the XBone reveal with its always online. World already moved a lot in the last years.

So people who complain about digital only are already like dinosaurs.

I won't argue that streaming/digital will be the norm in the future for the gen after next, but you can't compare a digital only Xbox One S at the tail end of a gen with still plenty of Xboxes with a drive sitting in shops, with a launch console that by definition would've set the standard going forward.

If nextgen Xboxes all launch without a drive, which looks like it won't happen, then we could compare both situations.

I'm a dinosaur by choice and because my internet sucks and I intend to stay like that as long as possible.
 

MrKlaw

Member
Oct 25, 2017
33,061
I doubt stadia will have much exclusive content or the ability to purchase games. That will be microsoft's forte

What i do expect is that stadia will be cheaper and more ubiquitous. Playable on chromecast and weaker laptops

Apart from chrome cast, this should be something MS/Sony/valve can do too

This feels like a race from different start points. Google have a likely advantage in infrastructure but are starting almost from scratch with publishing (although ports don't look too complicated); ms and valve have access to games already but need to build out the infrastructure. And Sony has arguably already started in the race but may need to update some stuff if they're running a little slower than the others

A lot of what google showed - state share, instant access from links - can be done by any one of those. It's only the youtube part that they control. And twitch is still out there potentially ready to do the same kind of thing with a partner.
 

KingSnake

Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,001
I won't argue that streaming/digital will be the norm in the future for the gen after next, but you can't compare a digital only Xbox One S at the tail end of a gen with still plenty of Xboxes with a drive sitting in shops, with a launch console that by definition would've set the standard going forward.

If nextgen Xboxes all launch without a drive, which looks like it won't happen, then we could compare both situations.

I'm a dinosaur by choice and because my internet sucks and I intend to stay like that as long as possible.

Which is fine, the game streaming won't replace the consoles, at least not on short term.
 

JackLinks

Banned
Mar 21, 2019
353
Apart from chrome cast, this should be something MS/Sony/valve can do too

This feels like a race from different start points. Google have a likely advantage in infrastructure but are starting almost from scratch with publishing (although ports don't look too complicated); ms and valve have access to games already but need to build out the infrastructure. And Sony has arguably already started in the race but may need to update some stuff if they're running a little slower than the others

A lot of what google showed - state share, instant access from links - can be done by any one of those. It's only the youtube part that they control. And twitch is still out there potentially ready to do the same kind of thing with a partner.

I don't expect sony or valve to even be part of the conversation

I think google will be first to market, ubiquitous and to leverage youtube/chrome while having the best graphical fidelity

Microsoft will be hampered by the power of their next console. However, they will have a back-catalogue of content, a presence on the switch, excellent online service and the ability to own your games.

They are the ones to watch in my opinion.
 

MrKlaw

Member
Oct 25, 2017
33,061
Valve I agree with you

Sony are already *in* the conversation for several years now

MS definitely agree about power - especially if their first streaming is supposed to be based on XB1S server blades. I wonder if MS will adjust that plan now? But they could hit the market by the end of the year by using existing hardware
 

gofreak

Member
Oct 26, 2017
7,736
Games library will be important. I'm also really curious if Microsoft or Sony will allow their cloud offering to out-perform their console. So far, they haven't. Because Google has already stated 8K 120 FPS (though not at launch) and CPU/GPU stacking and huge online multiplayer counts. Next gen consoles won't keep up with that. So they have to choose to either make the console only crowd feel like second class citizens by streaming superior experiences, or watch Google tout the most premium experience. I think they need to go all in on premium cloud only games or they're going to be left in the dust by Google.

I think you might be years into the next cycle before it becomes economical to either refresh the instance hardware, or to dedicate more than one instance to one user. In the case of 'stacking' instances for each user, it might never be feasible if the service is actually popular. 2 or 3 years into the next gen we'll probably have a refresh of console hardware too.

One thing that can be interesting in the shorter term is linking single per-user instances with bigger bandwidth, for multiplayer experiences that would be more difficult to do across local connections. So that potential is there, but I'm skeptical about per-user stacking any time soon.

I also wonder quite a bit about the feasibility of 4K/30 or 4K/60 streaming at console-platform scale - let alone 8K/120. If high res streaming ends up becoming popular, with millions of concurrent users, the backend bandwidth will have to grow enormously if we're to avoid serious throttling of res/framerate to accommodate the numbers of users. Google is very careful to say 'up to' x resolution at y fps. But quietly mentioned in interviews is that it can scale down to 720/30. At busy times this might happen to you, regardless of how good your local connection is. There's only so much bandwidth at the exchanges - maybe I'm wrong on that, if I am I'd welcome correction. But we might be well out of the next gen of consoles by the time it's feasible to offer that quality of service to millions of concurrent users.
 
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Deleted member 426

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,273
I don't expect sony or valve to even be part of the conversation

I think google will be first to market, ubiquitous and to leverage youtube/chrome while having the best graphical fidelity

Microsoft will be hampered by the power of their next console. However, they will have a back-catalogue of content, a presence on the switch, excellent online service and the ability to own your games.

They are the ones to watch in my opinion.
Isn't the next XBox rumoured to be more powerful than the stats Google provided? That's my main concern with stadia, it'll be Uber for a year and then PS5 and Nextbox will come in and one up everything. And then games targeting 30FPS on those platforms aren't suddenly going to be 4k60FPs if google's server hardware is weaker.
 

Alucardx23

Member
Nov 8, 2017
4,713
Isn't the next XBox rumoured to be more powerful than the stats Google provided? That's my main concern with stadia, it'll be Uber for a year and then PS5 and Nextbox will come in and one up everything. And then games targeting 30FPS on those platforms aren't suddenly going to be 4k60FPs if google's server hardware is weaker.

Google could just upgrade the servers. Also remember the part we're Google said developers could use multiple CPUs/GPUs for more processing power.
 
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Deleted member 426

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,273
Google could just upgrade the servers. Also remember the part we're Google said developers could use multiple CPUs for more processing power.
This is true, but also the cost associated with upgrading servers, and even having to have potentially multiple servers per consumer will be massive. So I expect those claims to similar to MS' early cloud claims. Possible but unlikely in practice to make a huge difference.
 

Ox Code

Member
Jul 21, 2018
376
This is true, but also the cost associated with upgrading servers, and even having to have potentially multiple servers per consumer will be massive. So I expect those claims to similar to MS' early cloud claims. Possible but unlikely in practice to make a huge difference.

While the cost is certainly high, I would think that shipping and installing new CPUs/GPUs to their data centers is almost certainly less expensive than shipping new consoles to tens of millions of physical locations. I'm leaning towards the assumption that A server-side model ensures Google can do an upgrade much faster than a new console could.
 

Alucardx23

Member
Nov 8, 2017
4,713
This is true, but also the cost associated with upgrading servers, and even having to have potentially multiple servers per consumer will be massive. So I expect those claims to similar to MS' early cloud claims. Possible but unlikely in practice to make a huge difference.

We don't know how flexible will the multiple CPU/GPU configurations will be for developers. For all we know, developers will have more access to performance than the PS5/Xbox Two can provide. A cool part about servers is that all of the configurations are virtualized, so if someone is only paying an indie game you can allocate a lot less power to that, compared to someone that is playing the latest AAA high budget/graphics game. So it it's not necessarily to upgrade the complete server 1 to 1 for every customer.
 

Deleted member 426

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,273
While the cost is certainly high, I would think that shipping and installing new CPUs/GPUs to their data centers is almost certainly less expensive than shipping new consoles to tens of millions of physical locations. I'm leaning towards the assumption that A server-side model ensures Google can do an upgrade much faster than a new console could.
Yep absolutely and I see that as an advantage. I was talking about what happens if the next PS and Xbox are more powerful than Stadia (which looks to be the case). We're not going to see 4k60FPS on games that target 30FPS on other more powerful consoles, and Google won't upgrade their GPUs only a year or two after release.