Google formally unveils the "Stadia" launching in 2019

[Ox Code]

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.

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Given server upgrades would be cheaper, and also Sony and Microsoft seem fine with upgrading their consoles every 3 years nowadays, I don't see why Google doing the same thing in 2 years isn't feasible.

Even if it isn't feasible, it's still a very short term problem.

 

[low-G]

I wonder what will be the first cloud game that gets downgraded to lower settings because they want to shift resources to a newer game.

 

[Soapbox Killer]

I wonder what will be the first cloud game that gets downgraded to lower settings because they want to shift resources to a newer game.

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Oh shit, i never thought about that.

 

[low-G]

Oh shit, i never thought about that.

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Probably would only be a thing if the downgraded game debuts with some unusual configuration, like dual GPU.

But they might also scale with load, regions, economics, tiers, etc.

 

[Fastidioso]

Let's say streaming 4K 60FPS HDR gameplay requires 30Mbit data stream (but is this even enough for no compromise 4K quality?). To play a 50 hour game would generate 527GB of traffic. Most ISPs will probably end unlimited data options or fees will increase significatly, because the way it works now the costs of "unlimited" data plants for heavy users is offloaded to users who also have "unlimited" data but aren't using it all that much.

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I have 30mb. 4k is out of the question with youtube except for short videos. Can't imagine with a full game.

 

[Deleted member 426]

Given server upgrades would be cheaper, and also Sony and Microsoft seem fine with upgrading their consoles every 3 years nowadays, I don't see why Google doing the same thing in 2 years isn't feasible.

Even if it isn't feasible, it's still a very short term problem.

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Yeah that's true, that makes me optimistic. Now I've just got to see the pricing!

 

[Evolution of Metal]

Given server upgrades would be cheaper, and also Sony and Microsoft seem fine with upgrading their consoles every 3 years nowadays, I don't see why Google doing the same thing in 2 years isn't feasible.

Even if it isn't feasible, it's still a very short term problem.

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When consoles are upgraded, the cost is transferred to the users.

Google cannot shift the server cost to the users, and launching with the power of 2x current consoles is not going to be enough when the new PS/Xbox are released. The 4k gaming, especially 4k/60FPS is a pipe dream.

One advantage Google has is that they probably need less than 30% of the devices for 100% of the audience because most people aren't going to play games 8+ hours a day.

 

[Calabi]

I think this might be a bit too early for the internet most of the USA is stuck with now. Maybe it's good to get the brand out there before 5G but I don't think this device will be able to realize it's potential until 5G is the standard.

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And 5G might not become the standard for a very long time if ever.

 

[AtomicShroom]

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?

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Technically, yeah. If a dev opts to make a Stadia-exclusive game, they will have so much less hassles to worry about concerning netcode. Games will no longer have to worry about optimizing for low-bandwidth connections since all the info will reside on the Stadia side and is transferred at lightning speed. It will allow games to fully realize the kind of original vision that MS had with stuff like Crackdown 3's destructible buildings.

 

[Alucardx23]

Technically, yeah. If a dev opts to make a Stadia-exclusive game, they will have so much less hassles to worry about concerning netcode. Games will no longer have to worry about optimizing for low-bandwidth connections since all the info will reside on the Stadia side and is transferred at lightning speed. It will allow games to fully realize the kind of original vision that MS had with stuff like Crackdown 3's destructible buildings.

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Stuff like the video below is what I want to see from games in the cloud. A 1,000 players in a single city that is fully destructible with this level of quality.

 

[Ox Code]

When consoles are upgraded, the cost is transferred to the users.

Google cannot shift the server cost to the users, and launching with the power of 2x current consoles is not going to be enough when the new PS/Xbox are released. The 4k gaming, especially 4k/60FPS is a pipe dream.

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Hard to argue whether Google can offset costs without knowing their pricing model, which no one currently does.

 

[Freakzilla]

The analog sticks next to each other is a no from me dawg.

 

[degauss]

PS5 will objectively not look worse than Stadia. Even if PS5 has less than 10.4tf (unlikely), due to the uncompressed image PS5 will look far better regardless. Especially on a 4K screen.

Even a 1080p high bit-rate image (or lossless in the case of native console) looks better and more detailed than a 4k low bit-rate image in every circumstance except when the image is stationary. And it's not like there's time for multi-pass video encoding when latency is having to be kept to a minimum. It's be encoding at the fastest, lowest quality setting.

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Nah. Crispness and how clean the image is has to be very low on the scale of perception on how good a game looks overall.

You know what looks better than the highest end 4K 120hz assassins creed (or whatever) on a high end gaming PC? An random episode of anything (let's say...The Good Place) at 720p on Netflix, even with all its compression artifacts, and lower resolution. Hell, rip it to YouTube, double those artifacts and it will still look "better".

It looks real, and doesn't look like video game, and all the resolution and uncompressed textures you throw at Assasins Creed, doesn't make this any less true.

But the same can be applied to video games.

The best looking games are not the ones you can run at the highest settings with the least texture compression. Something like Last of us 2, even at low resolution will always look better than most other current games because it has the best rendering tech and animations. You can't counter that with crispness and texture compression, all that stuff is ancillary and less important to the overall visual impact a game has.

 

[Ororo]

I don't think people are familiar with Google if they think hardware power is going to be a bottleneck on the service, this isn't NIntendo, they have the resources.

 

[riverfr0zen]

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.

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It's true that we should see what gets initially rolled out first, but if you listen to their presentation, they emphasized several times that the *main* high-level objective for Stadia was to remove developers from the limitations of console hardware specs. So it would be surprising if they didn't follow up with a) tools for devs to take advantage of scaling, and b) some kind of economic model that while it may be pricier, may still be feasible.

 

[MrKlaw]

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.

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First xCloud is supposed to use xb1s as the base. Later of course they;l update to xb2

But any games that are also designed to run on an Xbox will be limited by the Xbox. Over the years google can increment the hardware in the data enters to always be one step ahead. And everyone gets the benefit - unlike with local hardware where you don't want to reset all the time because you need a large addressable market.

It's one of the biggest advantages google has IMO

 

[Deleted member 426]

First xCloud is supposed to use xb1s as the base. Later of course they;l update to xb2

But any games that are also designed to run on an Xbox will be limited by the Xbox. Over the years google can increment the hardware in the data enters to always be one step ahead. And everyone gets the benefit - unlike with local hardware where you don't want to reset all the time because you need a large addressable market.

It's one of the biggest advantages google has IMO

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Wait so xCloud will only play Xbox One games (inc bc)? Xbox backwards compatibility is reaaally appealing to me.

 

[AtomicShroom]

Stuff like the video below is what I want to see from games in the cloud. A 1,000 players in a single city that is fully destructible with this level of quality.

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Keep in mind though that the game still has to account for the possibility of those 1000 players to have to be drawn in the same spot at the same time, so there's still gonna be some limitations around that with the kind of processing power they have available, unless they make everything low-poly and low-fi.

 

[Alucardx23]

Keep in mind though that the game still has to account for the possibility of those 1000 players to have to be drawn in the same spot at the same time, so there's still gonna be some limitations around that with the kind of processing power they have available, unless they make everything low-poly and low-fi.

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Sure, that is something that must be taken into account. The idea is that compared to trying to make the same game on traditional consoles, it would be a lot easier to do it on the cloud. Look at a game like Mag and the 256 players it supported on PS3, doing something with 1,000 player with the hardware we have now should be more than possible. The great advantage with running the game in server is that sharing the physics simulation for how the world can be destroyed is a lot easier on the cloud.

 

[Nekki]

Am I the only one who just doesn't like Google as a company joining the gaming business like this? I don't need Google to get even more information about me. What's next, ads in my bathroom?

 

[SurTAR]

Will Stadia be at E3? And, is there any rumor about prices or possible subscriptions?

 

[Deleted member 20284]

Sure, that is something that must be taken into account. The idea is that compared to trying to make the same game on traditional consoles, it would be a lot easier to do it on the cloud. Look at a game like Mag and the 256 players it supported on PS3, doing something with 1,000 player with the hardware we have now should be more than possible. The great advantage with running the game in server is that sharing the physics simulation for how the world can be destroyed is a lot easier on the cloud.

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For me the trouble is quality over quantity, with 1,000 players you have very little outcome on the game, games take a long time to get a winner etc. Smaller curated content is often more rewarding.

 

[Alucardx23]

For me the trouble is quality over quantity, with 1,000 players you have very little outcome on the game, games take a long time to get a winner etc. Smaller curated content is often more rewarding.

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Think of the time when we had 4v4 or 8v8 matches in Halo. You could have said the same about someone describing a 100 player game at that time, but look at PUBG, Fortnite, Apex today. It all comes down to gameplay design.

 

[Curufinwe]

I'm listening to the Game Informer podcast talk about the possible pricing for playing games on Stadia, and so far they have used Netflix, Xbox Live Gold, and PlayStation Plus as examples of similar services.

 

[Unknownlight]

Will Stadia be at E3? And, is there any rumor about prices or possible subscriptions?

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1. More info coming "this summer". Maybe that means E3, or maybe Google will do their own thing.
2. Not yet.

 

[riotous]

I'm listening to the Game Informer podcast talk about the possible pricing for playing games on Stadia, and so far they have used Netflix, Xbox Live Gold, and PlayStation Plus as examples of similar services.

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Man.. they don't understand that concept of cost at all.

 

[Windu]

"Ubisoft Montreal: Our Odyssey with Vulkan on Stadia - GDC 2019"

 

[Deleted member 41502]

I keep getting the feeling that these platforms are a solution in search of a problem. Like I get the market, someone who wants a PS4 without paying for a PS4. But Sony/MS/Nintendo have already confronted that competitor and faced it. They face it by having exclusives. You'll never play the last of us, or bloodborne, or Mario kart on this. I really can't see Stadia bringing much in the exclusive deptartment at this point. Without it, there's just not much market for these things. You're basically courting PC gamers who want to play on a Chromecast/Chromebook. Maybe PS4 owners who want to play assasins creed at Max PC settings. But the market really isn't that big.

 

[Ox Code]

I keep getting the feeling that these platforms are a solution in search of a problem. Like I get the market, someone who wants a PS4 without paying for a PS4. But Sony/MS/Nintendo have already confronted that competitor and faced it. They face it by having exclusives. You'll never play the last of us, or bloodborne, or Mario kart on this. I really can't see Stadia bringing much in the exclusive deptartment at this point. Without it, there's just not much market for these things. You're basically courting PC gamers who want to play on a Chromecast/Chromebook. Maybe PS4 owners who want to play assasins creed at Max PC settings. But the market really isn't that big.

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This ignores the fact that a streaming service not dependent on local hardware increases the Total addressable market of high-end gaming multiple times over, which is great for third party studios. And for customers, not needing to spend a few hundred dollars extra to play Assassin's Creed at ANY quality is quite obviously beneficial.

 

[Kleegamefan]

This ignores the fact that a streaming service not dependent on local hardware increases the Total addressable market of high-end gaming multiple times over, which is great for third party studios. And for customers, not needing to spend a few hundred dollars extra to play Assassin's Creed at ANY quality is quite obviously beneficial.

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I agree 100%

 

[Jade1962]

This ignores the fact that a streaming service not dependent on local hardware increases the Total addressable market of high-end gaming multiple times over, which is great for third party studios. And for customers, not needing to spend a few hundred dollars extra to play Assassin's Creed at ANY quality is quite obviously beneficial.

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It's just a theoretical market though at the moment. I don't think there are too many people who really want to play the latest AC or GTA that aren't currently. Especially those that are desiring these games at 4K60FPS. The person using a chromebook doesn't seem like someone who is a power user searching for high end videogame experiences. I can see streaming replacing the console/PC market eventually but I can't see it expanding the market much at least for games like AC/GTA/SF.

 

[Ox Code]

It's just a theoretical market though at the moment. I don't think there are too many people who really want to play the latest AC or GTA that aren't currently. Especially those that are desiring these games at 4K60FPS. The person using a chromebook doesn't seem like someone who is a power user searching for high end videogame experiences. I can see streaming replacing the console/PC market eventually but I can't see it expanding the market much at least for games like AC/GTA/SF.

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You're assuming that just because a person is not interested to spend $400+ on a console to be eligible to spend $60+ on a game (and even then we're putting online multiplayer costs to the side), then they're probably not interested in the game at all. There's massive grey area in between "I don't want to play the game" and "I don't want to play the game if I have to spend that much for it."

 

[Jade1962]

You're assuming that just because a person is not interested to spend $400+ on a console to be eligible to spend $60+ on a game (and even then we're putting online multiplayer costs to the side), then they're probably not interested in the game at all. There's massive grey area in between "I don't want to play the game" and "I don't want to play the game if I have to spend that much for it."

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And you're assuming the opposite that's where we disagree. Consoles come down in price but their sales still operate on a bell curve. I believe the person who won't purchase a console for $200 is the same person not willing to spend $60 to stream a singular game. They aren't even willing to spend $5 for games on their phone.

We will see how it plays out.