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Google formally unveils the "Stadia" launching in 2019
- Thread starter BAD
- Start date
Especially considering the overwheling positive impressions from the Stream beta...
And I'll still stand by that you're going to find that the convenience will trump that trade off. People won't care as much as you think they do. Only a small percentage of people are going to nitpick over that. If people did care, you'd see the Pro and the X being the dominant selling systems. You'd see the PC doing better than consoles too.
Yeah it would be if input lag isn't an issue, and while it might not be that bad consistently it clearly is a noticeable issue when compared to running games natively
So reduced responsiveness and visuals are the future of gaming we're supposed to be excited about?
They showed off a lot of cool things, but making my interactive entertainment feel and look worse is a pretty shitty trade off in my opinion
Feels like a leap in technology in the same way the cassette was a leap in technology over vinyl
A lot of these comments are too constrained on "now" and the limitations of "now." By releasing and going public with a service like this, Google is essentially hoping for a future that is centered around higher standardized internet speeds and is relying heavily on moving towards a streaming-based service. Yes there are trade-offs like modding, but there's a niche market for that which Google is clearly not targeting. Not everyone uses mods.
Stadia has a huge convenience factor to it - device versatility. It's like OnLive but on crack. OnLive died because it was trying to do something ahead of its time and didn't have the proper infrastructure for it. Google has the ability (and the money) to develop proper infrastructure for this service. It will definitely start at a smaller scale, but given enough support and enough time, it has the potential to be huge.
As for not owning your own games, you don't really own your games right now anyways. You're an end user and you have to agree to a EULA on like almost every single game you play.
As for physical media, you don't OWN Assassin's Creed Odyssey, you own a piece of plastic that has Assassin's Creed Odyssey on it.
Offline play would be simple to incorporate - follow Netflix's strategy for offline movies. Download the ones you want to play offline (minimum hardware requirements have to be met in order to play), stream the ones you want to play online.
Latency and Input Lag are heavily reliant on infrastructure + end-user setups. Different users will have different experiences depending on their setup and local infrastructure. Local infrastructure can be standardized, user setup cannot.
Again, there are tons of fine-details that Google still needs to address, but this service existing is a huge step forward in eliminating the need of a dedicated device. Consoles now only exist for console-exclusive titles (and hardware gimmicks).
I was part of the Project Stream beta as well and I was impressed. I encountered the typical input lag, but that's expected because the infrastructure isn't all there yet. But what I encountered and what I played was stunning.
Given time, I'd imagine it to be a superior version of PS Now, Xbox Game Pass, and OnLive.
Counting the seconds until the first few awesome/imposible to do on console games come out for a cloud service. Come back after that to say "I will never play them", too easy now.
I said it in a teasing way, because there are a lot of people on here Microsoft included that are going hard next gen on streaming. They will have a box for sure that is a regular console, but rumors of a discless one have almost all but been confirmed. And them having a plan that will probably include GAMEPASS/XBOX LIVE AND xcloud streaming for titles is something that I don't think should be a focus.
MAINLY xcloud. It's great when it works depending on where you are, but the way they want it to be used via a phone/tablet is reaching in having it be a seemless experience.
Every 3rd party dev will be on board with this soon enough IMO.
In all honesty the user base/size of the streaming audience will dwarf those who own a PS5/XB2 for quite a long time if not indefinitely even if not everyone has great internet.
You're a third party pub and you're looking at what in 2022 ... a PS5 that has maybe 20 million owners ... versus putting your game on Google Stadia and MS' streaming service gives you access to easily triple or quadruple that number of gamers instantly.
This is a big win for publishers.
In all honesty the user base/size of the streaming audience will dwarf those who own a PS5/XB2 for quite a long time if not indefinitely even if not everyone has great internet.
You're a third party pub and you're looking at what in 2022 ... a PS5 that has maybe 20 million owners ... versus putting your game on Google Stadia and MS' streaming service gives you access to easily triple or quadruple that number of gamers instantly.
This is a big win for publishers.
They said there are already 100 developers with development hardware. And Ubisoft has obviously been involved from early on.
I think gaming has opportunity for a mix of both.
For instance, I access this website on my desktop work PC, my home tablet, and my phone. I access it from three devices, but I don't do the same stuff on all three. When I'm on my desktop PC, I'm usually posting long, rambling replies (like this one), interacting with every thread. When I'm on my phone, I'm usually just consuming threads, maybe checking on subs, or writing short replies to specific threads, but usually in a consuming mode. When I'm on my tablet, it's a bit of both.
Same with how I consume video. With YouTube, I might watch a full length movie like experience on my TV in my living room, but watch stupid short videos on my phone. On my tablet, I might do a bit of both.
Also with something like Fantasy Football... I do my hardcore number crunching on my PC, usually with multiple tabs open going over all sorts of different stats and scenarios. On my phone, though, I'm usually just checking scores or making a quick adjustment here and there.
With traditional gaming, we tend to think of it as just a couch or just a mobile experience, but I could see that shifting in the future if the technology supports it. Take a game like Madden or FIFA (probably not great examples here because they're so despised, but bare with me). In Madden, I could see myself playing my weekly game against the AI or a friend in franchise mode on my TV, with my controller, normal TV gaming experience. The game ends, and I have to go to work or go to bed, but I'm able to jump over to my phone to wrap up the game... Maybe it's a meaningless final drive where I'm killing the clock, or maybe it's doing my post-game team management... Applying XP I earned in that game, or some other less intensive activity. At work, I might login to the game quickly to approve a trade, sign a free agent. And then, when I get home and sit in front of my TV, I'm ready to just play the game, instead of doing those other tasks when I sit down.
Madden, of course, is just a dumb example of it, but as the technology becomes more available you could see this in all sorts of games. In the past, you could only do this with something like a companion app if the developer supported it... It was usually janky and didn't work as well as the actual game, and it was always a disconnect... a discrete experience from the main game. If the technology worked and if it became ubiquitous, you could see games following other entertainment/media experiences with appealing to second screens.
I also think that as the technology advances, the UI will adapt. Right now, all we're doing is shrinking the giant 60"-designed UI down into a 5" form factor, which makes it really hard to use. This is how the web worked 10 years ago where websites would be designed for a 17-22" monitor, and then when smart phones started to come out, they'd just show that layout for big monitors shrunk down, and it was hard to do normal tasks like interact with forms, click links, or do simple actions becaus they were designed for that large screen with precise, mouse-driven inputs. But, today, the internet is "Mobile First," where most modern websites are designed first for the smallest device and then progressively enhanced up to add features and convenience for the largest device.
Which is not the point I was trying to make. My point was that "but media ownership" is not a mark against the success potential of Stadia outside of a subset of enthusiasts which never were the primary audience for this platform in the first place.
And while the jury is out on performance characteristics, I would put a lot of confidence in Google's ability to deliver on that front based on their existing investments in global infrastructure.
Well to me the actual concern isn't "lol this streaming console can't handle my frame perfect DMC games" but "oh shit no one is making hardcore action games any more because they only make games where input lag doesn't matter"
Gaming for everyone, anywhere! (but only if you live in a select few countries and have amazing internet)
The reality of Stadia exclusive first party games, that a lot of people won't ever be able to play just because of where they live is already a bummer, but if they start paying other developers for Stadia exclusives, it's going to be a nightmare.
The reality of Stadia exclusive first party games, that a lot of people won't ever be able to play just because of where they live is already a bummer, but if they start paying other developers for Stadia exclusives, it's going to be a nightmare.
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they went out of the way to say it wasn't during the presentation. apparently it's struggling in demos too
I can't stress this enough that people are vastly overestimating and exagerating what's required for this, but that's era. Actual technical understanding of cloud computing and what's being offered is sorely lacking.
If this works for everyone, Steam will have a problem. I'm anxiously awaiting a demo to see if it does.
Encoding is much different since it needs to be done (nearly) real time by the server...
But they have neither at the moment. Okay, they have Doom Eternal, the only new game (shown for five seconds).
I mean, I get that it's GDC and the presentation is to get devs on board, but can you imagine MS, Sony or Nintendo saying on stage "Yeah, we're doing a new thing launching this year, and we already have two games (one of them a year old) on it!"? That would be disastrous, and rightly so.
Streaming only = dead on arrival. Internet infrastructure worldwide is not where it needs to be for this to be feasible. Nowhere near in fact.
An xbox One X using a 21ms delayed display against a display with very little display lag. so when you use it on the same display it'll be even worse.
Well, that's quite the prediction. But until we actually see what this is, what the games look like, how it actually works, etc., I can't remotely think that way.
Next gen starts with Sony and Microsoft until we see otherwise.
I'd say Zoe Quinns opinion on the matter (seeing as youtube still pushes gamergate videos attacking her over her own stuff WHILE SEARCHING FOR HER STUFF) is quite a cold take, since it's been five years of time that google could have fixed that in.
ok, i remember the game was used to test that idea was rocket league, but still don't remember the service.
any help here?
I did know that actually, but everything about the "green goo" branding of the original machine makes me think they were happy to push forward with that name for the same reason that things were named X-Games, Xtreme or XFL in the 90s. eXtreeeeeeeeme.
This will be massive, Google has turned YouTube and every other service they provide into a game store. Just imagine the Buy or play now button under every YouTube video to get the game you're watching. That must be something that causes Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo to reevaluate their plans.
The only thing that can unite console warriors: a service that is cheaper with (allegedly) better performance than al the rest
I would assume there will be someone there to pick up the slack. In the indie space or whatever.
What people seem to fail to realize is that this scales. Get the infrastructure in place and then grow it as needed. If Google truly is invested, getting this infrastructure and foundation in place for the long term is important.
Now is now. Not some magical future where everyone has incredible internet speeds without data caps is not now, nor in the near future.
I wasn't talking about in-game settings. I was talking about editing .ini or other files to tune/fix/change stuff that cannot be changed in-game otherwise.
I assume that games made for this would remove graphical options since it'd be running off of Google's servers so they'd be always at the highest graphical settings.
Interactive mediums are inherently different.
When you stream a movie or a video, the playback is still happening on your local device. The only difference is that the data file itself is sent to you from someplace else over the internet. When you stream a videogame your local machine isn't doing any of the rendering or running any of the game logic. You can record a Netflix movie and keep it forever, but you cannot "record" a local copy of a streaming-only game. Assuming that this streaming thing takes off and is widely adopted, why would companies ever want to offer a localized, piratable version of their product that requires them to do a lot more work?
I think it's guaranteed to happen eventually.
I don't think the time to port would be the problem, it'd be the money involved or potential loss of money. Why we don't get anything close to day 1 PSNow games and it's pretty much just MS who do it for Gamepass.
Why the complete lack of pricing is a worry, sub based and there's about a 0% chance it'll be getting consistent day 1 releases, if it's just pay full price to stream, there's a pretty good chance it's DoA and if it's free to play, well I'm sure we'd hear the execs laughing when they get told.
right, but how many of those 100 will make exclusives? not that many, i'd reckon
is it a game store? we don't know. they didn't talk about that.
but I guess that's just consumer stuff, why would developers care
But that was the first time the game existed for most people =)
Yes. And we have cloud computing for that, not your desktop under the desk. And not just any hardware either, vastly improved architecture specifically designed for this specific problem and optimized for scale and performance out the ass. This is a non-issue
There was a dude playing it in a bathtub full of cheesy poofs. This ain't for casuals
Seems pretty dumb to use on-stage demos to dismiss the technology. Google Stream worked pretty well by most accounts. I'll wait to hear about people playing this in their own homes... all tests coming out of the conference aren't super useful either way.