I guess in terms of game development, Stadia will be like GitHub.
As a service though, we'll see. Their reveal stream kept crashing, and there was noticeable lag during their initial GDC presentation.
I'm guessing lag will depend on how far from the data center you are and might not be great initially but then could prove to be awesome in a year or two as more localised render farms appear.
$10/mo was pretty much the only way they could price the service; however I didn't expect 4k to be the base resolution for the paid service. (thought it would be $10/1080p, $15/4k; having 1080p for free is interesting).
Google needs to be more transparent about device support though. The stream highlighted Chromecast Ultra/Android, but not much else (e.g. if there is an iOS client, or compatibility with a base $35 1080p Chromecast/Chromecast protocol for smart TVs) [EDIT: the FAQ is more clear: https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9338946]
Sure, but compute isn't free. The fact that you pay for a game once, and you get a dedicated console rendering and streaming the game to you for as long as Stadia exists is not a given. And the game costs just as much as normal retail, so whatever cut they are taking has to account for the cost of computer.
I doubt iOS is going to get access to Stadia. One of the primary perks for going with Android is that you’ll be have access to mobile gaming through Stadia that you can’t get with an Apple device.
Google isn't a company that restricts their services in such a coupled manner. I fully expect it to be supported on most devices where it's possible to support it.
In my opinion, restrictive would be keeping Stadia to only Google specific hardware. Making it available for all Android devices feels pretty good to me.
I would actually suspect more of the opposite. Their biggest hurdle, at least initially, is fighting the perception that the service just won't be performant enough to be a good experience. I would not be surprised if they start with a limited set of high-end devices (Apple ones included), just so people don't blame device limitations on the service instead.
I don't think so. Google has announced it would be coming to more phones and devices in the future and they consistently say "tablets" instead of ChromeOS tablets. It's a service, it would be silly to ignore literally a billion possible customers (or whatever the iOS numbers are now).
Considering that iOS users, on average, pay a lot more for software, games and services, it’d be stupid for Google to ignore a paying customer base. In any case, Google will not ignore iOS, like it hasn’t done so far in a big way.
There are things that were released on iOS first by Google, like the Gboard keyboard, for example. So Google is not at all averse to iOS or in the habit of avoiding it in any way.
Does MS have a patent on offset joysticks or does noone care that you can't strafe right and look left without smashing your thumbs together? Switch the dpad and left joystick.
It matches all typical controllers so I can see why they did it, but the normal design is flawed. The joystick has to be offset to fit all hand sizes and thumb movements properly.
Competitive games, at least competitive shooter games, are really the worst application for this though because they suffer the most from input-to-display latency. Games like League of legends might be fine though.
But assuming that the latency gets reduced to acceptable levels for competitive games, I see this distribution model as the only one to effectively fight cheaters. I would love to hear alternatives, though.
Based on some rough, early estimates the input lag with Stadia is incredibly impressive. I originally thought it would never work for many types of games like you say but now I'm reserving judgement. It's not impossible at least.
They suffer from uneven or inconsistent input-to-display latency. If Stadia can give everyone the same, (hopefully) modest amount of latency, the games remain as fair as they ever were
I'm not entirely sure, but you may have misunderstood my point. It's not about fairness, it's about whether it is physically possible to play the game on the same level of skill.
Talking about shooters, in the traditional multiplayer setup input-to-display latency isn't actually a concern, because input-to-display doesn't go over the network at all. When you move your mouse, the display update loop doesn't contain a network roundtrip. There is only the concern of latency to the server for resolving which hits actually connect, and I agree with you that having this latency be roughly the same for everybody is probably quite a bit more important than how low it is.
With game streaming, the input-to-display loop does include a network roundtrip, which makes it harder to aim.
If you've ever tried to play a shooter with <15 fps, or suffered from the mouse input lag that some games used to have on Linux in the past, you should know what I mean: aiming with the mouse crucially relies on a feedback loop where you correct your hand movement based on what you see on the screen. The longer that feedback loop takes, the harder it is to aim.
That's what the concern is with competitive shooter play on game streaming services. (And it's why I wrote that other types of competitive games may not be affected as much, but it's been a long time since I've played a lot of games, so what do I know...)
I don't think so - the reason I don't use VSync for first person shooters is because it introduces 1 frame (8ms ~ 16ms depending on your frame rate) of input lag. It really feels laggy when I try to move my mouse and aim.
And mechanical keyboards make you type faster and gamer glasses make you aim better and a tincture of molybdenum in your star-water will cure your cold
Except for the part where it appears you'll be able to play from a computer just using Chrome. This allows for all sorts of botting (artificialaiming.net for example has been making PC aim bots for at least a decade as I tried it out on Battlefield 2142 and it was eerie at what all they could do including the settings to make it even believable so you were unlikely to get reported. Sure that was using a lot of client-side data but that was a long time ago and now you can probably do sprite-recognition type stuff effortlessly on the user side of a streamed game.
Similarly fishing and mining bots and the like for games like WoW would translate to repetitive farming type activity.
Arguably I think being in a browser window would make it easier to do.
Client side input could always be messed with. I think what the anti-cheat feature refers to more so is the direct communication with the server part, where cheating programs can e.g. modify UDP packets in transit to teleport your characters to new locations or give themselves inventory items. If all you're feeding into the system is controller input, there's no way for you to do any of that. Conversely, backend developers for exclusive Stadia games can iterate more quickly knowing that their client input is completely trustworthy, which is an INSANE win.
Imagine building a REST API and not having to worry about request validation, sanitation, authorization, data scoping, etc. because you can 100% trust that the input you're processing is from your own client. Wouldn't that be perfect?
There are undoubtedly major benefits in the war against cheaters by completely removing user access to the underlying system. However I think there are two fundamental points to keep in mind on why it's not going to be an ultimate solution.
1) Unless cross-platform play is forbidden or the game is exclusively streamed-only, the cheaters will just use a different platform and will still ruin your game the same old way. It's the cheater's platform of choice that matters.
2) Games are some of the least security conscious pieces of software out there [1], primarily written in C++. There are bugs, lots of bugs. Process-takeover enabling bugs. I'm sure Google sandboxes the game to protect their systems, however cheaters only need access to the game process to enable most of their desires. Yes this would raise the bar in how easy it would be to cheat. Average Joe Cheat Engine users would be gone, but more skilled cheat makers will continue business as usual and their released cheats will do the exploits hidden from the actual people doing the cheating.
[1] Even AAA developers are clueless about threat models. Games like Tom Clancy's The Division [2] and Fallout 76 [3] are multiplayer games that put extreme trust into the client. Trust that nobody would modify their script files, trust that the client is always telling the honest truth.
And the betting on when this product will be shut down by Google has already begun...right now 3 years is the choice with the most money behind it. Some fools are guessing Google may give this as much as 5 years.
Given Google's abysmal history of supporting its software and hardware products, see e.g., the Nest fiasco from a few weeks ago, only a fool or someone with cash to waste would invest in a Google hardware device before it's proven popular by the market.
"Buying into" isn't only about money. A lot of people put time and effort into Inbox, Reader etc. and they were badly burned when Google decided they weren't making enough millions of dollars.
Certainly a concern for the games purchased on top of this platform. If Stadia gets shuttered, your access to those games would just vanish.
The hardware would be a weird thing to be worried about though. Chromecast won't be going anywhere, and the controller is still usable even if Stadia ceases to exist.
Google has a habit of getting bored of a service or, if it's not doing too well, just switching it off. Can you assure people that if they spend money on Stadia games, they are still going to have access to them in the coming years?
I completely understand the question. I think there's a couple of things I would answer to that. One is our commitment to this business is extraordinary. If you look at the list of games, and crucially, the list of game companies that are backing Stadia, you can see the level of interest and support. Google is committed to this for the long term, we have made very significant financial investments in this. And we have an incredibly dedicated team who is helping to make Stadia reality.
"If you look at the list of apps, and crucially, the list of developers that are backing Android wear, you can see the level of interest and support. Google is committed to this for the long term, we have made very significant financial investments in this. And we have an incredibly dedicated team who is helping to make Android Wear reality." Google, 2014, probably.
Yeah, that's a concern I have with paying $60 for a game on there. But I'm pretty interested in the $10/mo with accompanying handful of free games. If they shut down the service in that scenario it doesn't bother me, since I'm getting my money's worth each month.
Where are you getting these numbers from? Do you have something to backup your words, or are you just pulling them out of thin air?
Even average the numbers from a site like gCemetery gives you > 5 years, and that number is already biased because it doesn't count the lifespan of products that are still alive.
Can someone explain the tech here? Obviously the brains of this is a Google data center beaming the game through a Chromecast to your TV (or in-app on your Pixel/ whatever). Is there any tech in the controller? What "costs" $129 if there's a subscription model attached to this?
If the controller is indeed "dumb" (just sending inputs), why wouldn't there be compatibility with Xbox or PS4 controllers?
If the history of non-main consoles has taught us anything (Nvidia Shield, Ouya, etc), you have to have games and a controller. Seems Google has games covered, but why try and reinvent the wheel with a new controller?
> Do I need to use your Controller? (Stadia Controller)
> No, you can use many popular HID compliant controllers when playing via USB cable on Chrome or mobile. To play on your TV you will need to use the Stadia Controller and Google Chromecast Ultra.
Hmm. Does this mean that the controller is the "brains", and after sending and receiving the game play data, then needs to beam it to your device? Or do the two devices (controller + screen) work together to handle some of this?
Right. The idea seems to be that the controller directly talks to Google via WiFi to minimize the input latency, while the display device also directly talks to Google to minimize the output latency.
> If the controller is indeed "dumb" (just sending inputs), why wouldn't there be compatibility with Xbox or PS4 controllers?
The controller is not dumb, it connects to Google.
Also, as I understood it other "supported" controllers can be used (per https://youtu.be/k-BbW6zAjL0?t=683) but then you need to use another device/platform that does the connect-to-Google part, e.g. Chrome on PC.
edit: http://stadia.com/faq says USB HID controllers are supported on Chrome and mobile.
Yes. The controller connects directly to your game instance over WiFi. It doesn't need to go through a box first and be relayed (this can shave a significant amount of latency off controller inputs).
> What "costs" $129 if there's a subscription model attached to this?
For $129 you get a controller ($69), a Chromecast Ultra ($60), 3 months of Stadia Pro ($30), the full Destiny 2 game with all the DLC ($?? I forget).
You may be confused with how Stadia Pro works. It's just like PS Plus, you occasionally get a free game or two and it enables you to play at 4K in 5.1 surround sound. Without Stadia Pro you can still play any Stadia game you own, without a fee.
> why wouldn't there be compatibility with Xbox or PS4 controllers?
But there is compatibility with XBox and PS4 controllers. It was in the video and in their original announcement. You just can't really use them with the Chromecast AFAIK but you can with any computer and some tablets / phones.
> but why try and reinvent the wheel with a new controller?
You can bring your own or use theirs for the best latency / game experience possible on Stadia.
> this can shave a significant amount of latency off controller inputs
How on earth would it do that? WiFi alone is a significant part of the latency here! Not to mention the huge jitter it brings. Screw in your smart cheap-ass 802.11b light bulb and watch your game feel off.
No, they want this stuff to work with Chrome out of the box and so they needed to cut out the middle-man anyway, and people aren't exactly prepared to put an Ethernet cable into it. But let's not pretend WiFi is somehow an improvement over connecting it to a PC that just blasts your input out through Ethernet (where it then traverses all the same boxes that it does "over WiFi" anyways, minus the shared medium that is used to stream 4k to your TV)
However much latency a wifi network has, making the controlled connect to another local box and that box to relay the signal through the same wifi would definitely by the latency of the wifi + T right? They are shaving off T.
But the Chromecast Ultra they're selling with it doesn't support USB or Bluetooth (or Ethernet), which makes it not really an option for that. The controller I believe works through Bluetooth and USB if you're using a device that has those.
> How on earth would it do that? WiFi alone is a significant part of the latency here!
Today there is input and display lag. You send the input to the box for processing. In streaming you send the input to a box who then relays that to a server. If you can cut out the server you can reduce a bunch of latency. It won't have lower latency than a locally played game but you can make it close enough.
> Not to mention the huge jitter it brings. Screw in your smart cheap-ass 802.11b light bulb and watch your game feel off.
Your knowledge of WiFi seems to be about 8 years out of date. Not only is it really difficult to find 802.11b anything anymore (even stuff buried in a basement; seriously 802.11b devices started coming out in 1999) but this is pretty much a non issue in almost any router made in the past decade. The majority of routers (especially the better ones) use dual or tri bands to better handle interference and backwards compatibility with older standards.
If you have issues with your WiFi I'd suggest upgrading your router. Seriously, they're pretty great nowadays especially if you get a triband almost anything :)
How are they overcoming the jarring effects of input latency? Even 20-30ms in input lag would turn a lot of people off, or is this primarily for casual games where this won't matter too much?
I played the AC Odyssey Stadia/Stream beta -- at least for that kind of single-player experience it felt comparable to console input lag with no jarring effects. I'd be interested in how it would be in twitch shooters though.
I played the beta too, but never a local copy of AC: O. I couldn't tell whether it was the game or Stadia or my connection (Google Fiber, no wi-fi), but it felt like walking through mud.
If that's was just the nature of the game, that's not a very honest choice of game. Every game I've bought for myself is in recent memory was more responsive.
I doubt twitch shooters would be playable. I've used steam's in home streaming, and platformers that require precise jumping accuracy are basically unplayable because even a fraction of a second hiccup in latency can get you killed. Even simple platformers like Crash Bandicoot can get frustratingly difficult to play over a stream. If the service gets popular enough, we might see developers making changes to help out players using Stadia, the same way that they add auto-aim for most console shooters, but disable it in the PC version.
I usually notice input lag in first person shooters when I have V-sync / fast sync on. V-sync introduces about 1 frame of input lag (0.5 frames for fast sync), so 8~16ms is just enough to throw myself off. I would guess platformers and fighting games would have similar kinds of input lag problems.
If if there was, would it matter? 144Hz monitors draw a frame every 7ms. What does it mean to have sub-frame latency? Human reaction time is about 250ms. So from the time you see something and ate able to react, over 30 frames have rendered.
As someone who used to play fighting games competitively I know that it makes a huge difference if it's sub 1 frame input lag or not. It's the difference of being able to execute certain combos with 1 frame links (basically the time between inputs) 100% of times instead of <50% of the time.
I know that 20-30ms is jarring because I've experimented in doing everything possible to reduce input latency while playing competitive shooters over the years, as has any serious FPS competitor. 20-30ms is highly jarring to many. Even playing SSB Ultimate over wifi on my Switch is super annoying for me to deal with.
You can simulate ~instantaneous input with this kind of approach, but not if the input has to travel to the server and back before it's registered locally.
Most people won't care about this, but it will certainly put a ceiling on serious people (e.g. streamers) trying to play popular, competitive games on Stadia.
This is right up my alley being a pretty casual gamer. I have a 1GB Fiber connection at home so streaming shouldn't be an issue, the cost is fairly minimal, and not having the worry about downloading or updating games and just being able to pick up the controller and have a quick gaming session will be perfect. And the cost to entry is very low, so even if the service is a bust and I leave after the 3 free months, I'll still have a Chromecast Ultra that I've been looking to pick up anyway.
A 1 Gbit/s connection is a great bandwidth (you probably mean 1 Gbit/s and not 1 GB), bit the latency is even more important. If the game movements and actions lag behind your physical input, this can ruin the whole experience, no matter if the stream has a great quality (few compression artifacts, high resolution) thanks to the bandwidth.
I only used the Shadow gaming VM service so far and the servers are in a neighbouring country, with 100 Mbit/s bandwidth and 30ms ping to 1.1.1.1, so not optimal conditions, but GTA IV, Minecraft and other games were not fun to play due to the input lag.
This all depends on where you live and the infrastructure. I have 1 Gbit fiber, but in my country nearly all the infrastructure is concentrated in one of 2 cities, so I still have minimum 15/30ms (IPv6/IPv4) ping to everything since it has to travel across the country.
Not sure if you already accounted for this, but the monthly subscription only includes a subset of their catalog. For any game outside of that you’ll need to pay for the subscription plus purchase the game.
So yes, if the game(s) you want to play one of the included games and the service goes bust you don’t lose much. If you purchased a title and service goes bust then you likely lost that money.
$10/mo * 12 = $120/yr and still paying $60/game for AAA. Alternatively, there is supposed to be a "basic" option coming in 2020 with no subscription fee where you just pay for each game but then what happens when Google gives Stadia the axe? Will users be able to claim licenses or local copies of games they paid for?
As opposed to paying $60/yr for PS Plus + $60/game for PS4 or next gen PS5?
The basic version is also free, which is something Sony isn't going to be able to offer me. But with Stadia I can play on my TV, on my desktop, on the go, etc.
I buy most of my games digitally whether or PSN or Steam. If either of those go out of business, I'm pretty much SOL. I don't see Google allowing you to claim your license for local copies as the Stadia hardware is specialized and custom, not something you can emulate easily outside of it's infrastructure, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.
Honest question now, you say you're a casual gamer, do you have a pc with a video card? With a gigabit connection, updates are really a non-issue. I can't see why people with even moderate gaming rigs ($150 gpu) would bother with this service? Is 4k really that big of a deal?
I have a pretty beefy gaming PC that I almost never game on. 4K isn't a huge deal for me. Convenience is.
I'm tired of updating my GPU drivers and experinece (5-10 minutes), then launching Steam, waiting for it to update and restart (2-3 minutes), then picking the game I want to play, waiting for it to update and install (5-10 minutes), then finally launch the game and have it spend more time connecting to servers before I can game.
The value prop of seeing a game trailer or game video that seems interesting and being able to say "play with stadia" and it just throwing me right into the game is the feature that speaks most to me.
If Stadia does this and it works well enough, i'll gladly get rid of gaming PC.
>I'm tired of updating my GPU drivers and experinece (5-10 minutes)
I never understood this complaint. You can be perfectly fine running GPU drivers from a year ago. You don't need to update them every day.
With Steam, it "updating" every time you run it seems to be a lie really, but I think most people who run Steam just leave it always on.
The games, I have 400 on Steam. Maybe 1-3 update per day on average, and there's lot's of overlap ie 90% of my library hasn't updated in a year, and 9% of the leftover updates maybe once a month.
So you order some thin client for 129 bucks, pay 10 dollars a month for the service and buy the games? I was assuming Stadia to be like a sort of Netflix for games. I could just as easily buy a console and buy the games.
Or you just buy a controller and buy the games you want and that's it. You don't need to pay $10/month. You don't need to spend $129 right now. For free, you won't get 4k, you won't get discounts, and you won't get free games, but you you don't need to pay monthly.
Strictly speaking, the minimum purchase is just one of the games on Stadia if you are going to be using Chrome on your PC and already own any HID-compatible controller.
The $10/mo gets you 4K streams (you get 1080p without a subscription), and occasional free and discounted games (like PS+ does). At launch, the free title will be Destiny 2 + all expansions (including the one releasing later this year).
The $129 gets you a Chromecast Ultra ($60), and the controller ($70), and 3 months of the subscription ($30) for you and a friend. Both the Chromecast and the controller are usable outside of Stadia.
> The Founder’s Edition will launch in United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland.
I've bought google products before by shipping them to a middle man in Germany. I wonder if this would work with Stadia, as it requires recurrent payments and online activation.
This is astoundingly cheap. In fact its too cheap, €10/month works out to €360 + €130 over a 3 year hardware cycle which is barely enough for a not-really-capable 4k GPU as it is, without costing all the additional services/hardware. And to put it bluntly, these games are second-rate titles from the last year. From this announcement I guess that this is mostly just another data farming play that will never generate a profit on its own and has a very high chance of being shutdown within 3 years.
You are not taking into account for the fact that the hardware will be used constantly by multiple people on and on. I play on average 1 hour of video game a day, multiply that by 24, or 12 or 6 to be more conservative, you are still getting a good margin on hardware cost.
He's right though, 10 is not enough. For fractional gpu use, bandwidth, electricity, and engineering, service support, business dev, and marketing salaries at the google level? Even if we assume that they can run 100 users on each GPU, that wouldn't be enough. (They can't run 100 users on each gpu, but even if they could.)
There's some other play here? Not really sure what google's strategy is, but these prices make it clear they don't need to make money.
I wonder if they will use high-end servers with GPUs that can be used for serving stadia gaming users during peak gaming hours, and then for tasks like number crunching and machine learning during off hours?
I'm astounded at HN's ability to spin anything as a negative.
> these games are second-rate titles from the last year
since when were games like AC: Odyssey or BL3 "second rate"?
Of course they aren't going to have all games (out of the gate, we can assume they are working on licensing) or have exclusive titles (for obvious reasons).
>I'm astounded at HN's ability to spin anything as a negative.
Usually I'm right there with you, but Google doesn't exactly have a good public perception around products and services without good profit margins. If they're not making money from it, it could be shut down at any moment (even for paid physical hardware, like the Nexus Q). "Too cheap" is a real fear.
You buy in at $170.
You subscribe for the 4k offering @ $10 / month.
They shutter the service after 1 year after you've paid $120 in monthly fees.
In total, you're out $290. You got a "free" Chromecast Ultra ($60), so you're only out $210.
That's honestly not that bad. Sure, you could have just bought a new XBox One S, but the value of those degrade over time, as well and, as much as MS wants you to believe it, the One S is not a 4K system. It's hard to measure the value of the entertainment you got using it. In my case, I definitely would have achieved $210 in entertainment value out of the system over the course of a year.
Maybe they'll revisit the pricing in a year instead of just cancelling it...
So you've paid $290 (plus the cost of the games) for one year of service, and that's not that bad? I don't know about you, but I have an Xbox One and it's lasted me more than one year for the $300 I paid for it, 4k or not.
I'm not even entirely sure what you're arguing... that it's okay to pay $300/yr for a video game system plus the cost of video games? That if you paid $300 for an Xbox and Microsoft discontinued the system after a year you'd be okay with the price?
Assuming the worst like you have, you paid $300 for a video game system that didn't include any video games and after a year you weren't allowed to play it anymore. That's pretty fucking awful. Even if Microsoft stops making the Xbox One, you still get to keep playing the games you bought.
Also not sure if it'd just a licensing issue. I think all the games might very well be modded to run on Stadia servers. May be the renders are optimized to send out compressed video over the wire instead of a video output. Totally speculating but I think it's likely that the games need to be integrated into the Stadia platform somehow.
iirc they support games made with certain engines out-of-the-box. Ironically, I think I heard that it's the Unreal Engine (sorry, Epic Games Store...). AC:O and BL3 seem to support that theory.
For comparison, Hetzner is offering dedicated i7-6700/64GB/1 TB SSD/GTX 1080/"unlimited" bandwidth for €94/month (no installation fee) [1]. Due to their business model, I assume this is a price that also generates them a healthy profit.
The stadia pricing does not sound completely unfeasible when taking into account the 130€, another 70€ from the extra controller, cut from game sales and the fact that casual gamers do not spend their days play the most computationally demanding titles. Some extra €€ would come from family plans and there might be some synergies with their cloud computing business (for example using spare capacity from GCE for Stadia).
Surprised by the lack of an ad supported free version. Seems like applying the lessons they've learned from conquering internet search might be helpful, but apparently not.
I'm not sure I follow. You buy your games like you would with any console. It's just the console is "in the cloud" and you only pay the monthly subscription if you want the higher quality stream and the occasional free game (think PS Plus).
How would an ad supported version fit into that model? I thought it was a fantastic model!
Instead of having to buy a game, the user plays the game for free, but has ads as part of the game stream (e.g., a discrete banner ad at the bottom of the screen), which may only appear during load times or in character selection menus (i.e., not during a fight). An important aspect would be that the ads could not interfere with the game itself. This is like how Google sells ads and displays the ads in the search results in a discrete manner.
The publisher/developer would receive a share of the revenue collected from the advertiser.
OR do the 4K stream option with no monthly payment but have ads that don't interfere with the gameplay.
I expect most have the knee-jerk reaction of "ADS?! N0! NEV3R!". But what if you get to play top games for free by ignoring ads that don't interfere with the game? Like how you get free internet search results by ignoring ads.
There is a free version that's limited to 1080p/60fps coming in 2020.
Games on the Pro subscription aren't free by the way either. Pro subscription just allows 4k/60fps streaming and some limited free games like Xbox Live and Playstation Plus. Most games whether on the Pro subscription or Free will still have to be bought by individuals.
Yes, and they could have launched with a free version supported by ads instead of an up front fee and a monthly fee. Perhaps the free 2020 version will be ad based. An issue with launching an ad based version may be the inability to line up advertisers for an unproven platform. By 2020 they may have the kinks worked out and be able to get some advertisers lined up.
I think this is a pretty reasonable price and I fully expect to pre-order, but I'm disappointed that the games must be purchased a la carte. I'd much rather pay a higher monthly fee and be able to play any games I wanted. I'm not sure how much more I'd be willing to pay, but I just think that purchasing titles that I don't own doesn't fit well with the streaming paradigm.
Yeah agreed, I was expecting streaming to be streaming - I don't purchase individual titles on Netflix. Maybe if it was transferable to PC or another platform I'd be more open to it.
> A free tier will be available some time in 2020, as will a paid subscription tier that doesn't require the upfront purchase.
Wonder if the paid sub won't require a payment for games in the future.
Even with a console you still have to pay to play online, so I don't see this as necessarily a huge problem if I have to pay $10 to get the online aspect and still pay for the games
Makes sense, I went to their site to look more in depth and it seems with the Pro subscription you get some free games periodically and also a discount on select titles. That feels like a good middle ground actually
It's not like any of this is new territory either. Xbox Game Pass works like that (minus the streaming) and OnLive worked exactly like that (streaming + unlimited games). It's not an unreasonable demand.
This. I got the preorder email a half hour or so ago and have been sitting here thinking "ehhhhhhh" I want to check it out but I'm expecting the quality to be exactly like it was from the first Amazon Fire (the controller even looks like a cousin of the Fire controller, the button orientation is slightly different and they've swapped the position a stick and the dpad) except instead of downloading titles to the Fire you'll buy the controller and randomtimelater Google will shut down the service leaving you with nothing to play at all.
130$ (probably more with shipping) is a good deal of money for me, I'd feel a lot better pulling the trigger if Google didn't have a history of abandoning stuff.
I expect to pre-order the hardware, but I'll probably hold off on a subscription until I see the games and have a compelling reason to pay a monthly fee. I don't really mind the difference between 1080p and 4K, so buying the games standalone seems like a nice fit for me personally, with the subscription sitting as a nice "premium" / improve-what-you-have option.
Personally, I already have an Xbox One that I lug around with me when I travel. The most compelling aspects of this are it feeling a lot more mobile (since you only need a chromecast and a controller, or just the controller with your phone), and feeling a lot more future-proof since it's effectively just a thin client running on beefy hardware elsewhere, that I expect to be upgraded to meet current game demands over time.
I think it would be nice if they had a demo/preview feature. With the streaming model, they could allow you play X hours of a game per day, or per week, or per month, or whatever, and lock you out or force you to purchase.
Or they could bill you at a slightly higher price per minute, up until you reach a maximum, where you are charged full price for the game.
There's a lot of room to play with pricing models with streaming (if they can get game publishers to agree).
I thought Google was just search and a few services like Drive, Docs, Gmail etc Shouldn't Stadia fall under the branch of Alphabet and omit all instances of using 'Google' in their marketing? Why use the Google name for something not remotely related to search?
Because the Google brand is still orders of magnitude more recognized than Alphabet especially in mass market. I would wager a decent chunk of their target audience doesn't even know what Alphabet is
Google is much more than that; think Google Cloud, which I think this falls into. Also even hardware (Chromecast, Pixel) falls under the Google umbrella!
Brand identity, I suspect. They're the only folks in the world who are allowed to (legally) prepend "Google" to a service or product, which is essentially free marketing.
Anyone know of a "how will Stadia perform on my ISP" check (all I see is a bandwidth check, which is not the same)? I'm not expecting anything (I'm on average 50ms ping to servers, 120ms ping if you include processing on the remote end), but it would be good to have confirmation.
I'm also disappointed by the dramatic extension of the "you don't own the games you buy", since there's not even an option to download the titles and play offline. It gets more worrisome based on Google's demonstrated "go to HN" form of customer support.
Last mile times are always going to cause lag. 5g won't be rolled out for years, then you'll need a phone to take advantage of it so that's not going to help. Last mile in US performance is really poor unless you're on full fiber which isn't offered in most of the US. Even with direct peering to the ISPs, which they don't have, this isn't likely to be a superior experience compared to a local machine. They'll have to push the entire video stream along with the intelligence. That's a lot of data that can't be lagged.
No. I don't not believe they've done this. They don't peer easily or often and peering with local partners is not something most people want to do, even Google. It takes trust on the part of the local service provider, which Google hasn't built as Google is often a direct competitor to their local products. Peering at the ISP level is really hard because it's all relationship management. Google couldn't manage their own fiber and built up a good deal of animosity with other networks in doing so, especially in the US.
Interesting information. There's definitely a bit of marketing going on there, but it seems that they have at least some peering. Without concrete public evidence otherwise I'll concede that Google must have great peering.
From a network administrator's point of view, they're an absolute joy to work with too.
If you're share any IXes with them at all, they'll peer with you. Private / appliance based peering has additional requirements, but that's par for course.
Does anyone have any numbers on how well they perform on average to above-average connections? I'm on Google Fiber now so obviously the test passes with flying colors, but I'm thinking about going back to moving often (between big cities) that probably won't have as accessible fiber, and a "portable console" like this sounds perfect -- as long as it still works well on first-mile, average connections.
... Does Google not have any data centers in Australia? (Granted, it isn't a given that Stadia might run out of those DCs, but with Borg, I don't see why they couldn't.)
That won't help. The connection to your house in Australia is using ancient copper lines that is all rotted out and stops working in the rain. In absolute best case conditions you could use this service but most of the country would struggle to stream 1080p reliably.
The internet upgrade in Australia (NBN) is well known as the biggest government fuck up in the last 20 years.
This is not a joke or an exaggeration, thanks to the NBN being switched from fibre to copper, my parents now have no internet when it rains, is windy, or there is lightning in the area.
All to upgrade them from 13Mbps to 17Mbps. Yes, I'm being serious.
They have one in Sydney. Only European and North American countries were listed in the launch announcement. I'd expect Australia and Asian countries, where Google have data centers, to follow some time later.
I just don't see how they are going to compete with Microsoft on this, or Sony for that matter. I can't help but think this will be killed off in the next 2-3 years due to low adoption. Microsoft and Sony already have their foot in the door, and xCloud is supposedly going to be an E3 topic...and I'm sure they will bundle it with existing Xbox Live services for a bump in price.
Google has proven me wrong in the past, but they've also killed a lot of products like this.
Uh, cross-platform gaming will be huge. It says it will work in a Chrome browser. This is running on Linux and using Vulkan as well, so I imagine the open source community will want to try to adopt these technologies more and more since it is clearly scalable and efficient enough to run a live streaming service of this magnitude. I'm happy to see less games developed in proprietary frameworks and to be supported on more operating systems than Windows.
There's no denying the underlying idea is big, the question is can Google actually penetrate the market, or have the grit to see it through when adoption is low in the beginning. I'm betting no, but we'll have to wait and see.
First time someone gets bored at Google they will drop this like nothing with a month or two notice and any games purchased will be vapor. Google doesn't care about it's users. It's just another platform to extract data mining or ai from. Google makes massive unilateral consumer unfriendly changes before breakfast. They barely care about business customers. If you're not ads or ad related and bringing in money you're not worth anything.
Didn't notice I was being downvoted. Legitimately don't care about it either. I'll be dead most likely within a few years and I can't take internet points with me or cash them in to take care of my family when I'm gone. Thanks for the kind words though.
Microsoft came out of no-where with the original XBox. You had Playstation, Nintendo, and Sega. It can happen, just need the right motivations for customers.
And if 5G lives up to it's promises, this will be one of those first great products to take advantage of that extra bandwidth.
Microsoft Xbox persevered only because of Microsoft's deep pockets not because they necessarily did anything different enough to attract gamers. It was not a successful console.
Success? You mean they saw it as one area they did better? Microsoft considering killing off the xbox after the fist iteration because the sales figures were not where they hoped it would be and it was costing them.
To add on to this, I remember Gates said _something publicly like "I expect to lose about a billion dollars on it before it pans out" when launching xbox. I remember that it just seemed a very genuine "I think we should be in this market long term, and I know we'll lose a lot of money to get there. But we can afford it."
The XBox also had the luxury of amazing timing, although it's unclear whether it was intentional or luck.
Sony dominated generations 5 and 6 against weak competition. The Dreamcast was an outright failure that was discontinued a few months before the Xbox's release, and the Gamecube was a commercial disappointment; which practically handed Microsoft a #2 showing.
Right now all three incumbents appear strong and evenly matched, which may not leave Google much of a hole.
To me this seems like xCloud is in response to Stadia. Google has the infrastructure and Microsoft and Sony need to work together to compete. This would be similar to how Microsoft and Sony responded to the Nintendo Wii.
The problem is that Microsoft can't really be taken seriously in the gaming market, or in any consumer space where they might have good or great products but little to zero traction, and Sony doesn't have the network infrastructure.
From what I understand, Sony and MS are literally throwing xbox's/ps4 hardware into racks and streaming from them. Doesn't seem very scalable or cost effective.
Google built their game platform from the ground up for the cloud, including specialized graphics hardware. Sounds like it will be able to scale up to meet demands of games, while the other services are just renting a console-in-a-datacenter to the user.
Microsoft certainly isn't just filling server racks with Consumer model Xbox Ones, if that is what you have pictured. They have rack-mount servers that share the Xbox Architecture.
The Xbox One and PS4 are modified PC architectures with slightly specialized graphics hardware. All three are doing the exact same thing: building traditional server racks, just with with an added focus on GPU power/performance. Google doesn't have a leg up in their datacenters, and if anything has the detriment that both Microsoft and Sony can run Consumer-targeted software builds directly on their racks, whereas supposedly Stadia needs new game builds, customized to the new hardware.
From a full-system integration might not be cost ineffective:
1. Single SKU for Server & Client (volume reduces cost)
2. Games target & optimize for this hardware already (nothing new)
3. Microsoft & Sony are essentially *the* targets (no platform integration cost)
4. Proven user adoption (approximate ROI known for these projects)
5. Brand recognition (xbox and playstation are household names)
6. Price (Microsoft is doing subscription for service + catalog)
7. Bought publishers (Microsoft & Sony "own" many dev shops)
8. Primary library vendor (DX11)
9. Network Effect (I bought an xbox because all of my friends owned one)
The only new components Microsoft needs:
1. Mount Game (iSCSI)
2. Output (HDMI to RTMP transcode)
3. Input
I'm not saying either solution is better (I prefer Google's approach) but they're only doing it if they've run the numbers.
> Azure has more DC and compute power around the world than Google
Interesting. Do you have a source for this?
Last I heard, Google's products are responsible for a significant proportion of all internet traffic e.g. in 2013 - 6 years ago - Forbes reported that it was 40% [1]. I think I heard more recently it was getting close to 50+% now but I cannot find any sources.
I'd be surprised to learn that MS is handling more traffic than Google and so has more DCs and more compute... or are they pissing money up the wall and just building data centres that are sitting 99% idle purely for bragging rights?
You're confusing Google's main services vs GCP and Azure. Stradia will be running on GCP, xCloud will be running on Azure. Azure has more data centers than GCP by a large amount.
Where did you read that Stadia will be in GCP only? From the looks of it, they are sharing a lot of infrastructure with YouTube which implies otherwise.
While I agree Microsoft is going to be a major and probably the biggest competitor to Stadia, I don't think number or size of data centers makes any difference here. Microsoft has traditionally not been a "cloud" company while as Google has lived it's entire life as one. Google definitely has an advantage here given it's technically their turf. Not saying MS are incapable of delivering cloud workloads but Google definitely is considered the better of the two when it coming to cloud infrastructure and talent. This might be changing now rapidly though.
What are you talking about? Microsoft has Azure and before they had that, they had numerous Internet scale services like hotmail. Microsoft has vast experience with building and running internet scale applications. Just like Google has.
It's one thing building Azure in response to AWS and GCP and another thing innovating to support something like Google search for decades and then using the same knowledge and tech to build other cloud services. Of course Microsoft is totally capable of delivery cloud workloads but they can still be considered the underdog here when it comes to Google vs MS
I'd say MS is pretty well positioned to compete against Google: they have the infrastructure plus an actual good catalogue of games. Sony may not have the infrastructure on their own, but by partnering with Microsoft, they'll become a solid competitor too since they have an excellent games catalogue.
Google are the ones who will have to prove themselves here, IMO.
I don't think it's as hard as you'd imagine. Gamers are the craziest of early adopters and tech enthusiasts. They'll flock to you if you give them a great product. Unlike other areas (messaging, social media), you don't need the critical mass to have a successful product especially with cross-play becoming more and more common/acceptable. Even if you need the critical mass, it's much easier to get it with a great product in the gaming industry compared to others.
If Google delivers a great product here, they'll for sure have a huge number of users IMO.
Go on a number of the gaming subreddit and you’ll see Stadia is being met with distaste and hesitation. Gamers are increasingly tiring of the games-as-a-service model, and this is a step even further in that direction.
Personally I think this will have the same lifetime as a lot of other google products: it’ll launch, have some success, and then be killed unceremoniously a couple of years down the line.
People viewing gaming subreddits most likely already own a console or gaming PC and aren't the target audience for Stadia. Google's aim is to open up gaming to new markets of people who only have low end PCs, laptops or mobile devices.
Go into gaming related subreddits, even for beloved and succesfull games and products - and marvel at the toxicity and negativity you'll likely see all over the place.
Game reddits (and other forums) are legendarily toxic.
I think it's very hard. The best article ever written on this subject is "So You Want to Compete with Steam" [1] and it applies as equally well to Playstation/Xbox.
I wonder where the ads come in. I can imagine creating an ad network and placements in-game, which would then let them offer the product for free/cheap to users, and pay a cut of the money to game creators who hook up the placements.
Probably cause Firefox is much slower than Chromium-based browsers, especially when it comes to hardware acceleration support for video streaming in Linux.
The architectural idea behind Stadia is interesting. The tacit assumptions here seem to be that the only games worth playing are multi-player, and also it's a real PITA to build a good gaming rig these days. The first assumption allows that there must be some shared state; and with the second, you extend the shared state to include the entire UI, and you use a video codec to ship it.
Lots of benefits to Google and game authors in terms of DRM - players no longer even have access to the game code. Nor do they have access to the "low entropy" network messaging stack. There will be literally no opportunity to write low entropy bots (although Sikuli style keyboard/mouse bots will always be possible, of course).
It's interesting to compare/contrast the trade-offs with traditional shrinkwrapped and more modern Steam/Blizzard style game distribution. It seems clear that Google wants to leapfrog Steam here, and go toe-to-toe with Netflix.
Do you really believe this? I've actually looked into buying a gaming rig recently, and the amount of choices one has to make is impressive. Plus, even if picking and assembling hardware is easy (and it isn't for the average person), there is the aspect of system administration. I haven't admin'd a Windows box for a long time, but it's not a responsibility I'd take lightly.
Yes, if you are even the least bit technically orientated it's extraordinary easy. There are many incredible resources online with prefab builds and suggestions. It's the easiest time in history to do so.
All of my clan friends none of whom are programmers or even in the tech industry all managed to do it fairly easily with help from guides and friends online.
IME, every time I go to buy a new PC (haven't bought a new PC since 2006!) I'm told to "wait" until the next, better buttkicker or core i13 comes out. I end up not buying anything.
LOL... well as soon as Ryzen 3000 series drops on July 7th, then get that, or see if they have some good deals on previous generations at that time. If you need something now, just go with a Ryzen 5.
Yes, I really do. Just because there are a lot of options, doesn't mean it is difficult, just that you didn't have enough knowledge at the time that you felt comfortable with to make a decision.
I'd encourage if you're going to buy to build it yourself. It is really easy, and pretty much everything is color coded. There are thousands of great videos you can watch too. Figure out what size of mobo and case you want, grab a Ryzen (my preference) CPU, and one or two Samsung M.2 drives. If you don't pick a case with a power supply, then add that to your cart and figure out what kind of graphics card you want. The RX 580 is a great deal, especially if you plan on using Linux. Grab some RAM and a compatible motherboard and you're good to go. All this for $800 or less, depending if you just stick with one hard drive.
Installing Windows is super easy. You just plug in a USB drive and startup your computer. I'm not sure what kind of system administration you're looking for. If you're looking for a bunch of bloated unnecessary spyware, then yeah you'd prob be better off buying a computer at Walmart, but then again I am surprised you're on Hacker News if that is what you're after.
Won't work. The reason multiplayer games work over the internet is game engines compensate for latency by prediction. But when I move my mouse I don't want to wait a third of a second for the view to change. The problem with Google is they test everything on local 10G networks with near zero latency and the servers are walking distance away. Then they produce these abortions of products that are killed off 2 years later.
Yeah basic input lag is about as enticing as a 2KG chunk of a plastic helmet strapped to my head.
I bet in 10 years time we will still be playing on a PC with a GPU and a monitor on the desk.
Yup, as someone who wrote action networked games when I was in gamedev this is pretty on point. You're not going to get any chance at latency correction so jitter(which tends to be bursty) on the connection is going to really hurt you.
Really not seeing how they pull this off. Even a couple of congested wifi channels is enough to put latency jitter into the connection that's noticable.
Back in gamedev we did all sorts of tricks with dead reckoning and the like to hide/compensate for it. With the current architecture I don't buy that you'll be able to make those same saving adjustments.
Maybe it can find a place, at the right price (perhaps free), location, game type, mechanic and implementation.
Here, google says the base will be free, but you have to buy the games. But will publishers drop their price enough? Would a low-quality version damage their franchise/brand? Second, will publishers modify their mechanics and implementation, to hide latency?
The other way is with low-latency internet - so would need to be geographically close, like a city-sized LAN party. Perhaps Seoul?
Both need to begin as disruptions, selling their strengths (cheap, convenient, simple, easy), in circumstances/usages where their weaknesses don't matter (latency, bandwidth), starting small and growing as work it out. e.g. a fun game that only really works as a cloud game. (is that possible?)
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 345 ms ] threadGoogle needs to be more transparent about device support though. The stream highlighted Chromecast Ultra/Android, but not much else (e.g. if there is an iOS client, or compatibility with a base $35 1080p Chromecast/Chromecast protocol for smart TVs) [EDIT: the FAQ is more clear: https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9338946]
There are things that were released on iOS first by Google, like the Gboard keyboard, for example. So Google is not at all averse to iOS or in the habit of avoiding it in any way.
Talking about shooters, in the traditional multiplayer setup input-to-display latency isn't actually a concern, because input-to-display doesn't go over the network at all. When you move your mouse, the display update loop doesn't contain a network roundtrip. There is only the concern of latency to the server for resolving which hits actually connect, and I agree with you that having this latency be roughly the same for everybody is probably quite a bit more important than how low it is.
With game streaming, the input-to-display loop does include a network roundtrip, which makes it harder to aim.
If you've ever tried to play a shooter with <15 fps, or suffered from the mouse input lag that some games used to have on Linux in the past, you should know what I mean: aiming with the mouse crucially relies on a feedback loop where you correct your hand movement based on what you see on the screen. The longer that feedback loop takes, the harder it is to aim.
That's what the concern is with competitive shooter play on game streaming services. (And it's why I wrote that other types of competitive games may not be affected as much, but it's been a long time since I've played a lot of games, so what do I know...)
If it creeps up into the 40's and 50's though, it will for sure.
Sample naive algo:
-Get a color range (RBG) of the enemy model's head.
-Take screenshot of screen and scan for pixel in that range.
-If match, get the x,y pos of that pixel.
-Set mouse(or controller) pos to that x,y pos.
-Click
E.g https://github.com/Dewep/POC-AimBot-Overwatch
The sample code worked well enough for Blizzard to forcibly take it off the internet.
However, for the aimbots, since you are sending your input to Google's servers, they could detect the input patterns of cheaters.
Isn't that exactly what happens today on a console or a PC?
Similarly fishing and mining bots and the like for games like WoW would translate to repetitive farming type activity.
Arguably I think being in a browser window would make it easier to do.
Imagine building a REST API and not having to worry about request validation, sanitation, authorization, data scoping, etc. because you can 100% trust that the input you're processing is from your own client. Wouldn't that be perfect?
1) Unless cross-platform play is forbidden or the game is exclusively streamed-only, the cheaters will just use a different platform and will still ruin your game the same old way. It's the cheater's platform of choice that matters.
2) Games are some of the least security conscious pieces of software out there [1], primarily written in C++. There are bugs, lots of bugs. Process-takeover enabling bugs. I'm sure Google sandboxes the game to protect their systems, however cheaters only need access to the game process to enable most of their desires. Yes this would raise the bar in how easy it would be to cheat. Average Joe Cheat Engine users would be gone, but more skilled cheat makers will continue business as usual and their released cheats will do the exploits hidden from the actual people doing the cheating.
Bonus: See this cute hack that injects flappy bird into Super Mario World. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0
--
[1] Even AAA developers are clueless about threat models. Games like Tom Clancy's The Division [2] and Fallout 76 [3] are multiplayer games that put extreme trust into the client. Trust that nobody would modify their script files, trust that the client is always telling the honest truth.
[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20170611084112/http://gafferongam...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/fo76/comments/9u71m1/get_ready_for_...
Given Google's abysmal history of supporting its software and hardware products, see e.g., the Nest fiasco from a few weeks ago, only a fool or someone with cash to waste would invest in a Google hardware device before it's proven popular by the market.
Seems like a false equivalence "free skin on top of Gmail" != paid-for service like this one.
The hardware would be a weird thing to be worried about though. Chromecast won't be going anywhere, and the controller is still usable even if Stadia ceases to exist.
I completely understand the question. I think there's a couple of things I would answer to that. One is our commitment to this business is extraordinary. If you look at the list of games, and crucially, the list of game companies that are backing Stadia, you can see the level of interest and support. Google is committed to this for the long term, we have made very significant financial investments in this. And we have an incredibly dedicated team who is helping to make Stadia reality.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48525703
Words are cheap, though.
Words are very cheap.
https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS44901819
I can't see Google dropping it unless Apple abandons theirs first.
Even average the numbers from a site like gCemetery gives you > 5 years, and that number is already biased because it doesn't count the lifespan of products that are still alive.
If the controller is indeed "dumb" (just sending inputs), why wouldn't there be compatibility with Xbox or PS4 controllers?
If the history of non-main consoles has taught us anything (Nvidia Shield, Ouya, etc), you have to have games and a controller. Seems Google has games covered, but why try and reinvent the wheel with a new controller?
I'm not counting the cost of Destiny 2.
And it appears as though it will be compatible with other controllers. (Probably not the Chromecast version, though.)
May I ask how you arrived at this conclusion?
> Do I need to use your Controller? (Stadia Controller)
> No, you can use many popular HID compliant controllers when playing via USB cable on Chrome or mobile. To play on your TV you will need to use the Stadia Controller and Google Chromecast Ultra.
I fear for the latency in general.
The brains is Google’s cloud.
The controller is not dumb, it connects to Google.
Also, as I understood it other "supported" controllers can be used (per https://youtu.be/k-BbW6zAjL0?t=683) but then you need to use another device/platform that does the connect-to-Google part, e.g. Chrome on PC.
edit: http://stadia.com/faq says USB HID controllers are supported on Chrome and mobile.
edit 2: and https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9338852 explicitly says PS4 and Xbox One controllers are supported.
> or in the Chrome web browser with the standard HID controller of your choice.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/6/18654632/google-stadia-pri...
Yes. The controller connects directly to your game instance over WiFi. It doesn't need to go through a box first and be relayed (this can shave a significant amount of latency off controller inputs).
> What "costs" $129 if there's a subscription model attached to this?
For $129 you get a controller ($69), a Chromecast Ultra ($60), 3 months of Stadia Pro ($30), the full Destiny 2 game with all the DLC ($?? I forget).
You may be confused with how Stadia Pro works. It's just like PS Plus, you occasionally get a free game or two and it enables you to play at 4K in 5.1 surround sound. Without Stadia Pro you can still play any Stadia game you own, without a fee.
> why wouldn't there be compatibility with Xbox or PS4 controllers?
But there is compatibility with XBox and PS4 controllers. It was in the video and in their original announcement. You just can't really use them with the Chromecast AFAIK but you can with any computer and some tablets / phones.
> but why try and reinvent the wheel with a new controller?
You can bring your own or use theirs for the best latency / game experience possible on Stadia.
How on earth would it do that? WiFi alone is a significant part of the latency here! Not to mention the huge jitter it brings. Screw in your smart cheap-ass 802.11b light bulb and watch your game feel off.
No, they want this stuff to work with Chrome out of the box and so they needed to cut out the middle-man anyway, and people aren't exactly prepared to put an Ethernet cable into it. But let's not pretend WiFi is somehow an improvement over connecting it to a PC that just blasts your input out through Ethernet (where it then traverses all the same boxes that it does "over WiFi" anyways, minus the shared medium that is used to stream 4k to your TV)
Today there is input and display lag. You send the input to the box for processing. In streaming you send the input to a box who then relays that to a server. If you can cut out the server you can reduce a bunch of latency. It won't have lower latency than a locally played game but you can make it close enough.
> Not to mention the huge jitter it brings. Screw in your smart cheap-ass 802.11b light bulb and watch your game feel off.
Your knowledge of WiFi seems to be about 8 years out of date. Not only is it really difficult to find 802.11b anything anymore (even stuff buried in a basement; seriously 802.11b devices started coming out in 1999) but this is pretty much a non issue in almost any router made in the past decade. The majority of routers (especially the better ones) use dual or tri bands to better handle interference and backwards compatibility with older standards.
If you have issues with your WiFi I'd suggest upgrading your router. Seriously, they're pretty great nowadays especially if you get a triband almost anything :)
If that's was just the nature of the game, that's not a very honest choice of game. Every game I've bought for myself is in recent memory was more responsive.
This is meaningless unless you can be more precise.
As someone who used to play fighting games competitively I know that it makes a huge difference if it's sub 1 frame input lag or not. It's the difference of being able to execute certain combos with 1 frame links (basically the time between inputs) 100% of times instead of <50% of the time.
Which is huge in a competitive environment.
Here's a recent HN thread on the revolution of compensating for network latency in QuakeWorld: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19915698
You can simulate ~instantaneous input with this kind of approach, but not if the input has to travel to the server and back before it's registered locally.
Most people won't care about this, but it will certainly put a ceiling on serious people (e.g. streamers) trying to play popular, competitive games on Stadia.
I only used the Shadow gaming VM service so far and the servers are in a neighbouring country, with 100 Mbit/s bandwidth and 30ms ping to 1.1.1.1, so not optimal conditions, but GTA IV, Minecraft and other games were not fun to play due to the input lag.
http://www.gcping.com/ to the closest Google data center puts me at 12ms median.
edit: gcping.com puts me at 40ms
So yes, if the game(s) you want to play one of the included games and the service goes bust you don’t lose much. If you purchased a title and service goes bust then you likely lost that money.
Except I had to pay for the console $400, pay for PS Plus to play online $60/yr, and pay for games that I want to play $60/game.
But with PS4 I'm locked in to playing on my 1 TV at home or a small catalog of games I have very little interest in with PS Now.
With Stadia, if I can play the latest AAA games anywhere for $10/mo and the experience is rock solid 99% of the time, I'll be all over this.
The basic version is also free, which is something Sony isn't going to be able to offer me. But with Stadia I can play on my TV, on my desktop, on the go, etc.
I buy most of my games digitally whether or PSN or Steam. If either of those go out of business, I'm pretty much SOL. I don't see Google allowing you to claim your license for local copies as the Stadia hardware is specialized and custom, not something you can emulate easily outside of it's infrastructure, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.
I'm tired of updating my GPU drivers and experinece (5-10 minutes), then launching Steam, waiting for it to update and restart (2-3 minutes), then picking the game I want to play, waiting for it to update and install (5-10 minutes), then finally launch the game and have it spend more time connecting to servers before I can game.
The value prop of seeing a game trailer or game video that seems interesting and being able to say "play with stadia" and it just throwing me right into the game is the feature that speaks most to me.
If Stadia does this and it works well enough, i'll gladly get rid of gaming PC.
I never understood this complaint. You can be perfectly fine running GPU drivers from a year ago. You don't need to update them every day.
With Steam, it "updating" every time you run it seems to be a lie really, but I think most people who run Steam just leave it always on.
The games, I have 400 on Steam. Maybe 1-3 update per day on average, and there's lot's of overlap ie 90% of my library hasn't updated in a year, and 9% of the leftover updates maybe once a month.
The $10/mo gets you 4K streams (you get 1080p without a subscription), and occasional free and discounted games (like PS+ does). At launch, the free title will be Destiny 2 + all expansions (including the one releasing later this year).
The $129 gets you a Chromecast Ultra ($60), and the controller ($70), and 3 months of the subscription ($30) for you and a friend. Both the Chromecast and the controller are usable outside of Stadia.
Sounds about right. By the time it comes to EU it will be abandoned by Google and shut down in a year or so
Disc: Googler.
From the list I see that they don't have any new EU states and they don't have even Portugal.
Which is quite strange, because internet speed there on average much better (fiber is quite popular) than in the old EU.
I think the issue is lack of google servers in those countries.
https://store.google.com/us/product/stadia_founders_edition
There's some other play here? Not really sure what google's strategy is, but these prices make it clear they don't need to make money.
I'm astounded at HN's ability to spin anything as a negative.
> these games are second-rate titles from the last year
since when were games like AC: Odyssey or BL3 "second rate"?
Of course they aren't going to have all games (out of the gate, we can assume they are working on licensing) or have exclusive titles (for obvious reasons).
Usually I'm right there with you, but Google doesn't exactly have a good public perception around products and services without good profit margins. If they're not making money from it, it could be shut down at any moment (even for paid physical hardware, like the Nexus Q). "Too cheap" is a real fear.
You buy in at $170. You subscribe for the 4k offering @ $10 / month. They shutter the service after 1 year after you've paid $120 in monthly fees.
In total, you're out $290. You got a "free" Chromecast Ultra ($60), so you're only out $210.
That's honestly not that bad. Sure, you could have just bought a new XBox One S, but the value of those degrade over time, as well and, as much as MS wants you to believe it, the One S is not a 4K system. It's hard to measure the value of the entertainment you got using it. In my case, I definitely would have achieved $210 in entertainment value out of the system over the course of a year.
Maybe they'll revisit the pricing in a year instead of just cancelling it...
I'm not even entirely sure what you're arguing... that it's okay to pay $300/yr for a video game system plus the cost of video games? That if you paid $300 for an Xbox and Microsoft discontinued the system after a year you'd be okay with the price?
Assuming the worst like you have, you paid $300 for a video game system that didn't include any video games and after a year you weren't allowed to play it anymore. That's pretty fucking awful. Even if Microsoft stops making the Xbox One, you still get to keep playing the games you bought.
The stadia pricing does not sound completely unfeasible when taking into account the 130€, another 70€ from the extra controller, cut from game sales and the fact that casual gamers do not spend their days play the most computationally demanding titles. Some extra €€ would come from family plans and there might be some synergies with their cloud computing business (for example using spare capacity from GCE for Stadia).
[1] https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ex51-ssd-gpu
How would an ad supported version fit into that model? I thought it was a fantastic model!
The publisher/developer would receive a share of the revenue collected from the advertiser.
OR do the 4K stream option with no monthly payment but have ads that don't interfere with the gameplay.
I expect most have the knee-jerk reaction of "ADS?! N0! NEV3R!". But what if you get to play top games for free by ignoring ads that don't interfere with the game? Like how you get free internet search results by ignoring ads.
Games on the Pro subscription aren't free by the way either. Pro subscription just allows 4k/60fps streaming and some limited free games like Xbox Live and Playstation Plus. Most games whether on the Pro subscription or Free will still have to be bought by individuals.
Wonder if the paid sub won't require a payment for games in the future.
Even with a console you still have to pay to play online, so I don't see this as necessarily a huge problem if I have to pay $10 to get the online aspect and still pay for the games
130$ (probably more with shipping) is a good deal of money for me, I'd feel a lot better pulling the trigger if Google didn't have a history of abandoning stuff.
Or they could bill you at a slightly higher price per minute, up until you reach a maximum, where you are charged full price for the game.
There's a lot of room to play with pricing models with streaming (if they can get game publishers to agree).
I'm also disappointed by the dramatic extension of the "you don't own the games you buy", since there's not even an option to download the titles and play offline. It gets more worrisome based on Google's demonstrated "go to HN" form of customer support.
The best test is going to be using it. There are too many factors to have a good predictive test.
Can't directly refute this, but wouldn't you think GCP is peered with the vast majority of local ISPs (in America and maybe the EU)?
From a network administrator's point of view, they're an absolute joy to work with too.
If you're share any IXes with them at all, they'll peer with you. Private / appliance based peering has additional requirements, but that's par for course.
Most of the pushback is on the ISP end.
The internet upgrade in Australia (NBN) is well known as the biggest government fuck up in the last 20 years.
For anyone who thinks this is hyperbole, I assure you it's not, my internet quite literally grinds to a halt when it rains too much.
All to upgrade them from 13Mbps to 17Mbps. Yes, I'm being serious.
Google has proven me wrong in the past, but they've also killed a lot of products like this.
And if 5G lives up to it's promises, this will be one of those first great products to take advantage of that extra bandwidth.
Sony dominated generations 5 and 6 against weak competition. The Dreamcast was an outright failure that was discontinued a few months before the Xbox's release, and the Gamecube was a commercial disappointment; which practically handed Microsoft a #2 showing.
Right now all three incumbents appear strong and evenly matched, which may not leave Google much of a hole.
But they are in this market for a long time and are taken serious.
Google built their game platform from the ground up for the cloud, including specialized graphics hardware. Sounds like it will be able to scale up to meet demands of games, while the other services are just renting a console-in-a-datacenter to the user.
Maybe it will matter, maybe it won't.
The Xbox One and PS4 are modified PC architectures with slightly specialized graphics hardware. All three are doing the exact same thing: building traditional server racks, just with with an added focus on GPU power/performance. Google doesn't have a leg up in their datacenters, and if anything has the detriment that both Microsoft and Sony can run Consumer-targeted software builds directly on their racks, whereas supposedly Stadia needs new game builds, customized to the new hardware.
Interesting. Do you have a source for this?
Last I heard, Google's products are responsible for a significant proportion of all internet traffic e.g. in 2013 - 6 years ago - Forbes reported that it was 40% [1]. I think I heard more recently it was getting close to 50+% now but I cannot find any sources.
I'd be surprised to learn that MS is handling more traffic than Google and so has more DCs and more compute... or are they pissing money up the wall and just building data centres that are sitting 99% idle purely for bragging rights?
1 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/08/17/fascinat...
Google are the ones who will have to prove themselves here, IMO.
Other players who could do this fairly naturally are Valve (steam link) and Nvidia themselves.
If they can get people impulse buying subscriptions/games, they'll get some traction.
Its not exactly breaking most people's bank to have a $9.99 subscription for all you can eat gaming.
For those who don't already have consoles, its a no brainer.
If Google delivers a great product here, they'll for sure have a huge number of users IMO.
Personally I think this will have the same lifetime as a lot of other google products: it’ll launch, have some success, and then be killed unceremoniously a couple of years down the line.
Those are the herds we all profit from. Not whales but cows. Why would I want to be on the bleeding edge and get a shit experience?
1) software as a service
2) streaming music
3) streaming video
4) digital games
There just isn't enough people caring about physically owning something these days.
and since most games use the same steam stub this would be a pretty easy thing to do
Game reddits (and other forums) are legendarily toxic.
I think it's very hard. The best article ever written on this subject is "So You Want to Compete with Steam" [1] and it applies as equally well to Playstation/Xbox.
[1] https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-...
1. They are also targeting people with no gaming pc / console
2. A big part of the plan is the leverage Youtube to bring people in
3. Most of the infrastructure is already there for the rest of Google, so this isn't too much of an overhead for them
Put all this together, and it doesn't look as crazy as some think it is. #2 is really the crux of the strategy though.
Lots of benefits to Google and game authors in terms of DRM - players no longer even have access to the game code. Nor do they have access to the "low entropy" network messaging stack. There will be literally no opportunity to write low entropy bots (although Sikuli style keyboard/mouse bots will always be possible, of course).
It's interesting to compare/contrast the trade-offs with traditional shrinkwrapped and more modern Steam/Blizzard style game distribution. It seems clear that Google wants to leapfrog Steam here, and go toe-to-toe with Netflix.
It's like as hard as putting together some legos. For $800 you can get a great setup these days.
All of my clan friends none of whom are programmers or even in the tech industry all managed to do it fairly easily with help from guides and friends online.
I'd encourage if you're going to buy to build it yourself. It is really easy, and pretty much everything is color coded. There are thousands of great videos you can watch too. Figure out what size of mobo and case you want, grab a Ryzen (my preference) CPU, and one or two Samsung M.2 drives. If you don't pick a case with a power supply, then add that to your cart and figure out what kind of graphics card you want. The RX 580 is a great deal, especially if you plan on using Linux. Grab some RAM and a compatible motherboard and you're good to go. All this for $800 or less, depending if you just stick with one hard drive.
Installing Windows is super easy. You just plug in a USB drive and startup your computer. I'm not sure what kind of system administration you're looking for. If you're looking for a bunch of bloated unnecessary spyware, then yeah you'd prob be better off buying a computer at Walmart, but then again I am surprised you're on Hacker News if that is what you're after.
Yeah basic input lag is about as enticing as a 2KG chunk of a plastic helmet strapped to my head.
I bet in 10 years time we will still be playing on a PC with a GPU and a monitor on the desk.
Back in gamedev we did all sorts of tricks with dead reckoning and the like to hide/compensate for it. With the current architecture I don't buy that you'll be able to make those same saving adjustments.
Maybe it can find a place, at the right price (perhaps free), location, game type, mechanic and implementation.
Here, google says the base will be free, but you have to buy the games. But will publishers drop their price enough? Would a low-quality version damage their franchise/brand? Second, will publishers modify their mechanics and implementation, to hide latency?
The other way is with low-latency internet - so would need to be geographically close, like a city-sized LAN party. Perhaps Seoul?
Both need to begin as disruptions, selling their strengths (cheap, convenient, simple, easy), in circumstances/usages where their weaknesses don't matter (latency, bandwidth), starting small and growing as work it out. e.g. a fun game that only really works as a cloud game. (is that possible?)