I wouldn't be surprised if the Android app is a thin webview wrapper either. Stadia is streaming content, it's not like it needs much beyond what the web browser can do.
I remember trying to figure out why video playback was so horribly slow in Chrome on an ARM device. Streaming the video with mplayer would take around 60% CPU time (out of 400%), but playing it in Chrome it would max out at 400% and start dropping frames.
In the end the answer was that each video frame had to be copied between buffers about three times with Chrome, among other things, whereas mplayer was able to draw directly to the framebuffer.
Now I'm not saying it isn't theoretically possible to make this fast (and Chrome has various optimizations nowadays for a select number of platforms), but abstractions can be expensive - especially for video.
It's best to go as native as possible if you're on underpowered hardware or want to go easy on your user's battery life.
Ehhh, there is a big difference between streaming some Netflix show that has no input and can buffer minutes or more and a game where even 500ms of buffering are unplayable. Plenty of streaming protocols aren't designed to do that in the first place (hello, HLS) and I could very well imagine players just falling over if they are not in their happy place of usual buffer sizes.
i was skeptical at first, but i gave it a try with cyberpunk and damn i am impressed, works like a charm, needs more games and i'm ready to wipe my windows partition for good
You don’t own your games on any platform anymore unless you are buying physical console games. It’s more a question of do you trust the store.
I trust steam to continue existing and providing access for a very long time. I do not expect that stadia will still exist in 10 years. If the service ends up failing, they aren’t going to have gaming hardware sitting around for you to use it.
It doesn't have a ton of games, but if it has the games you're interested in, why not? I just ordered the Premiere bundle (to get 4K) and expect to play Red Dead Redeption 2, Jedi Fallen Order and The Elder Scrolls Online. They don't have much else that interests me at the moment, but so what? It's only $99.
Their Outcasters is great. I agree the selection isn't large, but they'll be bringing much more in 2021 and so far have been living up to that promise that past month or so. Looking forward to EA games being added along with more AAA titles that they promised. They'll also be adding Ubisoft+ support so you can play those games through Stadia.
* The input lag is _still_ noticeable. I've tried this from multiple locations on various devices, all with extremely good internet (one of them was in the UK with gigabit internet) and the lag was always there. I'm not ultra-snesitive to input lag either - I regularly use Nvidia GFN, which also has some input lag, but it's actually playable.
* The overall experience is very unpolished. You'll most likely get stuff to work but, if anything fails, you're gonna have to post on google forums and hope someone will be able to help you. (It's google, so no support). Also, none of the features promised at launch (join a game from YT, large MMO worlds etc) have been delivered.
* It's google, so who knows how long the platform will be around for. (It's a meme, yes, but it's also a real risk, compounded by the fact that you'll own the games that you buy solely on Stadia)
* You have to re-purchase games that you already own. e.g. if you own a title on Steam, you can't play it on Stadia, you have to buy it all over again.
EDIT: if you like what Stadia is claiming to offer, I suggest you look at Nvidia's GeForceNow, which has a couple of advantages:
* You can play the titles that you own on Steam
* (In my experience) gameplay is smoother
The one disadvantage is that games get removed from GFN based on the whims of the publishers (you'll still own the titles on Steam, you just won't be able to play them on GFN).
It seems some of your info is outdated and I suggest trying again. The input lag had gotten tremendously better this last year and imo isn't noticeable unless you play at competition level, and only with certain games.
I haven't seen any bugs in the past few months. You can also join games from Youtube now (launched like 3 or so weeks ago).
Google has never abandoned paid services, only free ones. Although they do migrate them sometimes like with Play to Youtube Music.
The repurchasing of games is valid criticism. I know they are currently working on adding support for Ubisoft+ games, which I believe will be live 2021 Q1 based off language in their updates.
I last tried Stadia in early Dec (on the gigabit connection in the UK). Still too laggy to the point where it significantly affected gameplay and I gave up after a while.
There is a very large segment of the gaming community that's all about the 120-144hz experience these days. A lot of that is how it feels. At "just" 120hz that's only 8.33 frame time. You start throwing in 20ms of input latency on top of all the rest and you'll never get that 120hz experience.
It doubly won't cut it for the PC VR crowd. Ever.
That's high-end low latency experience but where things are headed and certainly noticable by non-pro gamers. But sure, it's high-end.. Even though the PS5 supports 120hz.
But forgetting high end, 20ms is more than a frames time at 60hz! PC Gamer's review of Stadia had the input lag as high as like 70ms on some titles doubling the total input latency!
I'm confident when I say that Stadia/GFN will never be good enough for anything that you want to play competitively.
For example, I wouldn't use it to play CS, LoL, DotA or any other competitive game where reflexes matter.
However, these services are great for AAA single player games, like Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, RDR, The Last of Us etc. You can max out the graphics and enjoy the story/game world.
I tried with Destiny 2 and it worked just fine. However, with GeForce Now I can just use the (supported) games I already own and it works just as well.
Google will probably kill this service before long. I'd rather trust Steam and Uplay with the actual game purchase.
I've tried both but for me Stadia takes the cake. Also Google never canceled a paid service as far as I'm aware, only free ones (paid ones are just migrated, such as Play > Youtube Music).
Possibly controller related. I plugged my Xbox controller into a Mac once, and it didn't know what to do with it (unlike Ubuntu, which recognized it as soon as I plugged it in). Same with Safari. Chrome running on the same Mac correctly recognized the controller and made it available via the gamepad API.
macOS didn't get native support for Xbox controller/DualShock until 10.13, so that may have been the reason it didn't work. Any Mac running Catalina or Big Sur should have the same level of gamepad support as iOS does.
I would assume it is, although if I were google I would be plastering that everywhere as a (potentially less than) subtle jab at Apple being conniving with their store in the first place (I assume it's so they can have their product in future as the only native one?)
If stadia exists in 5 years time (which I think it will, but still).
That and I really can't picture it ever being fast enough to keep up with a real machine on anything other than pretty games rather than (say) counterstrike.
I use the web app, but certain features ("fleets") aren't available in the web version. So far, I haven't felt like I'm missing out on anything, but it's an intentionally incomplete experience.
I don't use twitter, but I could forgive them for being a little slow (if they are?) because of the sheer volume but the reddit app literally grinds my phone to a holt just to load one photo (often, too)
Apollo on iOS or RedditIsFun on Android. Both great apps. I only keep the official Reddit app on my device for the notifications as Apollo try and charge a decent amount for them as they need to do it server-side.
I tried browsing Reddit in incognito on my phone earlier and it wouldn't let me without installing their app, thankfully old.reddit.com exists. From clicking on a search result to viewing an image post took ~8 clicks. The flow went something like: Click on result -> ending on an AMP page and clicking a bottom sheet to view the post in my browser -> clicking on the title to view the actual post -> ending up on the actual post and being told I need to view it in the app??? -> changing the URL to old.reddit.com which is tedious with a phone keyboard -> finally load the page and click on the image
When you need ad revenue, you need user tracking as well as incendiary content. If you can't get people upset so they keep interacting, and then suggest they go and buy some new coffee filters, how will you ever turn a profit.
It's not like Reddit is one guy who lives in the woods, it has so much investor money they need to keep growth up. And app installs are absolutely a fantastic kpi, the more people they can force to install the app the more active installs they can claim, and that makes board members happy
To be completely fair I think hacker News also attracts a much more mature demographic. The mod team does a very good job in filtering out even borderline content.
I don't think I've ever experienced anything worse than how reddit tries to make you install their app. The amount of intentional intrusions it creates to make it impossible for you to actually use anything but the app is ridiculous.
The fact that they can do it suggests that their market position is a little stronger than some HNers suggest it is - i.e. google allow competitors to stadia.
Would couldn't every game be it's own app with a Stadia shim to launch and then the Stadia store just links to the real app store apps? seems to get around that restriction.
my only wish is some way to port the game you buy off stadia off to personal pc or some other cloud gaming service because I don't trust Google to stick with any of the products they launch (except maybe gmail and youtube), won't be surprised if they decide to kill stadia someday soon if it's not as successful as they hoped it would be.
Honestly Google would probably issue refunds if that ever happened. At some point, sp games are often not replayed or come down substantially in price. I'm not worried given their history.
Yes, you need to buy the game before you can play it on Stadia. If it was like Netflix, I think it'd be far more compelling, even with a relatively large monthly fee.
The subscription gives you 4k streaming and games that you can claim and keep (as long as you have a subscription, even if you interrupt it and resume). Very similar to Xbox Games with Gold:
I was skeptical at the beginning, but I prefer it to a Netflix style subscription (like Xbox Game Pass Cloud or Playstation Now)... since if the movie that you're interested in leaves the streaming service, it's not a big deal (or even if it's a whole season of a series), but if a videogame is leaving, that might be quite a bit more frustrating, since it might take you more than 1 month to actually complete your game. At least with Stadia I know that (as long as my Stadia account is active) I'll always be able to come back to the games that I'm playing now.
Just like on Windows and Luna, you can also make use of your Ubisoft Plus subscription, though (only available in the US, for now)
One nice thing is that a lot of modern games (like some available with Ubisoft Plus) have "cloud synced saves" or cross-progression. So you could stop playing on Stadia, and continue your savegame on another platform.
The optional Pro subscription gives you a ton of games to stream that you can only stream whenever your subscription is active.
Alternatively, you can just buy games outright and play them whenever/wherever; no subscription required.
I have ~70 games in my library right now because I claim the Pro games each month. If I were to cancel my subscription, my library would shrink to just the ones I've actually bought (Hitman and Cyberpunk).
For people thinking about streaming gaming, I highly recommend checking out Shadow.
It basically just gives you a Windows desktop you can install whatever you want in and stream games from there. It lets you use your entire investments in Steam, Epic, etc. with the benefit of a streaming service. It's also surprisingly not all that expensive (especially compared to buying equivalent hardware yourself).
It also entirely solves waiting for games to show up on these services, or going away (a la Geforce Now), and ownership issues. There's no problem even putting custom software, games, dev environments, whatever, into the Shadow machine.
I was about to buy an entirely new rig and tbh, I'm probably just going to get a Shadow subscription in a month or two.
note there may be a several month wait for your Shadow rig to be ready as they provision dedicated hardware upon subscription and are pretty popular at the moment.
It was legally very shrewd for Apple to assist Amazon on getting their game streaming service playable over the web [1]:
>“We worked with the Safari team to ensure that some of the things that weren't there are there, and that allowed us to kind of get to where we are today,” Luna head of engineering and technology George Tsipolitis said.
All they needed was one of them to cave and the others would follow. This significantly undermines the antitrust cases against them, especially the "essential facilities" claims.
Microsoft almost certainly would have preferred if no one had done game streaming through Safari on iOS, because they're a complainant about Apple's App Store policies [1]. That became untenable after Amazon went first.
They'll be widely used if even one big app (like gmail, facebook, or whatsapp) require use of a third party store.
A service could do a gradual shift to a third party store by saying "you must use a third party store for new installations only", and your users will migrate slowly as they get new devices.
How do you explain this theory that they care about the store and don't care about web apps, if web apps allow both developers and users to skip the store?
They care about the store primarily for some other other reason, and the fee is just incidental they don't care about? I say, "Unlikely".
If that was the case, then why did they ever create the store in the first place? They started out with no public store and all installed apps were fully internally owned and controlled. If they only cared about that, they already had that before creating the store. If they only created the public store to allow a wider range of other apps to exist for the users, many years of prior examples of external apps that a device/os vendor could support without caring about controlling or extracting a fee from existed already from PalmOS and WinCE etc. They didn't need any store, or they could have allowed a 3rd party to operate a curated convenient store, or they could have just maintained a directory that had listings that pointed to all the random apps on their own websites etc and the end user experience could be exactly as smooth as today. The os and the app package format could provide all the same user protections and procedural consistency.
No, they only care about the app store for 2 main reasons:
1 - Because other platforms were already more useful to users like Palm which already had thousands of unpredicable random special purpose apps for many years, and so they were simply required to provide some sort of equivalent facility whether they wanted to or not.
2 - To extract a fee from all of that activity.
Once web apps allow both developers and users to skip the store... then what? Apple still doesn't care? No way. Come on.
Apple created the store because it sells iOS devices.
It sells iOS devices because it’s a curated and environment where people feel safe to buy software, and because Apple can deliver apis for new hardware as they release it rather than moving at the speed of web standards.
Apps also can be engineered for privacy and security in ways that web apps cannot.
The store will always be a differentiator from the open web in this way.
It is in Apple’s interest to have both the best browser and the best native platform and store.
Looks like you're right... $61b in store sales vs $413b in device sales, but not sure where the raw profits stack up... that said, I still think investors would be upset to drop $61b in what is likely high margins.
Activities occurring after a regulatory lawsuit has been initiated rarely affect the outcome of the case, the logic being that such activities were taken solely to avoid litigation and may be dropped as soon as the threat of litigation disappears.
If anything, this undercuts Apple's position that the restrictions were necessary in the first place.
Do you mean that Apple's policies on cloud gaming aren't a specially-crafted edge case? Because if so, it seems like you're wrong there. They allow browsers on the app store, which can access the whole (unmoderated) web, so it can't be about moderation. Seems like they just don't want anyone to create an "app store" within their App Store. Either that, or they're trying to keep competition at bay while they develop Apple Arcade. Maybe there's a better explanation that I'm missing.
This has nothing to do with why they don't want game streaming apps on the store. Running a Gecko shell instead of webkit on iOS wouldn't change their 'moderation' (preventing other app stores from being in the Apple App Store) stance.
I know this, but as judge2020 pointed out, that's irrelevant to my point. That said, it is relevant to the whole anti-trust thing because Apple has a stranglehold on browser features (such as PWA stuff).
It is very relevant. Another browser with e.g. push notifications in the appstore would be the equivalent of stadia displacing appstore games - but for 99% of all of appstore.
...and simultaneously knee-capping/slow-walking multiple web API implementation in WebKit while forbidding nimbler alternative rendering engines from their walled garden.
Is it using anything more than WebRTC? (Or HLS if the low latency mode is finally in?)
Is there a reason not to switch e.g. YouTube and Netflix, Zoom etc to a similar model and forego the app? (Yes, the app has its positives but also the 15%-30% tax)
On iOS that will mean not being able to use Cast for example. And of course, stadia customers (pc gamers) are more eager to jump through a hoop than Netflix customers.
AFAIK there's bit more with input devices (for low latency keyboard and mouse events and a portable interface to access joysticks and gamepads).
I think there's also some other APIs they need to coordinate with the stadia controller, though that may be optional.
Of course Google has been one of the companies that has been pushing for these APIs in the first place. (Which makes me wonder if Zoom would exist without Google meet...)
Using Stadia, I actually can see how it could be the future, but only once internet catches up.
I recently moved, and that's what made Stadia so much better. Now that I have gigabit fiber with unlimited data, and a WiFi 6 router, with less congestion, the quality of the streaming has been superb. I honestly can't tell I'm streaming. And the convenience of just starting immediately back into a game, no download or install, no updates, freedom to change screens at a whim, from PC, to TV to phone, to iPad, etc.
The only thing missing is for it to have much more content, and for some guarantee from Google that it won't be killed off.
I tried other similar services, like GamePass and PSNow, but they don't work as well, the streams are lower resolution, seem to have more artifact and the latencies are higher. So whatever Google is doin seems to be working, that said the game selection is so much better on PSNow and GamePass, and the option to install the games (which gives the best image quality and lowest latency), they still compete with Stadia.
At this point, I'm just hoping some more reliable company then Google comes up with a service that's just as reliable, maybe Amazon Luna will be it, or GamePass streaming could get a lot better, or PSNow, but the one I'm most hoping for is for Valve to get onboard and offer a Steam streaming service.
Edit: I also wish they added RT support, I feel a cloud gaming service should offer best graphic settings at all time, since that's one of the advantage I'm looking from it, paying monthly for hardware that gets kept up to date.
I worked on Google Fiber wifi routers ~5 years ago years ago and got to be one of the earliest dogfooders of Stadia. My personal take at the time was that gigabit internet needed a killer app, and cloud gaming could be it. Glad to see that dream being sort-of realized!
GeForce Now is great and you use games you buy on other platforms (eg Steam). Unlike Stadia, if the service doesn’t pan out you still have games, and access to much better sales, it’s also $5/mo and can handle Cyberpunk. I don’t see anything stadia offers over GeForce now.
Quick disclaimer, I am a Google shill who has tried both services. Overall I prefer GeForce Now slightly, I think Stadia does have some advantages. Whether or not they're worth it depends on your use case. GFN works great to supplement a gaming PC when you're traveling or laying in bed, but has some deal breakers that keep it from being the main way I play games.
If you use the free version of Stadia, it's the same resolution as GFN. If you're a monthly subscriber, the picture quality is much better than GFN because GFN doesn't support resolutions higher than 1920x1080. GFN is REALLY frustrating if you have a 1920x1200 or 1440p monitor. Because of this, GFN can complement my gaming PC (like when traveling with a crappy laptop) but never replace it. Stadia probably could replace my gaming PC if I was willing to buy the subscription.
No waiting period (its rare, but there's occasionally a wait for GeForce Now even with the founders edition)
Games don't disappear from the service like they sometimes do with GeForce Now (granted, if a game you bought disappears in GFN you can still install locally so this may be a win for GFN as long as Steam's cloud saves don't glitch on you)
Stadia doesn't require you to install a 200 megabyte app (assuming you already have Chrome installed)
GFNs video clip feature is a bit buggy for me compared to Stadia although I haven't used those features enough to tell if GFN is consistently glitchy or if I'm just unlucky with the NVidia overlay
The UI for GFN feels clunkier to me but I suppose that's personal opinion. It feels more like VPNing into a really locked down PC, where you'll hear Windows sound effects when there's errors and if a game crashes you're stuck with a Steam error and you have to restart the whole app and wait in a queue to play again. Stadia feels a bit more well-integrated to me.
I tried Stadia and it worked fine, but I own games on steam and given the size of the Google graveyard there’s no way in hell I’m going to “buy” a game on a service that will get shitcanned in a month. 1080p isn’t great, but I’m not a huge gamer and $5 is a steal.
> I don’t see anything stadia offers over GeForce now.
One advantage is that you can play Cyberpunk for free on Stadia (after you purchase the game, which you also have to do for GFN too). Also, last I tried GFN, it seemed a bit clunkier (it felt like more of a "PC on cloud" that you managed, vs a built for web service).
Disclaimer: I work at Google, though not on Stadia.
$5/mo is as close to free as you can get and if I ever decide to get a gaming PC in the future I don’t have to buy Cyberpunk again. If stadia could play games I own independently I’d be all for it, but why risk investing in something that will almost certainly get shut down, if only because I’m far from the only person making this calculation.
One thing in the works is game studio subscriptions. UBISoft has this already and I've signed up for 14.99. Right now it is only supported over Luna (Amazon's streaming game service) but Stadia support is coming soon. For large studios this model makes a lot of sense. I would use it for EA Sports as well. I don't need to "own" the game, but I do want to own a relationship with the publisher that will let me play their game anywhere. It'll be interesting to see how major consoles react to this where licensing doesn't really let publishers give their own direct user's access to titles on the console. I can see game streaming being a big win for publishers and a big loss for consoles which are essentally middle men.
Yeah that makes sense. As they start making more money from in game ads and user tracking I suspect that subsidy may make subscriptions more profitable on publisher end as well.
I think they're pretty even now for the user, but Stadia has some pretty big business advantages long term that may already be evident in that GeForce Now has queues and Stadia doesn't. The main thing is Nvidia probably doesn't have as much work it can do on machines that aren't being used, whereas the Stadia machines can probably be doing useful work even when the gamers are all sleeping. Stadia can therefore justify having way more capacity than is usually needed, which means having more machines closer to users (lower latency) and being able to deal with peaks better. For everything cloud-related, scale is such a big advantage it seems like it'll be hard long term for Nvidia to compete with Microsoft, Amazon, or Google.
All it takes is a neighbor with a router on the same channel as you or a little bit of rf noise(usb3 has a clock rate that tends to do this) and the whole thing comes tumbling down.
Back where I did gamedev we designed gameplay specifically for network usage(predictive based design) or had time-rewind, or both(ala half-life/cs). I just don't see how this works unless you're okay with a quality bar well below what a local client will provide.
You make it sound like this is an easy option for everyone, but it's not - your router is likely to be where the phone/fibre socket is, and that's not always going to be where your PC is. If you know what you're doing, you might be able to pull a cable and install a new socket, but that's definitely no lt for everyone.
There is nothing complicated about pulling wire. There are tons of videos on Youtube. People just convince themselves there is all this stuff they can't do - and what do you know! When you don't even try you can't do it.
Take a look at Shadow https://shadow.tech/. It's different in that you manage your own gaming PC, but in some of ways that is preferable. With the Steam stream-to-device functionality you can effectively use it on devices that aren't directly supported by Shadow too.
> You can play any Windows game, not just selectively supported ones
This is a big selling point for Shadow vs the other platforms. I was considering doing something similar with an AWS image but if this is custom tailored to “just work” I’ll definitely give it a go.
Sorry for the ambiguity, I only meant that you manage installing games (and sometimes even drivers) yourself, as opposed to having a fully managed service where everything "just works" like Stadia. You're right that you don't get your own specific PC, which is actually part of the appeal. The hardware is abstracted away like in any cloud service, so you don't need to concern yourself with upgrading it or fixing it.
Yeah stadia is magic. I'm a tech person, so most things I see leave me a little unimpressed. "Oh yeah, I get how they do this". With my crappy wifi and slow internet I don't udnerstand how they manage such an amazing experience. Most of the time I get full reoslution, no lag. It's amazing. I'd love to learn how they do it..
Contrast that with AirPlay 2. Locally, between 2 speakers (wifi router in the same room) and I frequently get dropouts. What ?
Streaming is the future but the Stadia business model is not. What happens if (or perhaps when?) Google decides to kill it? I'm probably in Google's target market for Stadia - I don't own a gaming PC and have reliable gigabit fiber. But I'm not prepared to drop vast sums into building a library on Stadia if I could lose everything. They need to work on a more sustainable business model (for them and consumers) but in the meantime they need to work with publishers so existing players can request Steam keys. If they did that I would be willing to give Stadia a shot.
I presume they would give you digital copies you could play on your own computer considering that is exactly what they did for the assassin's creed odyssey beta I participated in for stadia a few years ago.
Have you tried Nvidia’s GeForce Now? I would be curious to hear your opinion of it compared to the other similar services you’ve tried. I’ve heard the most good things about nvidias offering in this space.
Prediction: Apple will nerf performance when streaming video in Safari on iOS (perhaps specifically while using game controller APIs) to prevent Stadia, xCloud etcetera circumventing the App Store, under the guise of "power saving", or similar "for the users' own good" rubbish
The post right above yours describes how Apple added capabilities to Safari in cooperation with Amazon’s team to enable this use case... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25544687
Apple needs streaming games via the browser to be good enough so that the app store is not considered a monopoly, but not good enough to be an actual viable alternative.
156 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadIn the end the answer was that each video frame had to be copied between buffers about three times with Chrome, among other things, whereas mplayer was able to draw directly to the framebuffer.
Now I'm not saying it isn't theoretically possible to make this fast (and Chrome has various optimizations nowadays for a select number of platforms), but abstractions can be expensive - especially for video.
It's best to go as native as possible if you're on underpowered hardware or want to go easy on your user's battery life.
Disclosure: I work on Stadia, and am speaking only for myself.
[0] https://9to5google.com/2019/11/08/google-stadia-app-play-sto...
Because obviously then it would be irrelevant whether it's Safari, Flutter or Visual Basic.
If you have a high end gaming pc, probably not, but if you have a regular laptop or want to play on your tv, then I'd say yes
Edit
Should add that you need a solid internet connection
Do you care if you actually own your games? Or are OK with google owning the games, they just allow you to play them?
FTFY
I trust steam to continue existing and providing access for a very long time. I do not expect that stadia will still exist in 10 years. If the service ends up failing, they aren’t going to have gaming hardware sitting around for you to use it.
* The input lag is _still_ noticeable. I've tried this from multiple locations on various devices, all with extremely good internet (one of them was in the UK with gigabit internet) and the lag was always there. I'm not ultra-snesitive to input lag either - I regularly use Nvidia GFN, which also has some input lag, but it's actually playable.
* The overall experience is very unpolished. You'll most likely get stuff to work but, if anything fails, you're gonna have to post on google forums and hope someone will be able to help you. (It's google, so no support). Also, none of the features promised at launch (join a game from YT, large MMO worlds etc) have been delivered.
* It's google, so who knows how long the platform will be around for. (It's a meme, yes, but it's also a real risk, compounded by the fact that you'll own the games that you buy solely on Stadia)
* You have to re-purchase games that you already own. e.g. if you own a title on Steam, you can't play it on Stadia, you have to buy it all over again.
EDIT: if you like what Stadia is claiming to offer, I suggest you look at Nvidia's GeForceNow, which has a couple of advantages:
* You can play the titles that you own on Steam
* (In my experience) gameplay is smoother
The one disadvantage is that games get removed from GFN based on the whims of the publishers (you'll still own the titles on Steam, you just won't be able to play them on GFN).
I haven't seen any bugs in the past few months. You can also join games from Youtube now (launched like 3 or so weeks ago).
Google has never abandoned paid services, only free ones. Although they do migrate them sometimes like with Play to Youtube Music.
The repurchasing of games is valid criticism. I know they are currently working on adding support for Ubisoft+ games, which I believe will be live 2021 Q1 based off language in their updates.
Wasn't aware of the YT thing.
There is a very large segment of the gaming community that's all about the 120-144hz experience these days. A lot of that is how it feels. At "just" 120hz that's only 8.33 frame time. You start throwing in 20ms of input latency on top of all the rest and you'll never get that 120hz experience.
It doubly won't cut it for the PC VR crowd. Ever.
That's high-end low latency experience but where things are headed and certainly noticable by non-pro gamers. But sure, it's high-end.. Even though the PS5 supports 120hz.
But forgetting high end, 20ms is more than a frames time at 60hz! PC Gamer's review of Stadia had the input lag as high as like 70ms on some titles doubling the total input latency!
For example, I wouldn't use it to play CS, LoL, DotA or any other competitive game where reflexes matter.
However, these services are great for AAA single player games, like Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, RDR, The Last of Us etc. You can max out the graphics and enjoy the story/game world.
Google will probably kill this service before long. I'd rather trust Steam and Uplay with the actual game purchase.
> Use Google Chrome to play Stadia on computers & tablets.
https://stadia.google.com/warning/8
Which seems strange given that I believe both iOS and macOS Safaris use essentially the same code base.
The UI clearly acknowledges that I clicked on the game, but something is obviously supposed to happen and it just doesn't happen.
That and I really can't picture it ever being fast enough to keep up with a real machine on anything other than pretty games rather than (say) counterstrike.
I don't use twitter, but I could forgive them for being a little slow (if they are?) because of the sheer volume but the reddit app literally grinds my phone to a holt just to load one photo (often, too)
Nothing like that here on HN, and it's some of the best news/comments on the web.
When you need ad revenue, you need user tracking as well as incendiary content. If you can't get people upset so they keep interacting, and then suggest they go and buy some new coffee filters, how will you ever turn a profit.
It's not like Reddit is one guy who lives in the woods, it has so much investor money they need to keep growth up. And app installs are absolutely a fantastic kpi, the more people they can force to install the app the more active installs they can claim, and that makes board members happy
To be completely fair I think hacker News also attracts a much more mature demographic. The mod team does a very good job in filtering out even borderline content.
Some games are also available for free:
https://stadia.google.com/games/super-bomberman-r-online
https://stadia.google.com/games/destiny-2
The subscription gives you 4k streaming and games that you can claim and keep (as long as you have a subscription, even if you interrupt it and resume). Very similar to Xbox Games with Gold:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/collections/gameswithg...
I was skeptical at the beginning, but I prefer it to a Netflix style subscription (like Xbox Game Pass Cloud or Playstation Now)... since if the movie that you're interested in leaves the streaming service, it's not a big deal (or even if it's a whole season of a series), but if a videogame is leaving, that might be quite a bit more frustrating, since it might take you more than 1 month to actually complete your game. At least with Stadia I know that (as long as my Stadia account is active) I'll always be able to come back to the games that I'm playing now.
Just like on Windows and Luna, you can also make use of your Ubisoft Plus subscription, though (only available in the US, for now)
One nice thing is that a lot of modern games (like some available with Ubisoft Plus) have "cloud synced saves" or cross-progression. So you could stop playing on Stadia, and continue your savegame on another platform.
Alternatively, you can just buy games outright and play them whenever/wherever; no subscription required.
I have ~70 games in my library right now because I claim the Pro games each month. If I were to cancel my subscription, my library would shrink to just the ones I've actually bought (Hitman and Cyberpunk).
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/2/18292177/microsoft-ebooks-...
So, there's a precedent, and this leaves me a bit hopeful. OTOH, normally you can only ask for a refund if you played a game for < 2 hours
It basically just gives you a Windows desktop you can install whatever you want in and stream games from there. It lets you use your entire investments in Steam, Epic, etc. with the benefit of a streaming service. It's also surprisingly not all that expensive (especially compared to buying equivalent hardware yourself).
It also entirely solves waiting for games to show up on these services, or going away (a la Geforce Now), and ownership issues. There's no problem even putting custom software, games, dev environments, whatever, into the Shadow machine.
I was about to buy an entirely new rig and tbh, I'm probably just going to get a Shadow subscription in a month or two.
note there may be a several month wait for your Shadow rig to be ready as they provision dedicated hardware upon subscription and are pretty popular at the moment.
>“We worked with the Safari team to ensure that some of the things that weren't there are there, and that allowed us to kind of get to where we are today,” Luna head of engineering and technology George Tsipolitis said.
All they needed was one of them to cave and the others would follow. This significantly undermines the antitrust cases against them, especially the "essential facilities" claims.
[1] https://www.engadget.com/luna-amazon-cloud-gaming-interview-...
After all, when game streaming runs in-browser, Apple forego their censorship/app review powers and their 30% cut of sales.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-18/microsoft...
Apple could allow 3rd party app stores knowing very well that they’ll be barely used
They'll be widely used if even one big app (like gmail, facebook, or whatsapp) require use of a third party store.
A service could do a gradual shift to a third party store by saying "you must use a third party store for new installations only", and your users will migrate slowly as they get new devices.
What they do care about is that they maintain control of their store.
They care about the store primarily for some other other reason, and the fee is just incidental they don't care about? I say, "Unlikely".
If that was the case, then why did they ever create the store in the first place? They started out with no public store and all installed apps were fully internally owned and controlled. If they only cared about that, they already had that before creating the store. If they only created the public store to allow a wider range of other apps to exist for the users, many years of prior examples of external apps that a device/os vendor could support without caring about controlling or extracting a fee from existed already from PalmOS and WinCE etc. They didn't need any store, or they could have allowed a 3rd party to operate a curated convenient store, or they could have just maintained a directory that had listings that pointed to all the random apps on their own websites etc and the end user experience could be exactly as smooth as today. The os and the app package format could provide all the same user protections and procedural consistency.
No, they only care about the app store for 2 main reasons: 1 - Because other platforms were already more useful to users like Palm which already had thousands of unpredicable random special purpose apps for many years, and so they were simply required to provide some sort of equivalent facility whether they wanted to or not. 2 - To extract a fee from all of that activity.
Once web apps allow both developers and users to skip the store... then what? Apple still doesn't care? No way. Come on.
It sells iOS devices because it’s a curated and environment where people feel safe to buy software, and because Apple can deliver apis for new hardware as they release it rather than moving at the speed of web standards.
Apps also can be engineered for privacy and security in ways that web apps cannot.
The store will always be a differentiator from the open web in this way.
It is in Apple’s interest to have both the best browser and the best native platform and store.
This statement is complete bullshit.
But in any case, that’s exactly why they want the browser to be successful too.
Otherwise there might be an antitrust case which would cause them to lose the store.
My comment reacts to a comment claiming Apple doesn't care about collecting a fee from web apps.
Web apps theoretically allow both developers and users to skip the app store, and thus it's fees.
Both users and many developers benefit from the store for reasons already outlined in ways that the web can’t replicate.
It’s not going to be ‘dropped’ just because streaming games don’t fit the model.
Perhaps you missed the top of this thread and lost track of what this conversation is even about?
If web apps can take the place of apps (and in broad strokes, yes they can) then the thought experiment is to ask "What if all apps became web apps?"
And that was just part of evaluating the plausibility of the position that Apple doesn't care about collecting fees from web apps.
If anything, this undercuts Apple's position that the restrictions were necessary in the first place.
For all I know, this may be in response to Stadia; I hadn’t seen this functionality when last I checked a few months back.
Do you mean that Apple's policies on cloud gaming aren't a specially-crafted edge case? Because if so, it seems like you're wrong there. They allow browsers on the app store, which can access the whole (unmoderated) web, so it can't be about moderation. Seems like they just don't want anyone to create an "app store" within their App Store. Either that, or they're trying to keep competition at bay while they develop Apple Arcade. Maybe there's a better explanation that I'm missing.
Is there a reason not to switch e.g. YouTube and Netflix, Zoom etc to a similar model and forego the app? (Yes, the app has its positives but also the 15%-30% tax)
I think there's also some other APIs they need to coordinate with the stadia controller, though that may be optional.
Of course Google has been one of the companies that has been pushing for these APIs in the first place. (Which makes me wonder if Zoom would exist without Google meet...)
I recently moved, and that's what made Stadia so much better. Now that I have gigabit fiber with unlimited data, and a WiFi 6 router, with less congestion, the quality of the streaming has been superb. I honestly can't tell I'm streaming. And the convenience of just starting immediately back into a game, no download or install, no updates, freedom to change screens at a whim, from PC, to TV to phone, to iPad, etc.
The only thing missing is for it to have much more content, and for some guarantee from Google that it won't be killed off.
I tried other similar services, like GamePass and PSNow, but they don't work as well, the streams are lower resolution, seem to have more artifact and the latencies are higher. So whatever Google is doin seems to be working, that said the game selection is so much better on PSNow and GamePass, and the option to install the games (which gives the best image quality and lowest latency), they still compete with Stadia.
At this point, I'm just hoping some more reliable company then Google comes up with a service that's just as reliable, maybe Amazon Luna will be it, or GamePass streaming could get a lot better, or PSNow, but the one I'm most hoping for is for Valve to get onboard and offer a Steam streaming service.
Edit: I also wish they added RT support, I feel a cloud gaming service should offer best graphic settings at all time, since that's one of the advantage I'm looking from it, paying monthly for hardware that gets kept up to date.
If you use the free version of Stadia, it's the same resolution as GFN. If you're a monthly subscriber, the picture quality is much better than GFN because GFN doesn't support resolutions higher than 1920x1080. GFN is REALLY frustrating if you have a 1920x1200 or 1440p monitor. Because of this, GFN can complement my gaming PC (like when traveling with a crappy laptop) but never replace it. Stadia probably could replace my gaming PC if I was willing to buy the subscription.
No waiting period (its rare, but there's occasionally a wait for GeForce Now even with the founders edition)
Games don't disappear from the service like they sometimes do with GeForce Now (granted, if a game you bought disappears in GFN you can still install locally so this may be a win for GFN as long as Steam's cloud saves don't glitch on you)
Stadia doesn't require you to install a 200 megabyte app (assuming you already have Chrome installed)
GFNs video clip feature is a bit buggy for me compared to Stadia although I haven't used those features enough to tell if GFN is consistently glitchy or if I'm just unlucky with the NVidia overlay
The UI for GFN feels clunkier to me but I suppose that's personal opinion. It feels more like VPNing into a really locked down PC, where you'll hear Windows sound effects when there's errors and if a game crashes you're stuck with a Steam error and you have to restart the whole app and wait in a queue to play again. Stadia feels a bit more well-integrated to me.
One advantage is that you can play Cyberpunk for free on Stadia (after you purchase the game, which you also have to do for GFN too). Also, last I tried GFN, it seemed a bit clunkier (it felt like more of a "PC on cloud" that you managed, vs a built for web service).
Disclaimer: I work at Google, though not on Stadia.
Stadia also doesn't have to pay the Windows tax
Back where I did gamedev we designed gameplay specifically for network usage(predictive based design) or had time-rewind, or both(ala half-life/cs). I just don't see how this works unless you're okay with a quality bar well below what a local client will provide.
Amazing.
This is a big selling point for Shadow vs the other platforms. I was considering doing something similar with an AWS image but if this is custom tailored to “just work” I’ll definitely give it a go.
I don't see any mention of this on the site, only:
"After you subscribe, we create your Cloud PC in our nearest datacenter."
Unless I misunderstood in that it's not your own PC, but an instance of one you have full control over.
Contrast that with AirPlay 2. Locally, between 2 speakers (wifi router in the same room) and I frequently get dropouts. What ?
The post right above yours describes how Apple added capabilities to Safari in cooperation with Amazon’s team to enable this use case... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25544687