I use GeForce Now on a 2011 iMac/2014 Macbook Air.
- I can play games I've already bought on Steam, or GoG.
- It runs Cyberpunk 2077 very well.
- You can get from your desktop to your game very quickly, and I've never had a situation where there wasn't enough capacity.
True, but they would need a much lesser number of licenses compared to the number of users since they only need to make sure they have enough instances for concurrent usage.
There's so much FUD in this article I don't know where to start.
> For getting Destiny ready google had to deploy 2 of their engineers in Bungie's offices for 6 months to make sure that the game could release on time.
There's no mention of a possible delay in the article. I sounds like the Google engineers were there so they could optimize their own stack.
> And even after doing that, the game still runs at 1080p and is upscaled to 4k.
Stadia uses custom Vega 56 GPUs. It's not exactly known to run games at 4K. Sounds like a hardware limitation more than anything.
> Recently there have been reports of Game developers running into problems with the Linux scheduler and with Linux Torvalds proclaiming that the scheduler isn't the issue, these issues won't be going away soon.
Yes, as Torvalds explained, this spinlock "issue" was totally overblown.
> [With Windows, ] game developers wouldn't have to make any efforts to port a game to a completely new platform.
That's not true, there still would be some porting effort required, and all the QA that goes with it.
> Had stadia used Windows, they would have been able to tap into the already existing [multiplayer] player base.
There's nothing technically stopping Linux users from playing online with Windows users.
> Had stadia used windows, people would have been able to easily download their purchased games in the event of Stadia shutting down.
Yeah, I don't think so.
> Now all of these [network-optimizing] aspects are custom built and don't have anything to do with the operating system and hence would have been applicable even if google launched on Windows.
Really? Using Linux gives them a lot more freedom of movement because they can customize the network stack for their own requirements. That would be much harder to do on Windows.
> To summarize, Google Stadia would have been a much better service had they used Windows.
No. It's mostly an issue of lack of focus and wrong pricing model, where you pay a subscription and still have to pay full price for games you don't really own. Not to mention the unbearable lag if your connection isn't stable.
While I agree with the sentiment of meeting the developers where they are, I'm pretty sure the upfront licensing costs of Windows would have made Stadia a non-starter. I also doubt Google could have gotten a decent bulk licensing deal for this use-case given Microsoft demonstrating interest in cloud gaming with the XBox Game Pass streaming features.
We also have to remember that even if the underlying tech was Windows, PC games implementing multiplayer can be locked to a single environment like Steam, Epic, GoG Galaxy, Windows Store and not offer cross-play amongst them.
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 27.3 ms ] thread- I can play games I've already bought on Steam, or GoG. - It runs Cyberpunk 2077 very well. - You can get from your desktop to your game very quickly, and I've never had a situation where there wasn't enough capacity.
Assuming they could even get that to work technically, Microsoft would probably stick it to them with the licensing.
> For getting Destiny ready google had to deploy 2 of their engineers in Bungie's offices for 6 months to make sure that the game could release on time.
There's no mention of a possible delay in the article. I sounds like the Google engineers were there so they could optimize their own stack.
> And even after doing that, the game still runs at 1080p and is upscaled to 4k.
Stadia uses custom Vega 56 GPUs. It's not exactly known to run games at 4K. Sounds like a hardware limitation more than anything.
> Recently there have been reports of Game developers running into problems with the Linux scheduler and with Linux Torvalds proclaiming that the scheduler isn't the issue, these issues won't be going away soon.
Yes, as Torvalds explained, this spinlock "issue" was totally overblown.
> [With Windows, ] game developers wouldn't have to make any efforts to port a game to a completely new platform.
That's not true, there still would be some porting effort required, and all the QA that goes with it.
> Had stadia used Windows, they would have been able to tap into the already existing [multiplayer] player base.
There's nothing technically stopping Linux users from playing online with Windows users.
> Had stadia used windows, people would have been able to easily download their purchased games in the event of Stadia shutting down.
Yeah, I don't think so.
> Now all of these [network-optimizing] aspects are custom built and don't have anything to do with the operating system and hence would have been applicable even if google launched on Windows.
Really? Using Linux gives them a lot more freedom of movement because they can customize the network stack for their own requirements. That would be much harder to do on Windows.
> To summarize, Google Stadia would have been a much better service had they used Windows.
No. It's mostly an issue of lack of focus and wrong pricing model, where you pay a subscription and still have to pay full price for games you don't really own. Not to mention the unbearable lag if your connection isn't stable.
We also have to remember that even if the underlying tech was Windows, PC games implementing multiplayer can be locked to a single environment like Steam, Epic, GoG Galaxy, Windows Store and not offer cross-play amongst them.