It was so obvious, from the start. a) What changed about internet connections to provide the stability and speed needed to make this work consistently over the past 10 years? Nothing! Most...
It was so obvious, from the start.
a) What changed about internet connections to provide the stability and speed needed to make this work consistently over the past 10 years? Nothing! Most innovation went into making mobile internet a little less shitty. No sign of the trend moving anywhere significantly better within the next 10 years. Most people don't mind waiting 2 seconds to load a website and as long as that is true, nobody will pay for faster internet.
c) The pricing was ridiculous. Probably because it was realistic. Running games on the cloud requires massive hardware to run at full capacity for hours on end. Plus the internet connection for streaming in real time. Plus the money to optimize games for their system, maintenance, etc. Even for a company like google, that couldn't have been cheap.
d) Who likes google? The brand is toxic, almost like Facebook. Most people don't care but geeky early adopters do and it was hard to find genuine grassroots support and goodwill for a megacorp gaming product.
What changed about internet connections to provide the stability and speed needed to make this work consistently over the past 10 years? Nothing!
Nothing?
During the testing period for the August 2011 Report, the average speed tier was 11.1 Megabits per second (Mbps);6 for this Report, it increased to 14.3 Mbps, an almost 30 percent increase in just one year. Because ISPs also did a better job in the testing period for this report of meeting or exceeding their advertised speeds, the actual increase in experienced speed by consumers was even greater than the increase in advertised speed—from 10.6 Mbps to 14.6 Mbps—an almost 38% improvement over the one year period.
...
In 2012, across all technologies, latency averaged 31 milliseconds (ms), as opposed to 33 ms measured in 2011.
The weighted average advertised speed of the participating ISPs was 193.9 Mbps, representing an increase of 33% from the previous year’s Tenth Report and over 43% from the Ninth Report.
For most of the major broadband providers that were tested, measured download speeds were 100% or better than advertised speeds during the peak hours (7 p.m. to 11 p.m. local time).
...
The measured median latencies ranged from 8 ms to 28 ms (with the exception of CenturyLink DSL, for which the median latency measure was 37 ms).
Measured DSL latencies (between 21 ms to 37 ms) were slightly higher than those for cable (12 ms to 26 ms), and latencies were lowest for fiber ISPs (8 ms to 13 ms).
Gaming does require bidirectional communication, and I'm not sure a 20mbps upload median looks that great in 2022. For download, I appreciate that reporting the 136mbps median is more helpful than...
Gaming does require bidirectional communication, and I'm not sure a 20mbps upload median looks that great in 2022. For download, I appreciate that reporting the 136mbps median is more helpful than talking about the supposed 194mbps average, which is probably skewed up by gigabit fiber customers - an option whose availability is geographically limited. But games are also considerably heavier now than they were ten years ago. And for a service like Stadia, it's important to consider that speedtest.net defaults to the topologically closest server it can find, so if the connection to Stadia isn't as close to the user (though admittedly google does try to be) the quality of service will be degraded in comparison.
Sure, Stadia requires bidirectional communication, but the download vs upload requirements are not even remotely in the same ballpark, since download is necessary for transferring large amounts of...
Sure, Stadia requires bidirectional communication, but the download vs upload requirements are not even remotely in the same ballpark, since download is necessary for transferring large amounts of video data, but upload is merely for sending user input. Google itself doesn't even list upload speed requirements for Stadia, only download speeds... that's how little upload speed actually matters.
And as for latency, Google has a pretty decent amount of Edge Points of Presence around the world, which are what connect the internet at large to their internal fiber network linked Data Centers... so I don't think there would be as much latency difference between connecting to those and Ookla's SpeedTest servers as you might assume. See: https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure
Yeah, if anything, I thought the pricing was wholly unrealistic and clearly being subsidized in an attempt to build a user base. Google was basically selling games for the same price they go for...
Yeah, if anything, I thought the pricing was wholly unrealistic and clearly being subsidized in an attempt to build a user base. Google was basically selling games for the same price they go for on Steam or in stores, and supplying the compute resources and bandwidth to play them for free. I can see that being profitable for $60 linear games players buy and finish in 8-15 hours. Once you mix in sale prices though, and the popularity of already inexpensive games that offer hundreds or even thousands of hours of play time, I don't see how it would ever turn a profit without either charging a subscription or charging a lot more money per game.
There is no magical way to distribute games where the user does not have to end up paying for the hardware they are played on in some way or another. Personally, I'd rather invest in that hardware directly, rather than have its cost slowly leeched out of me through inflated prices or a subscription fee that holds my games hostage.
I really like the idea of game streaming in general. I was reasonably certain that Stadia was doomed to the Google graveyard, but bought a couple games on it anyway (during their promotions where...
I really like the idea of game streaming in general. I was reasonably certain that Stadia was doomed to the Google graveyard, but bought a couple games on it anyway (during their promotions where you also get a free Chromecast ultra just for buying the game) and payed for a few months of Pro to see how the 4k/HDR performance was. It was all around a pretty great experience for me on Comcast gigabit.
I hate the math of paying for new generations of consoles every few years. Let's say you get the cheaper models of Xbox and Playstation, and/or whatever Nintendo puts out, generally not caring about mid-cycle upgrades. That might conservatively put you at around $1000 every four years, which is equivalent to around $20/mo for hardware. Add a couple of the subscription services, let's say that adds another $20/mo, and then you buy on average $180 of games per year (enough for three big-studio AAA titles without any DLC). So now you're at the equivalent of around $55/mo.
Now compare to a hypothetical service with Stadia's pricing model that has all the same games you'd buy in the above model. You're still buying the games on this service, so the $180/year cost still exists. You could stop there, since HypotheticalService lets you stream your games for free, but in the above model you're paying for online services, so we add on the $10/mo for HypotheticalService Pro which gets you monthly free games and 4k streaming. So now you're at the equivalent of around $25/mo. You could argue that you also have to pay more for your internet service to ensure streaming at high quality, but let's be honest--if you're the type of gamer who buys two or three consoles every generation you're probably already also paying for internet capable of 4k streaming. Even so, let's say you have to pay an extra $25/mo for your internet to get it up to speed, you're still on-par or slightly better off than the console model.
I think the technology is finally there for streaming, at least for people who live in cities or other areas with high speed internet and are able to optimize their home wifi or wire everything up. I think the main barrier is not network speed, but the lack of cohesion and a willingness for the big megacorps to play nice together. HypotheticalService will never exist (Stadia and likely-equally-doomed Luna probably being the closest we'll ever get) because all the companies want their own walled garden and recurring subscription income and hardware lock-in and none of the gamers want to pay for 3 different streaming services with 3 different HDMI dongles and 3 different wifi controllers each with their own exclusive game library and no cross-play or cross-save when they can get that already with consoles with a better quality experience that's not tied to their internet performance.
Add on to all that the trend toward ridiculous microtransactions, DLC "season passes" that cost almost as much as the base game itself, and now all the NFT nonsense, the gaming landscape has become very depressing to me. Personally I'm skipping this generation of consoles, giving up on my hopes for a viable streaming service, and going to stick to retro and indie Linux gaming for a while.
Personally, game streaming terrifies me. If it ever sees significant mainstream success, I can see publishers moving to it exclusively as a means to further erode consumer rights. I also see it as...
Personally, game streaming terrifies me. If it ever sees significant mainstream success, I can see publishers moving to it exclusively as a means to further erode consumer rights. I also see it as a means to leech more money out of consumers. Why buy a console when you can subscribe to Stadia Pro for $15/mo. It's cheaper today, but after 2.5 years you will have spent more on that subscription than it would have cost you to buy a PS5. And would Stadia Pro really still be $15/mo if it was successful? I doubt it, as I'm betting it is priced to lose money today in order to try and build a substantial user base.
And that's not to mention that no streaming service has figured out how to do high framerates or VRR, or get the latency consistently low enough to play rhythm, fighting, or many other types of games on a competitive level.
Having grown up in the 2000s, one aspect I would lament would be the loss of mods. Counter-Strike, DotA, Dear Esther, The Forgotten City : all of those started out as mods and ended up either...
no streaming service has figured out how to
Having grown up in the 2000s, one aspect I would lament would be the loss of mods. Counter-Strike, DotA, Dear Esther, The Forgotten City : all of those started out as mods and ended up either being massive success or even starting whole genre by themselves.
Sure, it has never easier to use commercial grade engines for free, and we have a vibrant indie scene nowadays, but I would think that starting from an already established gaming grammar is easier.
The tech is good enough now for a casual gamer like me, and will only improve with time. I kinda get the consumer rights angle, but I also feel like that toothpaste's been out of the tube ever...
The tech is good enough now for a casual gamer like me, and will only improve with time. I kinda get the consumer rights angle, but I also feel like that toothpaste's been out of the tube ever since Steam and online DRM became a thing, so a move to streaming doesn't feel like a huge leap in that direction as much as an inevitable baby step. It happened with movies and TV--I still collect blu-rays and almost everyone I know thinks that's crazy now--and I think it's inevitable with gaming too.
As far as cost, as long as the service stays current and supports latest-gen games, improving visuals and other capabilities at a rate comparable to what I'd get by buying a PS5 and Xbox Series X now and a PS6/Series Y in four years and a PS7/Series Z in eight (and so on) then paying a roughly commensurate monthly fee and avoiding the hassle of console shortages and scalper inflation seems perfectly reasonable to me. Especially since it comes with other perks like never having to wait for a 120gb game to download before I can play it after paying, and the ability to pause my subscription if I'm not in the mood or too busy to game for a month or two.
I hear this argument a lot and it holds no water with me. It is borderline trivial for me to take any game from my Steam library and make it run without Steam. If Valve declared bankruptcy...
I also feel like that toothpaste's been out of the tube ever since Steam and online DRM became a thing
I hear this argument a lot and it holds no water with me. It is borderline trivial for me to take any game from my Steam library and make it run without Steam. If Valve declared bankruptcy tomorrow and shut everything down, the overwhelming majority of my library would still be perfectly usable. The fact that users own copies of the bits that comprise the game means we have the power to ensure they live forever.
If a game exclusive to Stadia ever gets taken off the service, it will literally be gone forever with no possible recourse for customers or preservationists.
Tangential, but this is yet another great argument for why at least the majority of NFTs are worthless. If you have already downloaded all the game content, there can always be a jailbreak of...
The fact that users own copies of the bits that comprise the game means we have the power to ensure they live forever.
Tangential, but this is yet another great argument for why at least the majority of NFTs are worthless.
If you have already downloaded all the game content, there can always be a jailbreak of sorts to access it. If your ability to download said content is DRM-protected (e.g. a streaming video service), then death of a service is death of the product.
So many games have been inspired by users having played emulators of ROMs well after their commercial lifespan, I hope we don’t limit future programmers from experiencing modern artforms in the future due to lack of access.
Regardless, if you can download it freely, I would argue you own the art as much as anyone that lays claim to NFT ownership.
That is true if you wanna play new releases right away. If you're a /r/patientgamers, you buy everything heavily discounted, with all the DLCs. https://psprices.com is an excellent way to track...
Add on to all that the trend toward ridiculous microtransactions, DLC "season passes" that cost almost as much as the base game itself, and now all the NFT nonsense, the gaming landscape has become very depressing to me
That is true if you wanna play new releases right away. If you're a /r/patientgamers, you buy everything heavily discounted, with all the DLCs. https://psprices.com is an excellent way to track deals, they even send you free email alerts for the games you selected. Despite the domain name, it covers all major consoles.
It’s a shame really, I’ve used every cloud gaming platform and none hold a candle to the reliability of stadias streaming tech. I saw the writing on the wall when they didn’t really care to do...
It’s a shame really, I’ve used every cloud gaming platform and none hold a candle to the reliability of stadias streaming tech. I saw the writing on the wall when they didn’t really care to do another anniversary deal other than the super cheap stadia premier bundles. I’m very much all in on cloud gaming, and before the activision-blizzard buyout I would’ve said geforce now was the next best thing. Unfortunately I think Microsoft is focusing on building their catalog for xcloud and they’ll do everything they can to keep their games off competing services. I love the idea of GeForce Now, spending the money to play games with RTX graphics without spending an arm and a leg on a graphics card is very tempting. Nvidia has a long way to go though, they need proper account sign-in pass through for steam and epic so launching a game is seamless, and they need to really improve the bitrate of their streams or at least dial it in better.
I think everyone saw this coming. Stadia worked well if your internet was fast and stable enough, however, this severely limits the potential user base and growth in the future in a way that isn't...
I think everyone saw this coming. Stadia worked well if your internet was fast and stable enough, however, this severely limits the potential user base and growth in the future in a way that isn't really in Google's direct control.
E.g. Sony/Microsoft can always make their consoles cheaper to increase player base, but Google cannot make good internet access cheaper, faster and more reliable (outside of expensive long term projects like Google Fibre).
It was so obvious, from the start.
a) What changed about internet connections to provide the stability and speed needed to make this work consistently over the past 10 years? Nothing! Most innovation went into making mobile internet a little less shitty. No sign of the trend moving anywhere significantly better within the next 10 years. Most people don't mind waiting 2 seconds to load a website and as long as that is true, nobody will pay for faster internet.
b) Google is infamous for killing of much-hyped products after investing billions. I guess we can soon add Stadia to the list.
c) The pricing was ridiculous. Probably because it was realistic. Running games on the cloud requires massive hardware to run at full capacity for hours on end. Plus the internet connection for streaming in real time. Plus the money to optimize games for their system, maintenance, etc. Even for a company like google, that couldn't have been cheap.
d) Who likes google? The brand is toxic, almost like Facebook. Most people don't care but geeky early adopters do and it was hard to find genuine grassroots support and goodwill for a megacorp gaming product.
I won't shed a tear.
Nothing?
vs. 2021
See also:
Gaming does require bidirectional communication, and I'm not sure a 20mbps upload median looks that great in 2022. For download, I appreciate that reporting the 136mbps median is more helpful than talking about the supposed 194mbps average, which is probably skewed up by gigabit fiber customers - an option whose availability is geographically limited. But games are also considerably heavier now than they were ten years ago. And for a service like Stadia, it's important to consider that speedtest.net defaults to the topologically closest server it can find, so if the connection to Stadia isn't as close to the user (though admittedly google does try to be) the quality of service will be degraded in comparison.
Sure, Stadia requires bidirectional communication, but the download vs upload requirements are not even remotely in the same ballpark, since download is necessary for transferring large amounts of video data, but upload is merely for sending user input. Google itself doesn't even list upload speed requirements for Stadia, only download speeds... that's how little upload speed actually matters.
And as for latency, Google has a pretty decent amount of Edge Points of Presence around the world, which are what connect the internet at large to their internal fiber network linked Data Centers... so I don't think there would be as much latency difference between connecting to those and Ookla's SpeedTest servers as you might assume. See: https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure
You're right about the upload, I was completely misremembering how Stadia works.
How was the pricing ridiculous? You just buy the game like you would on any other platform…
Yeah, if anything, I thought the pricing was wholly unrealistic and clearly being subsidized in an attempt to build a user base. Google was basically selling games for the same price they go for on Steam or in stores, and supplying the compute resources and bandwidth to play them for free. I can see that being profitable for $60 linear games players buy and finish in 8-15 hours. Once you mix in sale prices though, and the popularity of already inexpensive games that offer hundreds or even thousands of hours of play time, I don't see how it would ever turn a profit without either charging a subscription or charging a lot more money per game.
There is no magical way to distribute games where the user does not have to end up paying for the hardware they are played on in some way or another. Personally, I'd rather invest in that hardware directly, rather than have its cost slowly leeched out of me through inflated prices or a subscription fee that holds my games hostage.
TIL Youtube Originals were cancelled
I really like the idea of game streaming in general. I was reasonably certain that Stadia was doomed to the Google graveyard, but bought a couple games on it anyway (during their promotions where you also get a free Chromecast ultra just for buying the game) and payed for a few months of Pro to see how the 4k/HDR performance was. It was all around a pretty great experience for me on Comcast gigabit.
I hate the math of paying for new generations of consoles every few years. Let's say you get the cheaper models of Xbox and Playstation, and/or whatever Nintendo puts out, generally not caring about mid-cycle upgrades. That might conservatively put you at around $1000 every four years, which is equivalent to around $20/mo for hardware. Add a couple of the subscription services, let's say that adds another $20/mo, and then you buy on average $180 of games per year (enough for three big-studio AAA titles without any DLC). So now you're at the equivalent of around $55/mo.
Now compare to a hypothetical service with Stadia's pricing model that has all the same games you'd buy in the above model. You're still buying the games on this service, so the $180/year cost still exists. You could stop there, since HypotheticalService lets you stream your games for free, but in the above model you're paying for online services, so we add on the $10/mo for HypotheticalService Pro which gets you monthly free games and 4k streaming. So now you're at the equivalent of around $25/mo. You could argue that you also have to pay more for your internet service to ensure streaming at high quality, but let's be honest--if you're the type of gamer who buys two or three consoles every generation you're probably already also paying for internet capable of 4k streaming. Even so, let's say you have to pay an extra $25/mo for your internet to get it up to speed, you're still on-par or slightly better off than the console model.
I think the technology is finally there for streaming, at least for people who live in cities or other areas with high speed internet and are able to optimize their home wifi or wire everything up. I think the main barrier is not network speed, but the lack of cohesion and a willingness for the big megacorps to play nice together. HypotheticalService will never exist (Stadia and likely-equally-doomed Luna probably being the closest we'll ever get) because all the companies want their own walled garden and recurring subscription income and hardware lock-in and none of the gamers want to pay for 3 different streaming services with 3 different HDMI dongles and 3 different wifi controllers each with their own exclusive game library and no cross-play or cross-save when they can get that already with consoles with a better quality experience that's not tied to their internet performance.
Add on to all that the trend toward ridiculous microtransactions, DLC "season passes" that cost almost as much as the base game itself, and now all the NFT nonsense, the gaming landscape has become very depressing to me. Personally I'm skipping this generation of consoles, giving up on my hopes for a viable streaming service, and going to stick to retro and indie Linux gaming for a while.
Personally, game streaming terrifies me. If it ever sees significant mainstream success, I can see publishers moving to it exclusively as a means to further erode consumer rights. I also see it as a means to leech more money out of consumers. Why buy a console when you can subscribe to Stadia Pro for $15/mo. It's cheaper today, but after 2.5 years you will have spent more on that subscription than it would have cost you to buy a PS5. And would Stadia Pro really still be $15/mo if it was successful? I doubt it, as I'm betting it is priced to lose money today in order to try and build a substantial user base.
And that's not to mention that no streaming service has figured out how to do high framerates or VRR, or get the latency consistently low enough to play rhythm, fighting, or many other types of games on a competitive level.
Having grown up in the 2000s, one aspect I would lament would be the loss of mods. Counter-Strike, DotA, Dear Esther, The Forgotten City : all of those started out as mods and ended up either being massive success or even starting whole genre by themselves.
Sure, it has never easier to use commercial grade engines for free, and we have a vibrant indie scene nowadays, but I would think that starting from an already established gaming grammar is easier.
The tech is good enough now for a casual gamer like me, and will only improve with time. I kinda get the consumer rights angle, but I also feel like that toothpaste's been out of the tube ever since Steam and online DRM became a thing, so a move to streaming doesn't feel like a huge leap in that direction as much as an inevitable baby step. It happened with movies and TV--I still collect blu-rays and almost everyone I know thinks that's crazy now--and I think it's inevitable with gaming too.
As far as cost, as long as the service stays current and supports latest-gen games, improving visuals and other capabilities at a rate comparable to what I'd get by buying a PS5 and Xbox Series X now and a PS6/Series Y in four years and a PS7/Series Z in eight (and so on) then paying a roughly commensurate monthly fee and avoiding the hassle of console shortages and scalper inflation seems perfectly reasonable to me. Especially since it comes with other perks like never having to wait for a 120gb game to download before I can play it after paying, and the ability to pause my subscription if I'm not in the mood or too busy to game for a month or two.
I hear this argument a lot and it holds no water with me. It is borderline trivial for me to take any game from my Steam library and make it run without Steam. If Valve declared bankruptcy tomorrow and shut everything down, the overwhelming majority of my library would still be perfectly usable. The fact that users own copies of the bits that comprise the game means we have the power to ensure they live forever.
If a game exclusive to Stadia ever gets taken off the service, it will literally be gone forever with no possible recourse for customers or preservationists.
Tangential, but this is yet another great argument for why at least the majority of NFTs are worthless.
If you have already downloaded all the game content, there can always be a jailbreak of sorts to access it. If your ability to download said content is DRM-protected (e.g. a streaming video service), then death of a service is death of the product.
So many games have been inspired by users having played emulators of ROMs well after their commercial lifespan, I hope we don’t limit future programmers from experiencing modern artforms in the future due to lack of access.
Regardless, if you can download it freely, I would argue you own the art as much as anyone that lays claim to NFT ownership.
That is true if you wanna play new releases right away. If you're a /r/patientgamers, you buy everything heavily discounted, with all the DLCs. https://psprices.com is an excellent way to track deals, they even send you free email alerts for the games you selected. Despite the domain name, it covers all major consoles.
It’s a shame really, I’ve used every cloud gaming platform and none hold a candle to the reliability of stadias streaming tech. I saw the writing on the wall when they didn’t really care to do another anniversary deal other than the super cheap stadia premier bundles. I’m very much all in on cloud gaming, and before the activision-blizzard buyout I would’ve said geforce now was the next best thing. Unfortunately I think Microsoft is focusing on building their catalog for xcloud and they’ll do everything they can to keep their games off competing services. I love the idea of GeForce Now, spending the money to play games with RTX graphics without spending an arm and a leg on a graphics card is very tempting. Nvidia has a long way to go though, they need proper account sign-in pass through for steam and epic so launching a game is seamless, and they need to really improve the bitrate of their streams or at least dial it in better.
I think everyone saw this coming. Stadia worked well if your internet was fast and stable enough, however, this severely limits the potential user base and growth in the future in a way that isn't really in Google's direct control.
E.g. Sony/Microsoft can always make their consoles cheaper to increase player base, but Google cannot make good internet access cheaper, faster and more reliable (outside of expensive long term projects like Google Fibre).
Typical.