Google Teaser? #Stadia

I'm a bit of a framerate and latency obsessive, so any form of streaming is likely to get a thumbs-down from me.

We should really be working to reduce latency and try to get back to where we were in the arcade/CRT days (<=16ms from input to screen response). Today there's all too often 100ms or so between input and screen response even without streaming being involved, which is really quite poor.

But the reality is that many players are now used to fairly-high-latency 30fps gaming on consoles, and even where the developers try their best to run at 60fps with minimal software-induced latency, you can have LCD TVs adding 60-100ms of latency (especially those that aren't in Game Mode).

So if you've got a particularly laggy TV, you really won't want to add streaming lag on top. But if you've got a low-latency TV/monitor, a good streaming experience probably won't feel any worse than you'd get now from a console connected to a laggy TV. You'll certainly notice it if you're a fighting game/platformer/shmup enthusiast, though...

 

My main concern is that if everything becomes streamed, I feel indies will make less and less profits. I ofcourse speak without knowing any of the details, but I cant imagine it would increase revenue for them, only canablize it.

 

I wouldn't be able to deal with 100ms input lag in a fast first person shooter like doom. Seems like a very weird choice to support it as an early game.

If they can somehow get the mousecursor to be rendered locally, you might be able to play RTS, RPG or Point and Click adventure games decently over streaming. For some super demanding RTS games that might even make sense, even more so when in multiplayer the game logic could be calculated only once for all players. That theoretically could solve a bunch of tech challenges in that domain, but that would really make such a game "streaming only", which I'm strongly opposed to.

 

Not all games need 16ms reaction time
and
Mainstream user don't care that much about that (gta has abyssmal reaction time)
-> I'm being sad by anticipation

 

GTA is entirely physics driven. Doom Eternal is the only game they've confirmed and it absolutely needs better than 100ms from input to visual change from a server, especially if people are expected to play it on poor performance panels. Not only that, but video compression techniques being used don't handle certain things very well. Have you ever looked at a particle dense scene on twitch or youtube, even at the highest quality settings? It's a mess.

 

I'm very sad indeed, because if it makes enough monies, the industry WILL shift, because who doesn't like trend chasing like the one who gave birth to still born children that are fallout 76 and anthem?

 

How do you expect it to make all this money when the reason people pushed back so hard against the Xbox One was because enough people didn't have stable enough connections for always online DRM? How do you expect it to make all this money when pretty much the entirety of North and South American online infrastructure is in the state it's in? How about Australia? That's an entire country where the idea of streaming games, even with local data centers, will be nigh impossible? What about the huge parts of Europe where internet connectivity is fast, but unreliable? What about the other parts of Europe where the opposite is true? What about Russia, where online infrastructure is also pretty awful?

There's effectively no way to actually handle this rollout without some sort of Arowx style nonsense future tech behind it.

 

A lot of the logic being touted for why streaming can work, is very much the same logic that was applied to thin clients generally a couple of decades back. Nobody at the time imagined what would really happen. Which is that in the quest for making stuff fast, developers would create hugely bloated and inefficient clients. Ie javascript in the browser, where the trend is to just keep moving more and more logic to the client.

That games will take an opposite path, seems unlikely to me. IMO it's more likely history is repeating itself.

 

It just takes one event to flip things around, as history tells me. You never know. Like I said, google is very well positionned to make breakthrough in image processing due to advance in AI, if they achieve one order off magnitude efficiency on compression it will happen.

It took a long time for streaming services to take off, and the same mockery where leverage toward netflix. They don't need ALL people they need ENOUGH people. I barely have internet and almost never watch netflix, I don't even go to cinema because it's too expensive where I am, so Yeah I can totally envision them going through if the business make sense.

 

They actually do need all the people because the platform holder is not the only part of this equation. If they all of a sudden see a massive install base drop, where does the money come from? Where do the games come from? Streaming platforms are notorious because they make very little money for the people making content for them, even if that content is developed in house. The business doesn't make sense.

 

We have the tech for making tiny highly efficient web based apps. But we don't do it. It's cheaper to just buy faster hardware then to write optimized code for everything. The market eventually decides what's the most efficient approach.

Video streaming is different in that streaming itself was a requirement. With games we have something that works with streaming being another option. So it's a much more complex situation I think.

I think if you removed bandwidth cost entirely from the equation, streaming games is still not a sure thing. You don't really know how the market will sort things out until it does. So streaming could be a thing, but to be confident that just fixing one part of the equation will make it the best solution, that's what I don't buy into. That and the tendency of developers to focus on the tech and not the market part of the equation.

 

Streaming games isn't new though. It's not a sure thing (if this hard been a traditional console announcement - also not a sure thing!) But it has seen some success.

It's weird to see some hot takes around the net being "but others have done streaming so it's nothing new." And then see other people say the exact opposite "but it will never work!" For the first few months he owned a ps4, my dad pretty much only played PS3 games on playstation now. He had never owned a ps3, and didn't have very many ps4 games.

Sure, there are other ways to put backwards compatibility into a console, but I think streaming was a good choice there. It let them increase the content on a system that took a while to get going, and didn't require compromises or increased cost to the system design to support older games. Not everyone wants to play older games on their brand new console, so it was probably a good target there. PS now still operates and has expanded. I can now play Bloodborne on my PC.

 

I'm so hyped for this, this means games can be harder and more beautifull. Also your code is safer now it is not on the users device. Wondering what or if there are any entry barriers but the technique is something I really want to use! I also just read that Microsoft is going to lauch a competitor platform so if they are to hard to enter the other one will see an opening to support us (but google play store is really easy to use, so might this be just as easy..?). Anyway I'm really looking forward to publish to their platform. Can't wait to read more about it and see some tutorials for guidance.

 

This literally makes no sense. Unless your definition of "harder" is "making everything harder to control by introducing a latency spike every time you want to control your character".

I can at least understand where you're coming from with this one, but realistically unless the game only targets this new platform it simply won't be more beautiful outside of potentially allowing you to run the game at higher settings than you would otherwise but that's only "more beautiful because I'm not trying to game on a dinosaur".

Plus this is likely working with the assumption that they're constantly upgrading and I simply don't see that happening.

 

Also more beautiful as in a brightly coloured gaudy mess. It needs to be in order to reduce visible compression artifacts.

 

Seems like a lot of stuck-in-a-rut skepticism here. To me it sounds like a pretty cool thing. My only concern is possible input lag but it sounds like Google is trying everything possible to maximize performance. As to bandwidth, if your device can basically stream some kind of HD-ish video, then it can obviously stream a game. If you have low bandwidth or some 3G cell phone, I’m not so sure 4K is within reach. The overall ‘possibilities’ are interesting. If Google does it ‘right’ it could be a true game changer. If it turns into just yet another short term flop or just doesn’t get the really good games and the hardcare gamers don’t get behind it (as an alternative to PS/XB) then it’ll be another ‘appletv’ promising to revolutionize stuff and ending up with just not much good
software.

 

Thanks for the info, I was considering to buy a PS4 for that, but will try it out streamed first.

 

There's no reason that the business model has to result in this. But it might, and I agree that'd be... less than ideal.

 

This is a joke, right?

https://clips.twitch.tv/PlausibleWimpyPeanutOSfrog

 

Huh, that looks pretty good.

I just remember running The Isle over Steam Streaming and it had some pretty nasty compression artifacts, despite being at max quality.

 

Those compression artifacts look awful, so I'm not sure what to tell you. Compression in things like this only really work well for flat colours. Gradients, especially gradients in motion, or certain pixel grouping behaviour, look absolutely awful when compressed. It's why things like GTAV races in tunnels look awful, even when viewing them in the highest quality.

Games are going to look worse because of this. Not better.

 

Sorry, I think I have misunderstood something, as I agree with you.

Brighter images generally don't suffer as badly from compression artifacts as darker images, so one method to improve perceptual quality of the stream is to stick with a brighter art style.

I don't really like technology like this if it's going to add extra constraints on a game's visual design.

Also I can see this problem getting worse, as HDR and WCG monitor's becoming more popular.

 

Assuming current compression artifacts and that codec don't evolve.

 

Assuming that Chromecast has support for the advanced codecs required to produce a video stream with minimal latency that won't suffer from severe artifacting.

Also assuming that's the only major problem this idea has.

Two can play at that game. Google has shown nothing to indicate they've found a way around this. They didn't even hint at it during the keynote.

 

You're making a huge assumption that the target market, whoever that is, even cares about that in the first place.

Console games probably wouldn't be a thing if every game player in the world cared about the same thing that PC enthusiasts care about. Who wants to play a game at 30hz on a high latency display at less than 1080p with an imprecise controller and... oh, millions of people? Clearly those things don't matter to everyone as much as they matter to me, then.

I'm not saying that this'll work, but claiming that it won't based on the idea that it doesn't satisfy me or the groups I am a part of is missing the fact that there's a whole lot of other people out there. Ten years ago I was silly enough to think that making games for mobile phones was a waste of time. Who wants to play games on a tiny little touch screen when PCs and consoles offer experiences much closer to what I want?

Many millions of people who aren't me. That's who.

 

You guys, they never did tell us how the devs will get paid, so stop saying indies will suffer. For all we know there may be no cost to publish to Stadia, just like youtube. Or did I miss something?

 

People keep saying "oh, there's a huge market for this" but I don't think there is. I don't think there is a meaningful intersection between people who want to play these games and people who will have the network stability to play them. I don't think that a system that fundamentally ignores the existence of the vast majority of middle America or the entire nation of Australia has a meaningful market at all. This isn't just "oh, it won't be as good as PC" but "oh, this is just technologically impossible for a huge amount of people."

 

Platform publishing fees aren't the only costs you will have for a platform. You need to factor in the time to implement any platform-specific APIs as well as providing support to the people who play your game. It's never completely free.

 

It's not about the licensing cost, it's about the fact that streaming services pay like S***.

 

I won't speak for others, but I never said that. I gave two exaples of other things where meaningful markets have been demonstrated, and I specifically also said:

 

Have they announced their consumer pricing model?

 

No numbers as far as I know.

 

They haven't, but here's the thing(s):

• PSNow? Relatively expensive consumer model, terrible returns for developers.
• Netflix? Relatively cheap consumer model, terrible returns for content producers. Allegedly marginally better if it's original content (true original, not "we licensed this for distribution from another country" original)
• Youtube? Free entry for consumer model, returns are so bad that content producers are starting to near universally rely on services like D.rip and Patreon just to keep producing content.

But that's not even the half of it. Google's use of algorithms and general business practices have been a nightmare for a lot of content creators. Remember when it used to be possible to sustain yourself as an animator on YouTube before the big algorithm change back in 2014? I do. I remember a lot of algorithmic changes that left nothing but destruction in their wake for small to mid-sized creators.

Google has shown time and time again that their concern begins and ends at benefiting their own bottom line, even if that means throwing small to mid-sized creators under the bus. So aside from this being a technological impossibility for an actually relatively small percentage of people like coastal Americans, it's also a worrying trend for independent creators.

 

Yeah, I've on multiple occasions talked about how bad I think that the Netflix/Spotify pricing model is for game development. My point is that "streaming" doesn't necessarily need to use that pricing model.

Well, if you want to do business with someone you need to plan for it to be mutually beneficial. If your product or service isn't making them money then why would you expect them to keep supporting you?

Note that I haven't done anything with a Google platform in some time. I know that there's a lot of people complaining about changes over the past couple of years, but I've not at all looked into what those changes are.

 

OnLive didn't do a sub model and it was also terrible. If they're being cagey about this, especially when they're doing their reveal at GDC, where developers need to know things other than "okay so here's the hardware," that's a problem. This is something they should lead with.

Except it did make money. Animators were, for the longest time, bringing in millions of views and ad revenue. When the algorithm changed they stopped making pretty much any money at all. That's why you don't see animation on youtube past animatics that can be put out on a schedule of "several a week, preferably daily." Youtube's entire content scheme has been dramatically retooled so that you either need a huge established audience, you need to make content several times a week, or some combination of the two. This is why there's such a huge problem with burnout on the platform.

We have had multiple threads on this very forum where people found that unless their games were getting constant store updates, they were getting buried by the algorithm, and even then it was impossible to compete with things like the city builder games.

 

Did it make more money than whatever they changed things to?

 

That's not mutually beneficial then, is it?

 

YouTube suddenly changed its algorithm to value “minutes watched” above anything else, so high effort, short videos started being much less viable, while producing longer videos more often became lucrative.

The result was, YouTube got filled with low effort vlog style and reaction style, unedited videos.

Now imagine Google Stadia becomes successful and they announce that it pays developers based on minutes played...

 

That would depend on the details on a case by case basis.

Do you think that they did this because they are stupid, or because they figured out some other way to increase overall income?

It is not anyone else's responsibility to make your business profitable. If you can't figure out how to make something beneficial both to you and the people you're working with then it's time to move on - either work with someone else, do something else, or both.

As I said, I don't like the Netflix/Spotify model from a developer perspective for our industry, and I've gone on at length about why in the past. If that is their model then I certainly don't see it being of much interest to me, except maybe with older products.

 

Okay, so what does that have to do with the fact that they routinely bury smaller creators, which is where this started?

 

The answer to that has been stated multiple times, including directly in the middle paragraph you just posted.

 

Except it doesn't? It just shows their internal justification as to why. The simple fact of the matter is that it's not like these creators are losing them money, but that they aren't making them all the money in the world, which is bad for almost everyone on these forums working in games.

 

Because they are short sighted.

Soon after they changed the algorithm, the "ad-pocalypse" happened and a lot of companies pulled their ads from Youtube since they didn't want their brands associated with the terrible videos, terrible videos that were a result of the algorithm changing.

 

When it comes to seeing the future I too am very short sighted.

I am not Google and do not know their internal justifications to be able to share them with you. I was referring to the part where I said, repeatedly, that you need to figure out how to make something mutually beneficial or move on to something else.

When compared to other activities or businesses that make more money, yes they were.

If I have a choice between doing something with you that'll probably make me $100, or spending the same time and resources with someone else and probably make $500, which one do you think I'm going to choose?

Look, we can whinge and grump at vendors and platforms all we like, but it's almost certainly not going to change anything. Looking back at how great things used to be and whinging about how bad it is now doesn't get anyone anywhere. What is within our control is figuring out how to work with them how things are at the time, or deciding to do something else instead.

 

I would argue that it didn't need galaxy brain levels of foresight to think that prioritizing quantity over quality might have consequences.

Google needs to do that too though.

 

No? Not at all. You are not losing money if you aren't making as much money as humanly possible.

 

In that case, I've got a bunch of work you can do for $1/hr. You "are not losing money", so you're cool with that... right?

 

Ah yes, totally the same thing, asking me to work for 7% of the minimum wage. Also I am definitely a multibillion dollar corporation and you are definitely not a F***ing clown.

 

I agree we already have that situation about making a game for bigger or smaller market; i don't think that will change a lot.
Some people make games for mobile big market; while other prefer to make it for more limited market like Switch console or VR. Some people priority is not a mass market like mobile.

Another issue is crappy games, like mobile or Steam, without quality selection and with very low price cloud service cost for consumer; Stadia can become quickly a very flooded market with a majority of crappy games without real quality selection. Unlike consoles publishing where your game must be approved first limiting a lot the crappy games.

 

But the GDC 2019 Teaser video show something full of tension and exciting competition like FIFA, then F1,a FPS game, a space shooter... Even if you play cards alone you want fast ping and not tones of Gb.
Anyway is an opening door to a new link full of god ray bloom.
It can be nice to make the entry menu while downloading the resto but streaming will also slow down the download side.