Google Teaser? #Stadia

They stated in followups that anyone who can currently stream youtube at 1080p or 4k will be able to do the same with Stadia for roughly the same bandwidth so I do not think it is a matter of google not being smart enough to know who their market is. Streaming video does have the benefit of generous buffering so I doubt all people who fit that criteria will be able to use it, but still that is a good approximation of the market they are trying to reach.

They are not technically dumb, so they are obviously OK with the market they have identified for Stadia.

 

@Murgilod
You are making the argument I tried to make but reach different conclusion.

It make business sense to "them" not for us. If they succeed they will suck the air for content creator, but they will stay afloat due t sheer size.

Also I think people are more likely to play some game in 640p with hi fidelity visual and low latency, because of teh conviniance of just clicking on the browser. Which is why crappy flash game took off back in the day. I don't always watch my youtube full screen, especially not on my weaker computer.

While they show modern current hi fidelity game, that was also teh case with early facebook game, up until it evolve into its own format, so was mobile. The consumption format dictate the shape of content.

So if they succeed, at best the model will evolve into its own offering like mobile, casual and facebook game before. Or it will devolve into a spotify nightmare.

My risky bet is that teh intersection of "real time movie" editor format pushed by unity and unreal will intersect with david cage/telltale immersive format that don't need low latency but deliver hi fidelity visual.

 

I think game streaming can work, and is the future. We already stream games off of our consoles to our tvs. Its just that the wire between them is physical and much closer. It looks like it will offer many conveniences.

But there are some potential and very real consequences to consider for people who are already in the game industry, and especially for indies. At the moment it looks like Stadia is reserved for incorporated companies only. There is also privacy, revenue, and monopolistic issues, and i think there is a lot to discuss about where this is taking us.

 

GUYS CHILL OUT! This is starting to feel like the community over at stackoverflow!

 

Anybody knows ow multi-player networking will work in Stadia?

They claim games can now have thousands of players playing the same game in multi-player mode, so does Stadia have a new multiplayer API? Im using Photon networking now, anybody knows anything about Stadia multiplayer networking?

 

I'm assuming what they mean by thousands of players is that with a non streamed game the amount of bandwidth used is proportional to the number of players in visual range. You have to send data to the client for each one of those. With streaming it's just a different paradigm, all that is sent ever is the rendered video stream.

The other side of that, is that the amount of bandwidth required for streaming, is enough to support up to a couple thousand players without streaming given current best known approaches.

And of course there is the question of who cares, why would a game with that many players all around you inherently be a better game.

 

Odds are that multiplayer is just handled in the data centre itself and between the various data centres, I'd wager. I get the feeling a crossplay situation is not something we're going to see until a substantial amount of time after launch.

 

Remote LAN party. There's a phrase that never would have occurred to me in the past.

I don't know about it resulting in a "better" one, but I could definitely see someone coming up with a game concept that is infeasible with any other approach to multiplayer.

 

If nothing else, it might help large scale multiplayer games like the Planetside series

 

Apple just announced their own streaming service: Apple Arcade

 

It looks like not just anyone can develop for it: apple is apparently handpicking devs for this service.

 

Also, it's not a streaming service.

 

I'm predicting that bandwidth and latency will hurt Stadia's reputation in the long term, and eventually it will have the staying power of Google Plus. Google only keeps products alive which are clear market winners. Mediocre market share will result in the plug getting pulled most likely.

Multiple people using the same internet connection (which is the norm) will be a problem for Stadia. Typically you have several family members or roommates using the same internet connection. Performance degrading for your game because your roommate opens up Netflix is going to be a problem. Can 3 people on the same internet connection all play Stadia together? Probably, but expect reduced quality.

Differing latency depending on how close you are to the servers is another big problem which will probably kill Stadia for consideration as a serious competitive gaming platform. Many PC/Console games get around much of this with client side prediction techniques, but Stadia can't do that. Can you even do a big gaming event with 100+ competitors all at the same location? Going to need a monster pipe for that to be possible. Those type of events just won't happen for Stadia, and that will trickle down to the rest of the competitive gaming scene.

I think within a couple years of its release, it will be considered a joke by much of the gaming community, as it isn't a "serious gamer" platform. They will end up stuck with market share below the current big 3 console makers and you'll see Google stop promoting the service. 3-5 years after that they announce the date Stadia will be shut down.

 

Assuming Google wants to support such things, there's no reason they couldn't allow a few racks of Stadia units to be set up at the venue. That said, I don't see much attraction at this stage for that particular audience. And if a developer wants their game to be played like that they'd probably want to support platforms where that kind of thing already happens, anyway.

 

Well to be fair, I don't think highly competitive games are the target market for a streaming service like this. The games that would probably be popular on a streaming service would be single player AAA console games. Some gamers will prefer streaming those games instead of downloading and installing them. But highly competitive games will probably remain a locally installed solution.

 

Yeah that is a problem, since competitive games are some of the largest segments of the console and PC markets. If you want an Xbox to play the latest COD game, you're probably not going to buy a Stadia to play the games it is good at. You'll just get those games on Xbox. I don't think Google will be satisfied with coming in 4th place, behind all other major consoles.

 

I really enjoy playing highly competitive games on PC. One thing I noticed in recent years is that most people actually don't play highly competitive games. Most people play things like Candy Crush instead of COD. Even people that actually do want to play a first person shooter are often not playing a competitive game. For example, Destiny is a co-op RPG experience instead of a competitive game. I won't buy a Stadia to play PUBG (or COD), but a lot of people will buy a Stadia to play other things.

 

Its not clear just HOW google has done this but its been reading this latency level for a week, as long as I've tracked it. ~15 ms ping means excellent game play.

 

A domain can point to multiple IPs and a quick search shows that Montana, as well as other states in the Western US, have been trying to get Facebook and Google to bring additional data centers to the region for a few years now. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them was brought online recently. A few years is about how long it would take to build one.

Here is mine. I'm in a rural section of Virginia.

Code (csharp):

1. C:\Users\Ryiah>ping www.google.com
2.  
3. Pinging www.google.com [172.217.5.228] with 32 bytes of data:
4. Reply from 172.217.5.228: bytes=32 time=43ms TTL=56
5. Reply from 172.217.5.228: bytes=32 time=49ms TTL=56
6. Reply from 172.217.5.228: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=56
7. Reply from 172.217.5.228: bytes=32 time=43ms TTL=56
8.  
9. Ping statistics for 172.217.5.228:
10.     Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
11. Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
12.     Minimum = 43ms, Maximum = 49ms, Average = 44ms
13.  
14. C:\Users\Ryiah>

 

Very informative. I kind of figured Google had built one somewhere nearby or even in state but heard any specifics.

 

With websites, service providers can use anycasting. This allows a bunch of servers to be spread out around the world, and the closet one will respond to the connection attempt. They can also do some things at the DNS layer to distribute load and try to get people to to the nearest web server. Game server based streaming can probably utilize some of these same techniques if there are enough game server farms around the world. Those will be more complex than a typical front end web server, though.

 

I knew I had come across a term for it in the past. I just couldn't remember what it was called and my searches didn't help.

 

That's Google's CDN, ie. https://cloud.google.com/cdn/ (fancy word for some caching servers colocated in same spot as your ISPs network)

Same thing that Netflix, Akamai, etc. do. This was also a major part of the "net neutrality" debate as odd as it seems because they were using the fact it is impractical to haul this much bandwidth across the backbone to try to regulate sweeter deals(free in some cases) for colocating their servers with the major ISPs. Netflix in particular knew that caching edge servers was the right approach, and already had tons of them, but was trying to get it regulated on the false notion it was about net neutrality.

 

Code (CSharp):

1. C:\WINDOWS\system32>ping www.google.com
2.  
3. Pinging www.google.com [172.217.2.228] with 32 bytes of data:
4. Reply from 172.217.2.228: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=51
5. Reply from 172.217.2.228: bytes=32 time=48ms TTL=51
6. Reply from 172.217.2.228: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=51
7. Reply from 172.217.2.228: bytes=32 time=49ms TTL=51
8.  
9. Ping statistics for 172.217.2.228:
10.     Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
11. Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
12.     Minimum = 45ms, Maximum = 49ms, Average = 46ms

In San Jose, CA, practically next door to Google. So you're doing well.

 

So does Stadia have an SDK for Unity that us low life nobodies can start banging on, or only upper echelon of society will be able to use it?

 

You get everything through Google right now and need to be incorporated in some capacity.

Honestly though, it's Google. Stadia will be curated for about 3-6 months after launch, then they'll open it to everyone when they suddenly go "if we have all the games, we can have all the money."

 

Harder as in more computing power.

 

I believe that there may be a way Google will solve this. They mentioned having nodes set up for development in house but if they were to provide a similiar service for gaming events it would be the same as a local network play at gaming events.

 

Except gaming events are tiny compared to the home market, which is what these problems will affect the most.

 

@Ryiah @Lurking-Ninja

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. Pinging www.google.com [172.217.169.164] with 32 bytes of data:
3. Request timed out.
4. Request timed out.
5. Request timed out.
6. Request timed out.
7. Ping statistics for 172.217.169.164:
8.     Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

icmp blocked lol

 

I get 20-28ms for www.google.com, but 26-28ms for google.com. Central FL, here.

I'm not going to get really excited for Stadia until they announce some kind of pricing structure for the customers.

 

BTW

 

Why they bother giving a tutorial if they are only allowing high end game devs use their SDK. I believe only low budget devs are in here as far as i know.... its like holding out a carrot in front of us and wont let us eat....

If they gave me a chance with their SDK i would be all over that bad bouy.....

 

So pricing finally got announced, and it's... interesting? A bunch of placed have reported it, here's one.

The $9.99/mo I can understand. What seems odd to me is that you then pay premium rates for games on top of that:

So if you compare this to a console I'm not seeing the price point being attractive. Three or four years of play and you'd have paid for your console anyway, with no consideration for the amount of bandwidth you're chewing through. There is mention in another article about "Stadia Base" which lets you keep playing stuff you previously purchased, but no pricing info on that.

The bandwidth figures being quoted are rather large, too. I'm pretty sure I've streamed 1080p/5.1 with internet connections a fraction of the speed they're suggesting there. I know they're talking about 60hz rather than film frame rates, but still... I wonder if compression has to be compromised to keep the latency down?

I won't get to try it out myself as I'm not in a supported country, but I'm eager to hear from people who do try it out come November.

 

I believe they said Base is "free" (meaning no subscription, limited to 1080p, and you buy games full price as on every other store).

I'd be more interested in if the subscription had a whole bunch of free games, or if it was also a normal store (so I could download the games normally, but also had the option of streaming).

As it is right, now, I'd be paying full price for games for an objectively worse experience?

 

Objectively worse for people like us who already have nice gaming gear, yeah. For people who don't I think the experience they provide could be fine, if your 'net connection is up to the task.

What I don't understand at the moment is how they think they're making things more accessible, which was a clearly stated goal.

 

Thing is though, some of that "nice gaming gear" is stuff like a PS4 and an Xbox One. And the big problem there is that you can get both of those for only a handful more than a Stadia Founder's Edition but you'll also have access to a sizable library of games on each and the ability to play a game if the internet goes down.

 

Uhhh... I don't know.

Who is willing to buy games full price, plus 9.99$ per month for gaming, plus whatever the controller and a chromecast ultra, has 4k tv, above average internet connection, but somehow getting a PS4 Pro is something unthinkable?

 

I wonder when they will allow riff raff developers like me to develop for Stadia?

 

Sure, but that's the first version of the product, not whatever their long term vision is. It's perfectly normal for early adopters to be given a higher priced, less refined version of a product.

That said, from what I'm seeing I'm not making out a cohesive long term vision that actually solves any problems for anyone, at least not yet.

The first two of those are required for the initial release only, and the third one isn't a requirement at all.

I agree this thing has pricing issues, though.

 

I wouldn't necessarily consider it a higher priced version of the product because it includes both the controller (which is valued at $69) and a Chromecast Ultra (which is valued at $59). Both of which will be needed if you don't have any other compatible equipment.

 

Have you seen the AMD E3 presentation where they show off their latency reducing technology...



It looks like we already have a 50-60 ms display lag in games?

 

I don't know the exact numbers, but yeah, and that will be on top of whatever Stadia will add, so...

 

Yes, the time it takes for input to be visibly affecting your character is currently four frames at 60 FPS. AMD's new tech drops that down to three frames. Keep in mind the theoretical minimum is one frame. At 60 FPS that will be about 16 milliseconds, but if the platform runs at console frame rates that will be about 33 milliseconds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_lag

 

Yep, go look up display lag figures for monitors and TVs. And TVs in particular are a lot better now than they were even just three or four years ago.

 

Stadia will launch soon and I´d like to get the latest (official) information about how UnityDevelopers can use it.

1. (How) Can we upload our Games (ArchViz presentations in my case)?
2. What rules do we have to follow?
3. What does it cost for us developers?
4. What does it cost for "clients"
5. Is it possible to lock Apps/Games to specified clients only?
6. So much more......

 

@Cascho01 Is it even open to indies yet? Will it ever be?

 

Its not a platform for that, its a platform for commercial games. Google have never said it will be open for making enterprise apps etc. I very much doubt you can lock games to specific people, and like most platforms it will involve a store submission and signing process. I expect it will operate like consoles rather than app stores in that submissions will be curated and approved/denied by an actual person.

 

So what does the announced UnityToStadia-Suppport include?
Will it just allow Games made by Unity to run on stadia?