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[sdrawkcab]

I'm saving this thread to revisit it in 5-8 years.

I can guarantee a lot of crow will be eaten.

Whether you guys like it or not, streaming will eventually render physical consoles a thing of the past. In the short-term, they'll be here for some time longer, and will work parallel with streaming for some time. But eventually, the climate will change. It's not a matter of if, but when.

And until Sony has their own platform, Amazon and Google pose a bigger threat, IN THE LONG TERM. I don't know about you guys, but vision is imperative to having a dynamic and successful business. Without vision, you will fail. Apple saw vision with the iPhone, and Microsoft and BlackBerry laughed at them, and look where that landed those two in the mobile space.

In business, one has to be able to accurately project where things are heading, and get there with the competition (and not get left behind), or, better yet, lead the competition there, which is what Microsoft seems to want to do.

I remember when Steve Jobs said that people want to own their music; and now streaming is the biggest thing in music, and has changed the entire climate. Album sales don't even mean much anymore, compared to singles and streaming numbers. Steve was dead wrong (no pun intended).

I remember when people laughed at Netflix and Hulu, and felt content that Bluray wouldn't be toppled. And although Bluray still provides slightly better picture quality, streaming has taken over tenfold.

"I want to own what I purchase". Sure... No one's stopping you. But don't think for a minute that you speak for the rest of the world.

It took gaming longer, but rest assured gaming is going to reach there as well, it's just a matter of time. And if you're a console maker and publisher, you either realise this, and position yourself to be there when everyone else gets there, or you position yourself to lead everyone there. Because whether you want to like it or not, and whether or not you get there first, second or last...it's going there.

 

[Urprobablyright]

Sounds like throwing in the towel.

I think it's always kind of weird to compare Microsoft to Sony and Nintendo, anyway. Microsoft is such a comprehensive entity, existing in totally different fields to the competitor companies, frankly this statement could be interpreted in any of a number of ways.

I think the thinking behind it is probably that they think there's more money in monopoly control of markets that can be so dominated than constantly splitting a market with 2 other equally, or more attractive, players.

 

[Quezacolt]

I'm saving this thread to revisit it in 5-8 years.

I can guarantee a lot of crow will be eaten.

Whether you guys like it or not, streaming will eventually render physical consoles a thing of the past. In the short-term, they'll be here for some time longer, and will work parallel with streaming for some time. But eventually, the climate will change. It's not a matter of if, but when.

And until Sony has their own platform, Amazon and Google pose a bigger threat, IN THE LONG TERM. I don't know about you guys, but vision is imperative to having a dynamic and successful business. Without vision, you will fail. Apple saw vision with the iPhone, and Microsoft and BlackBerry laughed at them, and look where that landed those two in the mobile space.

In business, one has to be able to accurately project where things are heading, and get there with the competition (and not get left behind), or, better yet, lead the competition there, which is what Microsoft seems to want to do.

I remember when Steve Jobs said that people want to own their music; and now streaming is the biggest thing in music, and has changed the entire climate. Album sales don't even mean much anymore, compared to singles and streaming numbers. Steve was dead wrong (no pun intended).

I remember when people laughed at Netflix and Hulu, and felt content that Bluray wouldn't be toppled. And although Bluray still provides slightly better picture quality, streaming has taken over tenfold.

"I want to own what I purchase". Sure... No one's stopping you. But don't think for a minute that you speak for the rest of the world.

It took gaming longer, but rest assured gaming is going to reach there as well, it's just a matter of time. And if you're a console maker and publisher, you either realise this, and position yourself to be there when everyone else gets there, or you position yourself to lead everyone there. Because whether you want to like it or not, and whether or not you get there first, second or last...it's going there.

Thank god i have a backlog of games to play and saved all my consoles so far. If and when we reached a point where will only stream games, then i will give up on modern gaming, no matter how good streaming might be by then.

 

[DanielsM]

I'm saving this thread to revisit it in 5-8 years.

I can guarantee a lot of crow will be eaten.

Whether you guys like it or not, streaming will eventually render physical consoles a thing of the past. In the short-term, they'll be here for some time longer, and will work parallel with streaming for some time. But eventually, the climate will change. It's not a matter of if, but when.

And until Sony has their own platform, Amazon and Google pose a bigger threat, IN THE LONG TERM. I don't know about you guys, but vision is imperative to having a dynamic and successful business. Without vision, you will fail. Apple saw vision with the iPhone, and Microsoft and BlackBerry laughed at them, and look where that landed those two in the mobile space.

In business, one has to be able to accurately project where things are heading, and get there with the competition (and not get left behind), or, better yet, lead the competition there, which is what Microsoft seems to want to do.

I remember when Steve Jobs said that people want to own their music; and now streaming is the biggest thing in music, and has changed the entire climate. Album sales don't even mean much anymore, compared to singles and streaming numbers. Steve was dead wrong (no pun intended).

I remember when people laughed at Netflix and Hulu, and felt content that Bluray wouldn't be toppled. And although Bluray still provides slightly better picture quality, streaming has taken over tenfold.

"I want to own what I purchase". Sure... No one's stopping you. But don't think for a minute that you speak for the rest of the world.

It took gaming longer, but rest assured gaming is going to reach there as well, it's just a matter of time. And if you're a console maker and publisher, you either realise this, and position yourself to be there when everyone else gets there, or you position yourself to lead everyone there. Because whether you want to like it or not, and whether or not you get there first, second or last...it's going there.

Is this serious. like for real?
Lol

It's a strange combination of false facts, strawman comparisons, and goofy examples....to get you to your desired conclusion.

The part about climate change.

Fyi cloud gaming doesn't magically make physical consoles useless....it just changes the location of the hardware.

 

[JustP_Gaming]

Taking steps to address a problem is not the same as remedying it.

I'm not convinced by any of MS studio acquisitions, nor their strategy going forwards as I've seen it presented.

To me, it looks like Xbox is just getting pulled along in the wake of MS broader ambitions as a provider of cloud compute. As stated they have spent billions on Azure infrastructure, presumably with the aim to profit handsomely a s the dominant provider of such services. The thing is, they don't need Xbox for that.

I respect your opinion. Well put.

 

[psorcerer]

Mocrosoft is going to be obliterated by the Amazon cloud. It's the same story each time.

 

[Klayzer]

Taking steps to address a problem is not the same as remedying it.

I'm not convinced by any of MS studio acquisitions, nor their strategy going forwards as I've seen it presented.

To me, it looks like Xbox is just getting pulled along in the wake of MS broader ambitions as a provider of cloud compute. As stated they have spent billions on Azure infrastructure, presumably with the aim to profit handsomely a s the dominant provider of such services. The thing is, they don't need Xbox for that.

That's the most accurate assessment of the situation in the whole thread. Bravo dude.

 

[devilNprada]

Maybe you "binged" this article on your windows phone? Perhaps you streamed it on your Web TV?

I am pretty sure neither google, Amazon, Nintendo or Sony actually consider Xbox any kind of competition. If we're being honest, without their business applications they're pretty much fucking AOL.

Edit: says the only guy still uses a Hotmail account

 

[Rightisright]

In buisness you have to look forward. You have to look at future trends, and get involved in them before they take off. Netflix did this. They went from a dead end buisness of posting out physical movies, to being the number one streaming company.
Here in Australia the Government set up the national broadband network, which was meant to future proof the country with the internet. Well they rolled out certain rural areas using fixed wireless, and it's screwed. After billions and billions of dollars they are only willing to supply a minimum of 6mbs download speeds during peak times. They came out and said they hadn't factored in streaming would be a thing when it was designed, and now the system is stuffed.
This is why you have to look forward.
That's all Microsoft is doing. They know both Google and Amazon want to get into game streaming, and they know both have the money and infrastructure to do it. Sony doesn't have the money to set up that infrastructure to compete, which is what I pointed out previously only to have people reply saying how Sony has tons of PS4 money and this wouldn't be a problem.
This is exactly why I have been saying that if or when Google and Amazon go hard at it, expect them to buyout some massive developers and publishers to give them exclusives to get people to take up their service.
While we can all say we are happy with our consoles, if Amazon came in and bought out both EA and Ubisoft, making their games exclusive to Amazon, then you may well sign up to play those games.

 

[njean777]

My problem with cloud gaming as a thing that actually exists is that it really ignores the two huge problem in the US (which happens to be a huge market) INFASTRUCTURE and DATA CAPS. No matter where some of you think gaming is going getting ISP's to drop data caps, and not be able to charge you more, is not going to happen. The the cost of laying fiber all through out North America would cost companies way too much money to even think about doing it. These companies are not going to be nice and just say "welp people want to play games at 4k now so we may was well give them unlimited data" instead they are going to charge you extra every single month for unlimited bandwidth and at the end of it all, it would be cheaper to just buy a console and download the games instead of streaming them (gamepass route).

IF we look at Comcast (which btw is our only choice in this area) right now for unlimited data at least where I live it costs:
65$ for 200mb connection + 50$ for unlimited data without the 1TB cap. 110$ total without taxes so make it 120$ a month.
Thats 600$ a year just to have unlimited data in order to stream at 4k or hell even 1080P.

Or I could just buy a console at 500$ and not have to pay the extra 600$ a year for unlimited data just to be able to add games on top of Netflix, music, YouTube, and whatever else. This is not even considering how these companies are going to charge for a game that you don't have on your HDD or physically. I am not going to pay 60$ for a cloud game, Especially when I have to rely on whosever servers to be up in order to access the game.

These companies are not gonna give you the future that these companies are envisioning at this time. Nor will they ever as long as ISP's exists. ISP's want money, and they will squeeze it out of you whichever way they can.

Sure some of you may live in areas where they don't have data caps and great internet, but that is not the majority of America.

 

[Kagey K]

My problem with cloud gaming as a thing that actually exists is that it really ignores the two huge problem in the US (which happens to be a huge market) INFASTRUCTURE and DATA CAPS. No matter where some of you think gaming is going getting ISP's to drop data caps, and not be able to charge you more, is not going to happen. The the cost of laying fiber all through out North America would cost companies way too much money to even think about doing it. These companies are not going to be nice and just say "welp people want to play games at 4k now so we may was well give them unlimited data" instead they are going to charge you extra every single month for unlimited bandwidth and at the end of it all, it would be cheaper to just buy a console and download the games instead of streaming them (gamepass route).

IF we look at Comcast right now for unlimited data at least where I live it costs:
65$ for 200mb connection + 50$ for unlimited data without the 1TB cap. 110$ total without taxes so make it 120$ a month.
Thats 600$ a year just to have unlimited data in order to stream at 4k or hell even 1080P.

Or I could just buy a console at 500$ and not have to pay the extra 600$ a year for unlimited data just to be able to add games on top of Netflix, music, YouTube, and whatever else. This is not even considering how these companies are going to charge for a game that you don't have on your HDD or physically. I am not going to pay 60$ for a cloud game, Especially when I have to rely on whosever servers to be up in order to access the game.

These companies are not gonna give you the future that these companies are envisioning at this time. Nor will they ever as long as ISP's exists. ISP's want money, and they will squeeze it out of you whichever way they can.

Sure some of you may live in areas where they don't have data caps and great internet, but that is not the majority of America.

You seem to be missing the forest because of all the trees.

Cloud gaming is meant to supplement your console gaming for the time being. Like buy your game on console and play it at home most of the time, but if you go on holidays and don’t bring your console with you, you can still access and play the game so you can get your dailies or quests or whatever else you need to do, while you are away.

For those other countries, like Korea, they can use it as their full time gaming service.

You seem to be approaching it from a very nar·cis·sis·tic point of view and dismiss everyone else’s situation except your own.

 

[njean777]

You seem to be missing the forest because of all the trees.

Cloud gaming is meant to supplement your console gaming for the time being. Like buy your game on console and play it at home most of the time, but if you go on holidays and don’t bring your console with you, you can still access and play the game so you can get your dailies or quests or whatever else you need to do, while you are away.

For those other countries, like Korea, they can use it as their full time gaming service.

You seem to be approaching it from a very nar·cis·sis·tic point of view and dismiss everyone else’s situation except your own.

I probably should have said a lot of America (narcaccism not really there). If you are not in a city or surrounding areas, you are lucky to get any sort of decent service, that goes for Cell service also (LTE/5G/Edge/3G). Not just my area, I described my area because you can literally drive 30 minutes one way and they only have satellite internet (no cable or even DSL), or drive the other way and they have gigabit. It has been like this the last 20 years.

I am not dismissing anybody, but to say they gaming is going this way and having this idealistic view with everybody just following along is ignorant of the problems that plague this theory.

You describe it being supplemental at first and that's great, if you have any sort of way to get internet that can support it. Like I said Infastructure is a major problem in the US. I don't care about Korea or Europe as they pretty much have decent service and infastructure. America is a huge customer base, and happens to be where I live. I am describing the issues that I have seen first hand, and why the cloud is a pipe dream for now for games.

 

[Alexios]

You seem to be missing the forest because of all the trees.

Cloud gaming is meant to supplement your console gaming for the time being. Like buy your game on console and play it at home most of the time, but if you go on holidays and don’t bring your console with you, you can still access and play the game so you can get your dailies or quests or whatever else you need to do, while you are away.

For those other countries, like Korea, they can use it as their full time gaming service.

You seem to be approaching it from a very nar·cis·sis·tic point of view and dismiss everyone else’s situation except your own.

I'm sure cloud gaming will be a thing in some capacity but google has already faled in their implementation and their roadmap doesn't inspire confidence. Something like geforcenow is far more likely to find an audience assuming they can regulate, update, and even monetize it enough to make it viable and mass market capable (it might be too fiddly for the average console gamer as it stands since you basically still need to install shit manually on the remote PC, they need to make that process smoother and more hidden for those, but it's already fine for existing PC gamers which is like, everyone going for it right now, since it uses your existing pc library from various other services instead, maybe they have plans in the future to also sell games of their own though, who knows).

 

[Kagey K]

I literally said the majority of America (so yeah narcaccism not really there). If you are not in a city or surrounding areas, you are lucky to get any sort of decent service, that goes for Cell service also (LTE/5G/Edge/3G). Not just my area, I described my area because you can literally drive 30 minutes one way and they only have satellite internet, or drive the other way and they have gigabit. It has been like this the last 20 years.

I am not dismissing anybody, but to say they gaming is going this way and having this idealistic view with everybody just following along is ignorant of the problems that plague this theory.

You describe it being supplemental at first and that's great, if you have any sort of way to get internet that can support it. Like I said Infastructure is a major problem in the US. I don't care about Korea or Europe as they pretty much have decent service and infastructure. America is a huge customer base, and happens to be where I live. I am describing the issues that I have seen first hand, and why the cloud is a pipe dream for now for games.

Lol if you think rural anywhere in America is bad, you should come to Canada. It works perfectly well up here and our infrastructure is way worse.

As a curiosity have you tried to use Xcloud where you are or are you making a bunch of assumptions?

 

[Kagey K]

I'm sure cloud gaming will be a thing in some capacity but google has already faled in their implementation and their roadmap doesn't inspire confidence. Something like geforcenow is far more likely to find an audience assuming they can regulate, update, and even monetize it enough to make it viable and mass market capable.

What is the difference between GeForce now, stadia and Xcloud? I’m sure if you actually look these are almost completely unrelated services.

 

[Alexios]

What is the difference between GeForce now, stadia.

You tell me, the way I see it the main hook is that you can run potentially intensive games on any hardware you have whether it has the capability to run said games natively or not, without having to even download them first as everything is streamed. The main difference is that in the case of geforcenow they're pc games right as they are on any other pc, just remotely, and you don't lose the capability to run them natively if/when you do have the hardware capable of it, while on stadia they're slightly customized versions with less options/settings/features and you don't ever get to access them downloaded natively, which is a minus. What did I miss?

 

[njean777]

Lol if you think rural anywhere in America is bad, you should come to Canada. It works perfectly well up here and our infrastructure is way worse.

As a curiosity have you tried to use Xcloud where you are or are you making a bunch of assumptions?

XCloud no, but other streaming services yes Stadia, onlive, haven't tried nvidia's. The problem with all of them as of right now is that they are not reliable for MP gaming. Input lag is awful. I will wait to try XCloud as long as it free with my Ultimate gamepass, but from what is available now none are worth the price, nor the bandwidth cost in my eyes and won't be until they solve it. This is all from that view, but the bigger picture as we were discussing full cloud gaming is not viable right now for a myriad of reasons other than just input lag.

 

[Kagey K]

You tell me, the way I see it the hook is that you can run potentially intensive, or not, games on any hardware you have whether it has the capability to run said games natively or not, without having to download them at that as everything is streamed. The main difference is that in the case of geforcenow they're pc games right as they are on any other pc, just remotely, while on stadia they're customized versions so you don't get access to the same options as that, which seems even harder to maintain and support, small tweaks as they may be for the most part.

Xcloud right now is you buy the game for your Xbox, and you play the game wherever you are. It’s similar to Gforce and nothing close to Stadia.

You have the option to stream from your home console and can play all the games you own, or connect to Xcloud and stream from their servers if they offer better latency.

I’m starting to think you dont understand Xcloud at all and are dismissing it because of your lack of understanding. (Which they have made perfectly clear since announcement.)

 

[Alexios]

Xcloud right now is you buy the game for your Xbox, and you play the game wherever you are. It’s similar to Gforce and nothing close to Stadia.

You have the option to stream from your home console and can play all the games you own, or connect to Xcloud and stream from their servers if they offer better latency.

I’m starting to think you dont understand Xcloud at all and are dismissing it because of your lack of understanding. (Which they have made perfectly clear since announcement.)

Why are you talking to me about xcloud which I've not even cared to comment on (yet you claim I dismissed it? where did I do that? what drugs are you on right now?)? My very first post responded to a general cloud gaming post that did not name any services whatsoever (and no, I didn't edit that post at all) where I only spoke of google's obvious failures and said my opinion on the type of service I think can do well as opposed to it. You replied to me asking about the differences. I once again only spoke about the differences between stadia and geforcenow, as that's what I know of so far, and once again you just speak of xcloud (again, as if I dismissed something I didn't ever name). Still, the way you present xcloud seems very close to geforcenow yet you claim they're vastly different? Your existing library, anywhere you are. For xcloud it's your microsoft (xbox only? pc? I dunno, again I didn't comment on it) library, for geforcenow it's your Steam, Uplay, and Battle.net library and whatever other services they later add (for now also a limited selection from each, they seem to be adding support for different games as they go, rather than the whole libraries, which makes sense as in the case of Steam and Uplay they can be vast and incompatibilities with their hardware/os can crop up). Sooo, good drugs?

 

[Kagey K]

XCloud no, but other streaming services yes Stadia, onlive, haven't tried nvidia's. The problem with all of them as of right now is that they are not reliable for MP gaming. Input lag is awful. I will wait to try XCloud as long as it free with my Ultimate gamepass, but from what is available now none are worth the price, nor the bandwidth cost in my eyes and won't be until they solve it. This is all from that view, but the bigger picture as we were discussing full cloud gaming is not viable right now for a myriad of reasons other than just input lag.

I played a game (my first game through streaming) of Modern Warfare and went 13-2 latency is a lie.

The great thing is Xcloud is free so far if you own the game or have gamepass, so no money lost.

 

[MayauMiao]

That is setting a very low bar especially to compete against Google.

 

[Kagey K]

Why are you talking to me about xcloud which I've not commented on? My very first post only spoke of google's failures, and you replied to me asking about the differences. I once again only spoke about the differences between stadia and geforcenow, and once again you just speak of xcloud. Still, the way you present xcloud seems very close to geforcenow. Your existing library, anywhere you are. For xcloud it's your microsoft (xbox only? pc? I dunno, again I didn't comment on it) library, for geforcenow it's your Steam, Uplay, and Blizzard Battle.net library and whatever other supported services they add in the future.

Because you chose to edit out my posts. You don’t get to change my quotes as you see fit. Address it all or don’t address it., at all.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

He's not wrong. Cloud will be how we consume all media eventually.

Say that what you're saying Is true. Is 'eventually' this November? If not, then why are MS releasing a new console? And if they are, who are they competing with?

My issues with Microsoft atm, which has been the issues since 2011, is that their message is all over the place. Even if the direction they wanted to go in was crap, at least they would have a direction.

 

[DanielsM]

Look guys you are still getting the cart before the horse.

It has nothing or very little to do with infrastructure, bandwidth or 5g or Google or Amazon or Microsoft or Sony, etc. There simply is limited to no demand for cloud gaming, why? It's generally an inferior product than native playing (and most likely always will be) and most likely will always cost more. If one wants to play on a remote or mobile devices, of course there are options either paid services or your own equipment but for the masses it generally doesn't make sense.

There is simply very limited demand, and that is at give away prices. At least Microsoft use to chase products that made money for some company, now they are down to copying the loser products.... which is what cloud gaming truly is.

Game rental services can be a small alternative revenue stream, but I seriously doubt you really see any big money made in cloud gaming.... it doesn't offer much value.

 

[Kagey K]

Look guys you are still getting the cart before the horse.

It has nothing or very little to do with infrastructure, bandwidth or 5g or Google or Amazon or Microsoft or Sony, etc. There simply is limited to no demand for cloud gaming, why? It's generally an inferior product than native playing (and most likely always will be) and most likely will always cost more. If one wants to play on a remote or mobile devices, of course there are options either paid services or your own equipment but for the masses it generally doesn't make sense.

There is simply very limited demand, and that is at give away prices. At least Microsoft use to chase products that made money for some company, now they are down to copying the loser products.... which is what cloud gaming truly is.

I hope you have that shit copy/pasted. It must get tiring to be you.

I know this is me reading it for the 11 thousandth time.

 

[Ryu Kaiba]

Look guys you are still getting the cart before the horse.

It has nothing or very little to do with infrastructure, bandwidth or 5g or Google or Amazon or Microsoft or Sony, etc. There simply is limited to no demand for cloud gaming, why? It's generally an inferior product than native playing (and most likely always will be) and most likely will always cost more. If one wants to play on a remote or mobile devices, of course there are options either paid services or your own equipment but for the masses it generally doesn't make sense.

There is simply very limited demand, and that is at give away prices. At least Microsoft use to chase products that made money for some company, now they are down to copying the loser products.... which is what cloud gaming truly is.

The Masses are bigger than just the people in your country to MS. thats the part you don't understand MS is looking wayyy ahead not at the next 2 years.

 

[DanielsM]

I hope you have that shit copy/pasted. It must get tiring to be you.

I know this is me reading it for the 11 thousandth time.

It must not get tiring....you apparently love it as all you have to do is hit the ignore button, or the alternative...you didn't know what the word meant.

 

[DanielsM]

The Masses are bigger than just the people in your country to MS. thats the part you don't understand MS is looking wayyy ahead not at the next 2 years.

I'm confused, Microsoft doesn't even have a product yet, other companies have had products for years.

It doesn't matter what country you are in, in general, native playing is going to be better and cheaper.

 

[Kagey K]

It must not get tiring....you apparently love it as all you have to do is hit the ignore button, or the alternative...you didn't know what the word meant.

Really? I attack argument and you choose to attack me?

Not cool man.

That says a lot.

 

[DanielsM]

Really? I attack argument and you choose to attack me?

Not cool man.

Huh, you did no such thing. Nothing in your post was on topic, if you're so tired....hit the ignore button button.

 

[Kagey K]

Huh, you did no such thing.

 

[GHG]

Really? I attack argument and you choose to attack me?

Not cool man.

That says a lot.

Please explain to us how this is you attacking an argument:

I hope you have that shit copy/pasted. It must get tiring to be you.

I know this is me reading it for the 11 thousandth time.

?

 

[Ryu Kaiba]

I'm confused, Microsoft doesn't even have a product yet, other companies have had products for years.

It doesn't matter what country you are in, in general, native playing is going to be better and cheaper.

People here are far too Short sighted.
people have to think outside of their own little bubble for once to understand, not everything is about serving you.

There is a whole world out there that doesn't care about your console allegiance or your favorite game of the gen. They don't care about a little latency or even playing games with touchscreen controls.
They care about whats accessible to them. More and more of the world is coming online and children in remote and developing countries are being born that will know the name Xcloud before they know Nintendo. That's what MS is playing for. I say this with my own preferred platform being Nintendo and Sony's.

 

[Kagey K]

Please explain to us how this is you attacking an argument:



?

Obviously you weren’t around the other 150 times me and him did this dance. Regardless I don’t care and I’m out.

Theres a reason why you ended up on my ignore list and he didn’t. This is your chance to redeem yourself.

 

[DanielsM]

People here are far too Short sighted.
people have to think outside of their own little bubble for once to understand, not everything is about serving you.

There is a whole world out there that doesn't care about your console allegiance or your favorite game of the gen. They don't care about a little latency or even playing games with touchscreen controls.
They care about whats accessible to them. More and more of the world is coming online and children in remote and developing countries are being born that will know the name Xcloud before they know Nintendo. That's what MS is playing for. I say this with my own preferred platform being Nintendo and Sony's.

Well, if that were true people could have signed up for various services for the last decade, but didn't.

None of this is new, it's actually very mature.

No demand.

 

[Ryu Kaiba]

Well, if that were true people could have signed up for various services for the last decade, but didn't.

None of this is new, it's actually very mature.

No demand.

?? Xcloud is very new, it hasn't even launched yet. As the years go by more and more of the worlds infrastructure will develop. Like I said this is about the long game. It's about accessibility.

 

[DanielsM]

?? Xcloud is very new, it hasn't even launched yet. As the years go by more and more of the worlds infrastructure will develop. Like I said this is about the long game. It's about accessibility.

The tech is not new, it's simply game streaming.

Why would you be waiting on infrastructure, you can play these games today natively? I have no idea what your point is.

 

[Kagey K]

Well, if that were true people could have signed up for various services for the last decade, but didn't.

None of this is new, it's actually very mature.

No demand.

what?

Xcloud has been available for the last decade?

 

[DanielsM]

what?

Xcloud has been available for the last decade?

No cloud gaming, none of this new.

Fuck, even the ps3 had a limited version of remote play back in 2006. Lol. It's not magic. I was a beta tester way back in the onlive days, had to be close to decade ago. Ps now is on year 6 and gaika before that.

 

[Ryu Kaiba]

The tech is not new, it's simply game streaming.

Why would you be waiting on infrastructure, you can play these games today natively? I have no idea what your point is.

Game streaming is very new to the majority of the world, Even in the U.S internet infrastructure is still developing.
Once again think outside your bubble.

Sony Nintendo and MS are selling platforms. They are selling access to customers.

In order to have a customer you must first sell them a $300 - $500 dollar box.
That is a luxury. That is unreasonable to many people around the world for many reasons. MS's goal is to tear down that barrier to entry.
The long game.

 

[polybius80]

In buisness you have to look forward. You have to look at future trends, and get involved in them before they take off. Netflix did this. They went from a dead end buisness of posting out physical movies, to being the number one streaming company.
Here in Australia the Government set up the national broadband network, which was meant to future proof the country with the internet. Well they rolled out certain rural areas using fixed wireless, and it's screwed. After billions and billions of dollars they are only willing to supply a minimum of 6mbs download speeds during peak times. They came out and said they hadn't factored in streaming would be a thing when it was designed, and now the system is stuffed.
This is why you have to look forward.
That's all Microsoft is doing. They know both Google and Amazon want to get into game streaming, and they know both have the money and infrastructure to do it. Sony doesn't have the money to set up that infrastructure to compete, which is what I pointed out previously only to have people reply saying how Sony has tons of PS4 money and this wouldn't be a problem.
This is exactly why I have been saying that if or when Google and Amazon go hard at it, expect them to buyout some massive developers and publishers to give them exclusives to get people to take up their service.
While we can all say we are happy with our consoles, if Amazon came in and bought out both EA and Ubisoft, making their games exclusive to Amazon, then you may well sign up to play those games.

there is a problem with that, you are thinking of azure as some kind of magical future proof game streaming hardware that you only have to buy once and will works for everything

server need upgrades and game streaming servers need more upgrades, sony right now with their ps3 and ps4 data centers has better infrastructure than whatever MS can offer them for their streaming needs for PSnow why?, because you cannot expect to virtualize a PS3 on azure and be cost effective vs a rack with 8 cells and 8 RSX or a virtual PS4, azure is a cloud for a lot of services but most of them are not related to game streaming, you can add GPU power to your virtual machine but you can select between GPUs from Nvidia and AMD with different amounts of power they do that because not all the hardware in azure has the same procesing power in other words only a part of azure can run and stream games, what if you need raytracing? what if you need certain ram speed? what if you need hardware specific gpu extentions? how much of azure hardware can actually do that?, the point of virtualizing hardware is to not care about the hardware you just allocate more power on demand that works very well for business applications, database, video stream and webhosting that is good and is MS main business with azure but games and more specifically console games streaming require a console hardware to run properly that is why google mentioned the specs of the machines for stadia you can only run as many games simultaneously as machines with that specs you have, do you need more power for more complex games? then you have to distribute hardware and render part of the screen on another machine that is 2 machines for one game/user or you buy new and more powerful server which you eventually will do anyway and replace old ones with the exception that you cannot run more complex games than machines with powerful hardware you have

MS can spend a lot of money in azure right now(they need to for their business) but for game streaming only part of it will work, sony want to stream consoles games they dont need something as big as azure specially because most of azure wont work for their needs they can grow the data centers they have for game streaming as much as PSnow require and they can even wait until they truly need lot of data centers to buy modern hardware and at that point they can have as many modern gaming capable servers as MS

 

[ryan13ts]

Streaming definitely has the threaten companies like MS/Sony/Nintendo, but it's going to be a bit before the technology and internet speeds improve enough for that to happen. Stadia shows it's just not there yet, but it's not impossible that it'll be actually viable within the next generation at least.

There's also other factors that have to be in place too for it to really overtake the status quo, but it probably is a bit early to rule it out completely like a lot of people already have.... though after the complete disaster with Stadia, can't say I blame them for thinking it.

 

[CyberPanda]

 

[DanielsM]

Game streaming is very new to the majority of the world, Even in the U.S internet infrastructure is still developing.
Once again think outside your bubble.

Sony Nintendo and MS are selling platforms. They are selling access to customers.

In order to have a customer you must first sell them a $300 - $500 dollar box.
That is a luxury. That is unreasonable to many people around the world for many reasons. MS's goal is to tear down that barrier to entry.
The long game.

Yet...you still have to pay for the box...you actually have to pay for more hardware, more electricity, more bandwidth, than you have to pay someone to commission it and decommission it in the data center, pay for maintenance and repairs....also the provider has additional costs as well...large scale cooling, property asset management, etc.

I'm not sure why you keep saying MS plenty other companies actually already provide this service....no demand.

Again, you say think outside my bubble....it has nothing to do with bubbles....there is no demand for obvious reasons.

Cloud gaming is not only not as good as native playing.... it will cost more.

 

[DanielsM]

Yet they have access to 1 billion people thru the ms store and fail to compete with digital distribution.

Just because you want access to the world doesn't mean 7 billion people want or need your product.

These are silly sales pitches the tear up on Shark Tank.

 

[wolffy71]

Yet...you still have to pay for the box...you actually have to pay for more hardware, more electricity, more bandwidth, than you have to pay someone to commission it and decommission it in the data center, pay for maintenance and repairs....also the provider has additional costs as well...large scale cooling, property asset management, etc.

I'm not sure why you keep saying MS plenty other companies actually already provide this service....no demand.

Again, you say think outside my bubble....it has nothing to do with bubbles....there is no demand for obvious reasons.

Cloud gaming is not only not as good as native playing.... it will cost more.

k

You dont pay for hardware unless you want to play on console. In that case youre already buying a console. Youre going on about price being similar but there not even close. You have a phone/tablet, get a sub, and whatever they charge for xcloud. Done

 

[sdrawkcab]

Is this serious. like for real?
Lol

It's a strange combination of false facts, strawman comparisons, and goofy examples....to get you to your desired conclusion.

The part about climate change.

Fyi cloud gaming doesn't magically make physical consoles useless....it just changes the location of the hardware.

Where did I say that consoles will become useless? Who's using strawman arguments now? In my very post I said that they'd work parallel with consoles, for quite some time actually. At least until we've made bigger strides in data and internet speeds, affordability and access throughout first-world countries or leading markets.

You people really don't get it, huh? Okay, let me put this in another way; what is going to stop gaming from going to a mostly streaming model in a decade or so, give or take a few years? You guys really, seriously think that gaming isn't going to move to a more streaming-centric model, eventually? You think data caps/speeds/access and ping/latency is going to remain where it is today? Are you familiar with 56k modems and dial-up? You really think things are going to remain stagnant, and not change? Why? What governs your thinking.

It is happening everywhere, in every sector of technology; from lighting, to automobiles, to medical science, to surgery, to music, to video content, to communication. But, gaming is an exception because you said so? Because a few loyalists or die-hard gamers refuse to accept what is an inevitable actualisation? It is going to happen, whether you agree with it or not...whether you like it or not.

Y'all need to wake up. And in no way did I state MY actual feelings on the matter. Just because I have a bit of common sense and can see where things are going, doesn't mean I'm automatically a fan of it. I love the idea of OWNING what I purchase. But I'm not the company pushing products and creating rules, and changing the dynamics, and changing the climate. I'm the consumer, and capitalism/consumerism has always been a democracy; the majority rules. The majority will always be the lowest hanging fruit, the common denominator...aka, the masses. That's who they cater to. In gaming terms, it'll be the casuals, largely. Of course there'll still be consoles, for quite some time. Just as there are record players today; some people just love the novelty of certain things...and the tangible, physical interaction. Whether it be to preserve the idea of their humanity or for nostalgic reasons. I can even see competitive gaming still holding on to the physical model of a console for quite some time, maybe even long after streaming becomes mainstream.

That said, let's say it doesn't happen tomorrow, or in 5 years, or even 10. If you seriously think 25+ years from now streaming games won't be a big thing (and probably the most popular way to play), you have to be sniffing something. If you don't experience that paradigm shift, your kids or your grandkids will. People have such short-sighted, myopic views of things, it's ridiculous. You think Henry Ford could foresee a future of self-driving cars? I'm pretty sure he didn't. But guess what? Ford has lived years beyond Henry Ford. The same will go for Microsoft and you and me, most likely. These companies will most likely outlive us, including the people we know today as their leaders (Phil and even Nadella, Gates, Balmer, etc.). And when we're dead and gone, things will develop in ways we probably can't even fathom yet.

So yeah, while you laugh at Phil...Phil is positioning his chess pieces to at least be able to react to an ever-changing environment that is probably inevitable. if not, lead it.

How this reality isn't blatantly obvious to everyone is beyond me.

 

[Deanington]

Digital is rising year after year, PS4 is nearly at a 50/50 split. Cloud and digital is the future whether you like it or not. Some people are still watching VHS, you’ll join them in 20 years with your mindset.

This, the short sighted views around here are baffling. Amazon and Google are power houses. For anybody to deny the impact that they could potentially have with how we consume games in the future, and not see why MS needs to try to move forward is just ignorance. Hate it all you want people, but shit changes. Just the move to digital should already be a big indicator of that. Yeah Stadia failed, because the delivery was shit. Google actually helped the industry out though by showing what not to do. To just sit around and close our eyes to where the future is potentially heading though, is stupidity. Even more so for MS, Sony, and Nintendo ( well except for Nintendo, they do what ever tf they want ). Worst case scenario for MS, you play their games every where that is available.

 

[mejin]

we were ahead of our time. you can use it, Phil.

 

[Rightisright]

I probably should have said a lot of America (narcaccism not really there). If you are not in a city or surrounding areas, you are lucky to get any sort of decent service, that goes for Cell service also (LTE/5G/Edge/3G). Not just my area, I described my area because you can literally drive 30 minutes one way and they only have satellite internet (no cable or even DSL), or drive the other way and they have gigabit. It has been like this the last 20 years.

I am not dismissing anybody, but to say they gaming is going this way and having this idealistic view with everybody just following along is ignorant of the problems that plague this theory.

You describe it being supplemental at first and that's great, if you have any sort of way to get internet that can support it. Like I said Infastructure is a major problem in the US. I don't care about Korea or Europe as they pretty much have decent service and infastructure. America is a huge customer base, and happens to be where I live. I am describing the issues that I have seen first hand, and why the cloud is a pipe dream for now for games.

I agree that not everyones internet is up to it. I gave an example of mine where I get 6mbs down at peak hours. But things need to be built now, to be ready for then. It will be a gradual thing that is rolled out where people who can use it do. Then adoption will follow as internet is improved. 5G will eventually replace my crappy 4G fixed wireless, and fibre will eventually get to you.
Look at all the work a Telco has to do behind the scenes, for so many years, before they can switch on 5G.