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[mekes]

It works well ‘enough’ for certain types of games but not all. I have the Shield and I tried Street Fighter. It was horrible. As someone who is good at fighting games I knew it was unplayable after 5 seconds in training mode. Fighting game players would quit the genre if current streaming technology was the only way to access the games. Same with FPS.

 

[kaczmar]

Streaming isn't being marketed towards PC gamers, it's being marketed more towards console gamers, as evident by Stadia's use of a gamepad, etc. Up close to a monitor, the compression and artefacts are a lot more noticeable than from a TV viewing distance.

Also, streaming is not feasible for the multi-billion dollar eSports industry, where the games are being played on 120hz+ monitors and response time is of utmost importance.

You should consider rewatching the keynote. Google is going after all screens. Notebook, Monitor, TV, Tablet, and Cell Phone. Touch controls, Keyboard/Mouse, Trackpad, and Game Controller will all be supported as interface devices.

If Stadia is successful (and that is a really big if) then the need to buy expensive gaming hardware will no longer be required. For many gamers, the high end hardware will reside in Google's data center not your home.

Unless Google can persuade Nintendo and Sony to put their IP on the Stadia service, console hardware isn't going anywhere.

What percentage of gamers actually participate in eSports? I bet its less than 5%. I wouldn't use eSport as a measurement of anything.

 

[The Pleasure]

Lets keep in mind where we were 10/20 years ago.

I remember the days of 56K, then 1MB internet. 10 Gig Limits. etc...

Internet is not going to be the same 10 years from now.

10 years ago it would take me hours to download a movie, now I can stream the whole thing in 1080P in an instant.

1080p netflix is like a good dvd conversion. Their 1080p pales compared to a good blu ray. And you don't beat speed of light. I got gigabit internet and I still lag on games. Smash still smells like poverty internet.

 

[Whitesnake]

I live in the rural midwest, and go to a college that’s in a relatively bigger town (for the rural midwest).

At home I get ~20mb down, 1mb up.

At my dorm I get ~35mb down, ~5 up.

ping at home hovers around 50, or 40 on a good day. ping at college is around 30.

My only experience with games streaming was a free trial for PS Now or whatever it’s called. I played some obscure shmup game. It was playable, but not a good experience.

Game streaming is just not a good idea for a sizeable portion of the U.S.

 

[BackBackPunch]

Well PS Now works since 2014.

That doesn’t means it is a great gaming experience.

PS Now when I tried it a couple years ago is garbage compared to Geforce Now, even in Beta.

 

[cryptoadam]

1080p netflix is like a good dvd conversion. Their 1080p pales compared to a good blu ray. And you don't beat speed of light. I got gigabit internet and I still lag on games. Smash still smells like poverty internet.

Give it time, my 50 mb 144P videos used to buffer on real player too back in the day.

And developers like with mobile will just find games that suite the streaming experience.

Local gaming won't go away. This is just more options.

If Google can deliver then this option is going to make a lot of people question throwing down 500$ on a PS5. But only if Google delivers on their promise. Until its in the wild its just promises for now.

 

[DanielsM]

Give it time, my 50 mb 144P videos used to buffer on real player too back in the day.

And developers like with mobile will just find games that suite the streaming experience.

Local gaming won't go away. This is just more options.

If Google can deliver then this option is going to make a lot of people question throwing down 500$ on a PS5. But only if Google delivers on their promise. Until its in the wild its just promises for now.

If you're a normal gamer, you're still throwing down $500, its just not at your house and its a rental payment plan. For someone that doesn't game much, there might be some type of plan which might work out, but this is not to make prices go down for processing power, it will probably will go up in overall costs.

Its throwing whales out with the trash to capture minnows.

 

[cryptoadam]

If you're a normal gamer, you're still throwing down $500, its just not at your house and its a rental payment plan. For someone that doesn't game much, there might be some type of plan which might work out, but this is not to make prices go down for processing power, it will probably will go up in overall costs.

Its throwing whales out with the trash to capture minnows.

Thats me.

I bought PS4 day 1.

Games I bought. BF4, BF1, BFV, StarWars 1, StarWars 2, Killing Floor 2.

I do not own a 4K TV.

So for me if BF 6 launches and I have the choice of streaming it or throwing down 500-600 (I am Canadian) on a PS5, I choose streaming.

For others, especially on this board that probably doesn't work. I 100% understand that. Its not for everyone. My GF loves mobile games but would never touch a PS4. Mobile games work for her not consoles. Same thing here.

But the big thing will be how many people will see Staida as good enough instead of throwing down 500 on a next gen console? If you can play Cyberpunk 2077 at high settings 1080P (or even 4K) for 20$ a month or whatever I think plenty of people are going to pass on upgrading to next gen and just enjoy the game streaming.

The 1 year headstart is going to be make or break for Google. If they can prove it works then PS/MS will have a lot of trouble selling their next gen systems. If it falls flat on its face then Stadia will be the next Google Cube/Google Nexus player.

 

[Arkage]

People who care about MP stuff that is in any way competitive will never go for streaming, period. And considering those types of games have the biggest userbases/streambase, good luck getting that scene to embrace even a little lag, assuming the best conditions.

 

[DanielsM]

Thats me.

But the big thing will be how many people will see Staida as good enough instead of throwing down 500 on a next gen console?

I get everything you are saying, I actually think its your decision and others... streaming might work for some. Regardless, you're still throwing down $500, generally speaking, its just your paying someone else ot manage it on top of the cost of the hardware. The people that select streaming are still paying $500, just a matter how the subscription/model splits the payments up.

That cost doesn't go away, it could be a shared cost but that $500 plus management, plus electricity, plus replacements, plus decommission, plus square footage, plus property taxes, etc. don't go away. For the most part cloud processing really isn't cheaper, as a generalization... where businesses might save money is usually headcount to maintain the hardware, consumer can't eliminate headcount. When someone says they're not throwing $500 on the hardware because of a subscription model, its really like saying I didn't pay $25,000 for my car because the first payment was only $400.

 

[ethomaz]

PS Now when I tried it a couple years ago is garbage compared to Geforce Now, even in Beta.

I can give exemples too.

I’m without TV right so I even made a thread how to make RemotePlay work on my Notebook and for my surprise a simple 1m ethernet cable from my PS4 to my notebook made it work.

It is the lowest lag you will have for streaming... it is only 1m cable of 1Gbps ethernet.

And you know the result? It stills pretty noticeable to the point that I have to get used with it when I play Destiny Raids.

I mostly use it to play DQXI so it didn’t bother me that but it is no way how I like to play games.

I consider garbage.

 

[Solid Slammus]

I can give exemples too.

I’m without TV right so I even made a thread how to make RemotePlay work on my Notebook and for my surprise a simple 1m ethernet cable from my PS4 to my notebook made it work.

It is the lowest lag you will have for streaming... it is only 1m cable of 1Gbps ethernet.

And you know the result? It stills pretty noticeable to the point that I have to get used with it when I play Destiny Raids.

I mostly use it to play DQXI so it didn’t bother me that but it is no way how I like to play games.

I consider garbage.

that's for two reasons that you should consider:

1) Remote Play has poor performance compared to its peers in any environment. That is actually because, for reasons I cannot ascertain, latency is a factor of the chosen game. Some games have a lot more latency than others when played via remote play, by nature, and I have not been able to understand why. There are games (like FFXII and UC Collection) that feel just as solid and -good- to play as anything streamed through Windows streaming, and there are games like Persona and FFXV that are consistently unplayable for me via Remote Play. This inconsistency has left me feeling after extensive testing that Remote Play needs some level of technical improvement before it is as consistent and as capable of minimizing latency as its contemporaries (in Windows streaming and Steam in-home streaming) are.

2) Believe it or not, the way you hooked up your remote play setup... is actually not the best way to hook up remote play, performance-wise - you'll get better performance from wiring both your laptop and PS4 up to the same network switch or router. Try it, you'll notice an immediate improvement, I hope. (This is my experience with using PSTV tethered versus on my network - but I've always had a better experience with the PC app vs PSTV to begin with so ymmv)

I hated remote play for a long time but I've come around to it (with select reservations) after doing extensive testing to find out what works and what doesn't.

With that said, Remote Play isn't even in the same realm as streaming solutions like GeForce NOW.

I use GeForce NOW and the latency is almost indistinguishable from that of a locally played game. And I'm pretty sensitive to that. GeForce NOW's latency - with games being played from an off-site server, no less - is consistently and significantly lower than that I've experienced with Remote Play, despite RP being a local solution! It's one of those things you won't believe until you've tried it, and believe me, I was posting the EXACT same sort of things that you are now, before I had my time with GeForce NOW.

 

[ethomaz]

that's for two reasons that you should consider:

1) Remote Play has poor performance compared to its peers in any environment. That is actually because, for reasons I cannot ascertain, latency is a factor of the chosen game. Some games have a lot more latency than others when played via remote play, by nature, and I have not been able to understand why. There are games (like FFXII and UC Collection) that feel just as solid and -good- to play as anything streamed through Windows streaming, and there are games like Persona and FFXV that are consistently unplayable for me via Remote Play. This inconsistency has left me feeling after extensive testing that Remote Play needs some level of technical improvement before it is as consistent and as capable of minimizing latency as its contemporaries (in Windows streaming and Steam in-home streaming) are.

2) Believe it or not, the way you hooked up your remote play setup... is actually not the best way to hook up remote play, performance-wise - you'll get better performance from wiring both your laptop and PS4 up to the same network switch or router. Try it, you'll notice an immediate improvement, I hope. (This is my experience with using PSTV tethered versus on my network - but I've always had a better experience with the PC app vs PSTV to begin with so ymmv)

I hated remote play for a long time but I've come around to it (with select reservations) after doing extensive testing to find out what works and what doesn't.

With that said, Remote Play isn't even in the same realm as streaming solutions like GeForce NOW.

I use GeForce NOW and the latency is almost indistinguishable from that of a locally played game. And I'm pretty sensitive to that. GeForce NOW's latency - with games being played from an off-site server, no less - is consistently and significantly lower than that I've experienced with Remote Play, despite RP being a local solution! It's one of those things you won't believe until you've tried it, and believe me, I was posting the EXACT same sort of things that you are now, before I had my time with GeForce NOW.

I can't talk about GeForce Now because nVidia didn't let me test it.

But I will disagree with what you said about the RemotePlay.

I have a Vita and the Vita for better performance shift to direct WiFi connection to PS4 after it connect... I tried to stay in the range of my router but far away from PS4 and the experience is worst if I use Vita near PS4 directly connect to PS4.

Same happened to my Notebook... why I will find others solution if just plug-in in my network (both via cable) it will works good? Of course I have to decrease the lag and the best way is to direct connect the PS4 to Notebook via cable... the Windows manage like a router... it give it a IP and the PS4 thinks it is a router for it... everything works fine.

The best way here was really direct connect my PS4 to my Notebook... via router add more lag.

There is a log yet... you can clearly see the difference in fast paced games like Destiny (sorry to use that example but it was because I used to play it over 2 hours per day on PS4 and on Vita when somebody was watching TV and now I can compared with my PS4/Notebook setup).

 

[Jagz]

You should consider rewatching the keynote. Google is going after all screens. Notebook, Monitor, TV, Tablet, and Cell Phone. Touch controls, Keyboard/Mouse, Trackpad, and Game Controller will all be supported as interface devices.

If Stadia is successful (and that is a really big if) then the need to buy expensive gaming hardware will no longer be required. For many gamers, the high end hardware will reside in Google's data center not your home.

Unless Google can persuade Nintendo and Sony to put their IP on the Stadia service, console hardware isn't going anywhere.

What percentage of gamers actually participate in eSports? I bet its less than 5%. I wouldn't use eSport as a measurement of anything.

The eSports playerbase is huge, especially in Asian countries, like China, South Korea, etc. But it's more the fact that the industry is worth billions, and could not feasibly operate in all-streaming future.

While Stadia does support other screens and controllers (which is great), the marketing of Stadia is still very console focused. Stadia's unique share and voice functionality is tied to their gamepad, which they're really trying to sell people on. Almost nothing about their marketing so far has been towards PC gamers.

Also, I know first-hand, that streaming works better in a console-style environment, not at the desk in a typical PC gaming environment. As someone whose used Geforce Now, the compression and imperfections was a lot more pronounced up close to a 21"+ monitor, but as soon as I was playing from the couch distance, I noticed it a lot less.

Sony in particular wouldn't put their IP on Stadia, they'd put it on their own streaming service. The problem with PSNow is Sony's lack of commitment to the service, and reluctance to put their entire library day and date as it's released on PS4, in addition to pricing not being all that attractive just yet. But when Sony does figure it out, they could potentially have the most successful streaming service of the lot, at which point, who knows what it will mean for the future of physical PlayStation hardware.

 

[kaczmar]

The eSports playerbase is huge, especially in Asian countries, like China, South Korea, etc. But it's more the fact that the industry is worth billions, and could not feasibly operate in all-streaming future.

While Stadia does support other screens and controllers (which is great), the marketing of Stadia is still very console focused. Stadia's unique share and voice functionality is tied to their gamepad, which they're really trying to sell people on. Almost nothing about their marketing so far has been towards PC gamers.

Also, I know first-hand, that streaming works better in a console-style environment, not at the desk in a typical PC gaming environment. As someone whose used Geforce Now, the compression and imperfections was a lot more pronounced up close to a 21"+ monitor, but as soon as I was playing from the couch distance, I noticed it a lot less.

Sony in particular wouldn't put their IP on Stadia, they'd put it on their own streaming service. The problem with PSNow is Sony's lack of commitment to the service, and reluctance to put their entire library day and date as it's released on PS4, in addition to pricing not being all that attractive just yet. But when Sony does figure it out, they could potentially have the most successful streaming service of the lot, at which point, who knows what it will mean for the future of physical PlayStation hardware.

Show me the data that eSports is huge? According to this site its not even a blip on the gaming radar. It's not even 1% of the total gaming market.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...ports-market-will-exceed-USD1-billion-in-2019

I think you are mistaken. Time will tell who will be right. Stadia is going after everything. PC, console, and mobile. Everything. Nobody that enjoys Nintendo's or Sony's IP is going to migrate to Stadia. You want to play the next big multiplat in 4K @ 60 fps, then it might be a different story.

Services like GeForce Now, Blade Shadow, and Liquid Sky go after PC gamers not console gamers. Stadia will most likely put all of them out of business if successful. But to continue to think that streaming services aren't also after the PC gaming market is not correct.

 

[tr1p1ex]

Another question is what happens to playing with friends across the country. STreaming wants to localize your server for a better experience and yet Google says multiplayer games will be better because the clients and server are in the same place.

what happens when I'm in the midwest and my buddy is in Oregon and another friend is in Florida. This actually was the case in Apex Legends the other day.

Will our clients be in different areas but connected to one server? Will one of us have a massive advantage because our client is in the same location as the server while the other two clients are far away. Imagine the input lag of cloud streaming adding on to the usual lag of today's online gaming.

If the clients are all in the same area then two of us are going to have a much worse cloud streaming experience than we otherwise would have because our clients won't on the closest servers.

 

[CagedChicken]

For people worried about latency, you can check your connection's latency to the nearest Google data center using tools like this one

http://www.gcping.com/

I've got 40ms round-trip latency to my nearest, for example. That's about 1/25th of a second. For comparison, a lot of mid-range Samsung TVs have between 10-25ms response time and that's largely considered okay by most people, even when compounded with other input latency causing issues such as wireless controllers and such.

It really just comes down to how well your internet connection performs.

Thanks for that link. I've got 7ms to my nearest location. Given that the latency between my brain and my fingers is about 10x that, I think I'll do OK on Stadia

 

[DanielsM]

Another question is what happens to playing with friends across the country. STreaming wants to localize your server for a better experience and yet Google says multiplayer games will be better because the clients and server are in the same place.

Not sure anyone has said that yet, but if they had dedicated hosting in one GDC, and you had 20 streaming Stadia customers in say 3 separate GDCS getting feeds off the users are in theory just competing against one another for the best response times, for latency input/image rendering. It just sounds like you'll be going against whatever the dev chooses meaning PC, console, and mobile users. But either way the person with a better latency figure is probably going to win by a mile.

Lets be a little honest though, online gaming really isn't fair, although there is tech to try and even the playing field, the issue is... you're going probably get your ass handed to you using a streaming service, and even if all the people are streaming... the people with the best distance to the DC and less hops and better bandwidth will have some huge advantage.

A very simplified version, if you're streaming from Stadia, that is you in the bottom right. (I should have put rage quitter over the local host there)
https://ibb.co/D9CzsLm

https://bit.ly/2YpkqpI

 

[Jagz]

Show me the data that eSports is huge? According to this site its not even a blip on the gaming radar. It's not even 1% of the total gaming market.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...ports-market-will-exceed-USD1-billion-in-2019

I think you are mistaken. Time will tell who will be right. Stadia is going after everything. PC, console, and mobile. Everything. Nobody that enjoys Nintendo's or Sony's IP is going to migrate to Stadia. You want to play the next big multiplat in 4K @ 60 fps, then it might be a different story.

Services like GeForce Now, Blade Shadow, and Liquid Sky go after PC gamers not console gamers. Stadia will most likely put all of them out of business if successful. But to continue to think that streaming services aren't also after the PC gaming market is not correct.

As of 2018, console gaming accounts for 38% of the overall gaming market, while PC's account for 33%, with many of the PC's biggest earning games being eSports, F2P mmo's, etc. The article you posted is proof itself, stating that eSports will generate over 1bn dollars this year, and will vastly rise over the next 3 years. Esports is not necessarily just about the % of people playing, but the viewers, advertisers, sponsorships, events, people watching online through Twitch, etc. Even the hardware manufacturers, like AMD, nVidia, Intel, are all heavily involved, marketing and producing hardware for the eSports industry and for the next generation of more graphically demanding eSports games, like PUBG, Apex Legends, etc.

I'm not saying streaming services won't try to go after the PC market, it's just that they won't be very successful. The PC is a very different platform to consoles; it's a personal and open platform and PC gamers expect to have more access over their games through mods, user generated content, etc, that they wouldn't get through streaming.

Console gamers aren't aware or privy to the level of freedom PC players have, so they're more likely to be acceptive of streaming, as they're already used to consoles, which are restrictive closed platform devices.

PC's are needed to perform tasks outside of gaming, much of which people find too sensitive to be done through streaming. Powerful CPU's and GPU's aren't solely produced for gaming, but for graphics development, rendering, high level VR and much more. I believe even in a cloud computing driven future, companies like AMD, Intel, nVidia, etc, are always going to produce silicon for use in personal consumer computing devices.

But we'll have to wait and see; I don't think streaming will replace anything in the short term future, and will just be an option. In the long term future, if Internet becomes a ubiquitous entity, then yes, maybe we'll all be streaming almost everything to cheap little devices and all computing will be server-based.

But I think people will always want a personal device, that's closed off from networks and prying eyes, whether it be to produce sensitive PC work on or to play games on. And that's why I think native physical PC's - in what ever form factor they take in the future - will always continue to exist. Consoles, like I said, they're largely just for playing games on, you're not using them for much than that, and I think in 20 or so years from now, PlayStation will essentially just be like a Netflix app, there won't be any hardware but the controller involved. But yeah, only time will tell; it's kinda pointless debating further.

 

[Zimmy68]

I've had the Nvidia Sheild for a couple of years and GeForce Now couldn't perform stable using local wireless from my PC to the Sheild.

I was in the Project Stream beta and I can tell you, it just worked. It was a world of difference from GN.

 

[kaczmar]

As of 2018, console gaming accounts for 38% of the overall gaming market, while PC's account for 33%, with many of the PC's biggest earning games being eSports, F2P mmo's, etc. The article you posted is proof itself, stating that eSports will generate over 1bn dollars this year, and will vastly rise over the next 3 years. Esports is not necessarily just about the % of people playing, but the viewers, advertisers, sponsorships, events, people watching online through Twitch, etc. Even the hardware manufacturers, like AMD, nVidia, Intel, are all heavily involved, marketing and producing hardware for the eSports industry and for the next generation of more graphically demanding eSports games, like PUBG, Apex Legends, etc.

I'm not saying streaming services won't try to go after the PC market, it's just that they won't be very successful. The PC is a very different platform to consoles; it's a personal and open platform and PC gamers expect to have more access over their games through mods, user generated content, etc, that they wouldn't get through streaming.

Console gamers aren't aware or privy to the level of freedom PC players have, so they're more likely to be acceptive of streaming, as they're already used to consoles, which are restrictive closed platform devices.

PC's are needed to perform tasks outside of gaming, much of which people find too sensitive to be done through streaming. Powerful CPU's and GPU's aren't solely produced for gaming, but for graphics development, rendering, high level VR and much more. I believe even in a cloud computing driven future, companies like AMD, Intel, nVidia, etc, are always going to produce silicon for use in personal consumer computing devices.

But we'll have to wait and see; I don't think streaming will replace anything in the short term future, and will just be an option. In the long term future, if Internet becomes a ubiquitous entity, then yes, maybe we'll all be streaming almost everything to cheap little devices and all computing will be server-based.

But I think people will always want a personal device, that's closed off from networks and prying eyes, whether it be to produce sensitive PC work on or to play games on. And that's why I think native physical PC's - in what ever form factor they take in the future - will always continue to exist. Consoles, like I said, they're largely just for playing games on, you're not using them for much than that, and I think in 20 or so years from now, PlayStation will essentially just be like a Netflix app, there won't be any hardware but the controller involved. But yeah, only time will tell; it's kinda pointless debating further.

Hmm. Thanks for your comments and thoughts. It seems that you aren't interested in Stadia because you are a PC gamer and Stadia doesn't seem to offer a better gaming experience to you. From my console POV, I have no need for Stadia because the games I like to play (Nintendo IP and Sony IP) simply won't be available on Stadia at launch or in the future.

It looks like neither of us has a use for Stadia.