News Google GDC 2019 Conference

lashman

Dead & Forgotten
Sep 5, 2018
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Ready for ouya 2: electric steaming boogaloo
lol :p

i pretty much only want to see which games i'm gonna have to miss out on (even if i wanted to use that thing - my internet connection is NOWHERE NEAR anything even resembling "good enough" for streaming, lol)

You can't turn your eyes away from it, you want to be there, alongside thousands others as you witness the prequel to the unknown madness that would follow.
the what now? :p
 

Alextended

Segata's Disciple
Jan 28, 2019
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Honestly, it sounds good. As long as a) it works reliably and b) the pricing is right considering you'll have even less control/ownership than digital distribution. Instant playability (and whatever that entails like all the youtube stuff and influencer stuff and all that jazz) is big and for plenty games even a bit of latency is fine if you ask me. At least if the alternative is an already laggy feeling 30fps native play. I think that for better or worse streaming is the future but I don't think it will replace running stuff locally any time soon either (and for me personally it will take even longer). But it's cool to see it develop.
 
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fsdood

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Jan 9, 2019
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Only US, Canada, UK and Europe in 2019. I guess they know their audience where they'll (mostly) have good internet infrastructure.
 
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TheVectronic

The Wondering Scribe
Oct 31, 2018
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That Assistant Button is gonna be misspressed so much. I think they should have an option to at least disable it. Also the WiFi only for that controller is really worrying for delays.
 
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Alextended

Segata's Disciple
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I mean the wifi is to cut down on lag since we're talking about streaming games, not add to it, by giving the pad a direct connection to the game rather than pass through your pc via whatever other means. I'm not sure if it will make any difference but any difference it makes should be positive, not negative.

Of course it'd be nice if they made it work like a regular controller also so you can use it for your other PC games too but yeah. Plus really if you don't like it at all you can use any controller you already have as they said. This is truly a software/streamed platform even if it has some custom hardware bits available.

I don't see me going all in on steaming until 10 years in the future but it's tech that brings a lot of good to the table as far as usability goes. Again, as long as it works and as long as the prices are good. Not like Ubisoft's crazy scheme to sell streamed AC Odyssey on Switch in Japan with daily pass price or a two year price that costs as much as a new AAA game at launch or more. To be honest they should probably either make it subscription based (maybe cheaper for people who don't use the max resolution and such) or have decent regular game prices per title. It'd be nice to know you have a lifetime (service lifetime obviously, not if it shuts down) guarantee to stream your games too, I think they should offer this. In practice it may not add to their cost, it might sound bad for them to have the obligation to offer it to you forever but surely it will only be a tiny minority of people like me that actually uses old games a lot without necessarily buying new stuff. But it would make many more people bite if they felt they have the same ownership of their games as they do now.

My PC is good for now and I do plan another upgrade in the future but remembering back to the time my last build started showing its age, I'd definitely have postponed the upgrade at the time if I could have just bought a couple of the big demanding games on google in the meantime and play them at swell performance and settings. I could feel the same the next time I'm due for an upgrade but actually have the ability to do that this time.

Or have like friends who don't game on PC but they could buy a game you want to coop together via google and have it on whatever device (as long as multiplayer is cross platform). Stuff like that are very very good things. Not to totally switch over and give up on local native games for a long time but yeah.
 
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Alextended

Segata's Disciple
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I'm sure specs will change over time anyway. Sure it compares well to current systems but next ones are around the corner. And they mentioned eventually wanting to go for 8k streaming so surely they think they will be running new games at that res too at some point otherwise why stream as such. Etc.
 
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TheVectronic

The Wondering Scribe
Oct 31, 2018
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Too many questions so little answered:

- What's the pricing for Stadia?​
- Will it be subscription based or one time pay?​
- Will it be free to access with paid games like a normal storefront?​
- How will the crossplay function with everything if some companies don't even allow it on their systems?​
- Will developers apply this to their games?​
- What's the minimun/recommended connection speeds for the platform?​
- How does licensing work into the fray?​
- Will the store be a website or built into the browser?​

These & more just make me not even want to consider going through this. This is impressive technology, but the consumer base isn't caught up tech-wise to even reach the level of streaming that it wants to achieve.

I feel they could've fixed their current platforms with the money invested in this proyect like YouTube that has very poor track record recently. This is a major jumping the shark moment for Google & all I can think of is what the landing will look like.
 

Alextended

Segata's Disciple
Jan 28, 2019
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I mean, yesterday you'd have even more questions, I'm sure when the time comes you can try it and get an answer for all. You won't exactly be asked to pay money before knowing the payment model and what you're paying for, ha. Your first three are the same question! And any tech needs its early steps, they can't exactly skip to the point where it's all amazing for everyone no matter what and works perfectly from 0. Like I said, I don't see myself jumping to game streaming when I can't even stream high quality videos without buffering them first. but it's still cool to see it develop and there are clear advantages for when it does work. Of course assuming they actually get it right, if they don't then that's on google, just as the PS5 ending up shit would be on Sony, not all consoles being shit. I have questions about next gen consoles, they're not shit just because it's not yet the time to answer the questions and they will all be answered by launch <_<
 
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Ex-User (307)

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The name sucks so much. The hardware itself at least looks solid from a pure spec sheet perspective. Beyond that, I still don't see any clarity on some of the super important issues.
  • What's the pricing model for games going to look like? Are we looking at renting, buying or a Netflix/Game Pass model? What does "ownership" look like here?
  • More importantly, how is this going to function for people with internet caps and generally slower speeds? Is everyone with slower speed internet just SOL for now? What's the minimum connection required to get this thing to work? I'm sitting on a fiber line, so I'll be fine, but most people don't have that luxury.
  • How are we going to deal with game tweaking and modding in the future? Are mods, config tweaks, cheats/trainers, and reshaders all out?
So many questions. And as I type this, I see TheVectronic beat me to some of these issues. The more I think about this, the worse this sounds. If you already don't like the "walled gardens" of console compared to PC gaming, this entire concept sounds like it's going to be about 20,000 times worse than consoles.
 

Alextended

Segata's Disciple
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It's a streaming service, of course anyone with shit internet whether by speed like me or data caps like others is SOL, how is that even in question :p

And as far as I could tell it's games ported to the service like they're ported to consoles. It's not a PC game streaming service like some we have seen elsewhere where you basically take full control of a remote PC, it is its own platform, not a PC. So, no modding unless a dev can choose to provide a local SDK for modders to utilize and then have some kind of online repository they can upload to for users to play. Maybe it'll be done for some big games like TES some day.

Same for crossplatform multiplayer, that's just up to the dev, it's just assumed google's open to that on their end unlike say, the Sony of a year ago or whatever.

And I'm gonna guess they won't even have graphical settings enabled, you'll just be going with what the given developer chose for his stadia version of the game. Even if you can only stream at 30fps I imagine they won't bother with multiple versions of the game so you won't have better graphical settings than a guy streaming at the full 60fps. It's simpler to keep it simple I suppose. But given hardware wise it does sound like a PC at least ports are probably quite easy.

Whining for the internet is just being captain obvious, like oh my god, this burger joint's super special burger isn't for vegans or people who hate beef! Of course noting not everyone has great internet so their target audience is restricted by default to those with that should be done but beyond that I don't see the room for jokes and shit, that's like me saying but there are places on earth without electricity so how is Sony's new console for everyone >_>
 
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TheVectronic

The Wondering Scribe
Oct 31, 2018
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If you already don't like the "walled gardens" of console compared to PC gaming, this entire concept sounds like it's going to be about 20,000 times worse than consoles.
In PC gaming, if you can't run the game you can at least upgrade it to make sure it can run that & anything else below that spec requirements with a lot of mileage before your next change.

In console gaming, you can just get the console & forget upgrading until the next console becomes more affordable to them.

For streaming, you're locked by your internet. A worse issue than being laggy in a multiplayer game.

Most households reach a rate of 4mb/s of download & less than a megabyte of upload, because it's enough for people to just browse online not to stream a 1080p game. My internet can barely handle Twitch streams imagine streaming hours of games.

I'd rather just need electricity to play my games, not a "You must have THIS amount of bandwidth to play this game"
 

Ex-User (307)

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Dec 11, 2018
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FTFY

isn't capitalism awesome?
Being in it for profit isn't the actual problem, so are all other gaming companies like Valve, Sony and Nintendo.

The problem, ironically, is that they've created a gaming platform that relies on a "utility" that is not any part of "free market capitalism," while it's also not treated to government regulation that other utilities are.

And hilariously, Google should know this, since the red tape with ISPs is why they basically stopped rolling out Google Fiber. Everywhere they went, they had to cut through government red tape in the form of regulatory barriers at state and local levels, as well as litigation from the already existing ISPs. Because ISPs are coercive monopolies that maintain the barrier to market entry through manipulation/lobbying of the government.

So on the one hand, government in the USA decided to never formally treat the internet as a utility, so unlike phone lines, they can't force a company (e.g. AT&T's phone lines) to let another provider access them. But at the same time, they never actually created a "free market" for providing internet, and instead created all kinds of stupid regulations that only benefit incumbent providers, as well as local municipalities doing asinine things like signing non-compete contracts.

And instead of either creating some kind of nationalized utility, or letting the market actually open up to "competition," we instead have backasswards government that has spent $400 billion for fiber optic access that Verizon, AT&T never provided, and an internet situation that's neither a competitive market, nor an actually regulated utility. It's like the government chose literally the worst possible parts of both options and stuck them together.
 

Kuro

"Oh yeah? Aren't you gonna punish me?"
Dec 22, 2018
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Yeah, please fail miserably.
Yesterday we were laughing how consoles have to pay for their online services, soon we'll be all in the same chain paying our ISPs more for Gigabit AND Google big money to be able to play anything.
JFC, people on the other forum are already "looking forward to games that can only be done in the cloud", just crash and burn already.
 

Ex-User (307)

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Dec 11, 2018
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Yeah, please fail miserably.
Yesterday we were laughing how consoles have to pay for their online services, soon we'll be all in the same chain paying our ISPs more for Gigabit AND Google big money to be able to play anything.
JFC, people on the other forum are already "looking forward to games that can only be done in the cloud", just crash and burn already.
Telling us you tested it on a 200 mbps connection, which is probably about 150 mbps more than the average internet subscriber has access to, tells us nothing.

I don't understand how any of this can be sustainable anyways. The industry is already a behemoth with ballooning budgets just waiting for a market bubble to pop. Who the hell is even going to have the resources to take advantage of "cloud gaming" anyways?
 
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Derrick01

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Oct 6, 2018
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I can't believe I was nervous about this event entering this week. That was a joke :ROFLMAO:

My favorite part was the id dev saying "What better way to show that this tech works than with Doom?" and then....not showing anything. Plus after the show impressions came in that Doom had way too much input lag.
 
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Kvik

Crossbell City Councillor
Dec 6, 2018
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Downunder.
Yeah, I don't think this will gain traction at all with the current state of internet in my country. I mean, I'm on 100Mbps and I'm already in the 1%-er. lol..

Secondly, this service is just another system of control, designed to take away freedom of ownership from end users which is already diminishing rapidly. If the purpose of game streaming as dictated by Google is to conveniently game anywhere we please, we should also be aware that we're also letting go the freedom of modding, game archival, emulation and other community improvements which makes PC gaming great.

For someone who loves PC gaming more than anything because of the freedom it offers, I can say without a doubt that this service is not for me.

but yeah, 20GB per hour is insane ... definitely WAY above what my shitty internet connection is capable of
RIP anyone with non-unlimited data quotas.
:wd_io:
 

lashman

Dead & Forgotten
Sep 5, 2018
30,372
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Yeah, I don't think this will gain traction at all with the current state of internet in my country. I mean, I'm on 100Mbps and I'm already in the 1%-er. lol..

Secondly, this service is just another system of control, designed to take away freedom of ownership from end users which is already diminishing rapidly. If the purpose of game streaming as dictated by Google is to conveniently game anywhere we please, we should also be aware that we're also letting go the freedom of modding, game archival, emulation and other community improvements which makes PC gaming great.

For someone who loves PC gaming more than anything because of the freedom it offers, I can say without a doubt that this service is not for me.
... not to mention game preservation
 
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