Google isn't legally obligated to give you your games elsewhere if Stadia fails of course. But they would be extremely foolish not to do that I think. In this scenario, Stadia bombed so they don't have a ton of users - in which case they could easily afford to make users that they do have whole. If they didn't then it would be a PR disaster that would follow them to every new product launch for years, and even to existing ones like Play Movies. It's one thing to shut down a free product, it's another to delete their users' purchased content without compensation. To my knowledge Google has never done that.
I thought Google fiber's challenges were mostly red state regulators.
The main purpose of Google Fiber was to embarrass other ISPs into actually improving their service. It worked*, as they started falling over themselves to start putting together much faster packages. Google, which wasn't really making any money on Fiber, decided to move on.
*rural American Internet access remains a shitshow as always.
Which is part of the problem. For Stadia to be successful Google has to be prepared to lose money on it for a good while. It absolutely will not be profitable at launch
I imagine the latency on this wouldn't be a problem for most of the games I enjoy, like turn-based RPGs.
Am I right in assuming that the subscription is kind of like PS+ where you get games to play every month? And there will be non-subscription games you have to buy? I don't find anything inherently offensive about that model.
My only concern is about what happens if Google drops the Stadia service, can I download my games? This is the same problem that other platforms have with digital copies though, it's not unique to Stadia.
I'm very confident that if Google drops the Stadia service, they'll offer redemption codes for other platforms for the games you fully own (not the free Pro ones). This has happened before with at least one other game marketplace IIRC, I forget the name.
I didn't get anything when OnLive shut down!
Desura did let you download installers. No Steam keys or access to patches, though.
Hm, I had bought gnomoria on desura and wound up with it on steam via a key. I don't recall exactly how that went down though.
0
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Another hurdle for Stadia is that their competitors in the video game sphere are all ready experimenting with streaming.
Microsoft is likely to announce their streaming service this E3. And if Phil Spencer gets his wish you'd be able to access it on everything. Plus all signs point to it being a flat subscription fee and MS has an immense library to offer.
Nintendo experimented with streaming on the Switch in Japan not long ago.
Sony I assume also have plans in motion. They'd be foolish not to.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
+1
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
The Giant BeastCast folks brought up a really good point about Stadia:
This product desperately needs a 7 day trial window and demos. Give people a chance to see if it works in their environment and with their equipment. I'm now very shocked they didn't announce that.
The Giant BeastCast folks brought up a really good point about Stadia:
This product desperately needs a 7 day trial window and demos. Give people a chance to see if it works in their environment and with their equipment. I'm now very shocked they didn't announce that.
How would you reasonably do that? There's a hardware purchase necessary to use Stadia. I'm sure there will be a return policy.
The Giant BeastCast folks brought up a really good point about Stadia:
This product desperately needs a 7 day trial window and demos. Give people a chance to see if it works in their environment and with their equipment. I'm now very shocked they didn't announce that.
It seems like their initial launch is pretty targeted to early adopters and doesn't include the base version. So in general I don't think they're ready to tell the "this is how grandma can get started" strategy.
The Giant BeastCast folks brought up a really good point about Stadia:
This product desperately needs a 7 day trial window and demos. Give people a chance to see if it works in their environment and with their equipment. I'm now very shocked they didn't announce that.
How would you reasonably do that? There's a hardware purchase necessary to use Stadia. I'm sure there will be a return policy.
That's not the case, it works with any controller and any device (at least when it's fully launched).
Many of those are "and then were replaced by X" but frequently X didn't have all the features of the things which were killed, so I'd still count it.
Some, like Google Video, aren't - it was completely obviated by YouTube. And other things are basically features within other apps, like Inbox for Gmail.
I think the internet tends to blow Google's cancelations out of proportion (and I used to use Reader and Picasa), but people can go to that page and decide for themselves if discontinued Chrome extensions and URL shorteners signify that Google's going to lose interest and discontinue a game streaming service after six months.
Honestly, most of what Google's killed were free products. Plenty of folks chucked when Google + bombed, but it really didn't affect their willingness to use Google products.
Discontinuing a paid service, especially when it causes you to lose access to games you paid for, might be another matter.
Yeah, I've found the "Google kills their projects!" thing to, very frequently, be quite a stretch - and something that has not really been voiced until recently, until it suddenly became a ubiquitous meme. They for sure have killed projects, but I think those statistics are often not presented with the best of faith.
Yeah, I've found the "Google kills their projects!" thing to, very frequently, be quite a stretch - and something that has not really been voiced until recently, until it suddenly became a ubiquitous meme. They for sure have killed projects, but I think those statistics are often not presented with the best of faith.
Google creates a ton of experimental stuff, and yeah if it fails they kill it. That's just how it goes when you take risks, the alternative would be to never try things like this. It's totally possible that Stadia is DOA and dies shortly after, but if that happens it will be because it wasn't a great product and no one is using it, in which case nobody here would shed a tear. If it's good enough that people on this forum want to use it, I think it's safe to say it would be a success.
Google creates a ton of experimental stuff, and yeah if it fails they kill it. That's just how it goes when you take risks, the alternative would be to never try things like this. It's totally possible that Stadia is DOA and dies shortly after, but if that happens it will be because it wasn't a great product and no one is using it, in which case nobody here would shed a tear. If it's good enough that people on this forum want to use it, I think it's safe to say it would be a success.
Honestly, I think it's mostly that Google has their beta tests be external instead of internal.
Which ends up infuriating when you like something that they decide not to go with.
Honestly, as skeptical as I am, I think Google has the best capability, technology, and money to make this work. More than Microsoft, Sony, or whatever hole those poor OnLive guys are living in.
I just don't think it's going to be a good experience for many, or even most people, even with the Top Men(tm) on it.
In my mind, ISP caps and shitty speeds across the country for the US and Canada are what will kill it. Some places like Japan or Scandinavia maybe where they have decent infrastructure (but caps?) could pull it off. It feels like a narrow market segment of people who can't afford the initial console outlay of what, 300 bucks? But the first package is 169? Plus ongoing? IDK, just save a couple months and buy a damn Xbox and gamepass, done and done.
I see mentions of people talking about playing Assassin's Creed on a tablet in an airport, and have to wonder what airport they're in because wifi in all the ones I've been in has bee a pile of crap that wanted my Visa.
Microsoft and Amazon (and maybe Alibaba if their DC division keeps growing) are the only other companies on the planet with the resources and infrastructure to try this on the same scale as Google. Sony has already seen the writing on the wall there and is teaming up with Microsoft to at least have access to Azure's optimizations for xCloud.
I suspect Amazon will be content to just host other people trying to compete instead of creating their own, but we'll see.
i just personally don't understand the crossover for wants to play games, can't afford expensive console, but can afford expensive internet.
the travel case is interesting, but i've almost never traveled somewhere that would have internet fast enough to do this sort of streaming. most hotels i struggle to get text down the pipe more or less 1080p/4k streaming video where any latency is a dealbreaker.
In my mind, ISP caps and shitty speeds across the country for the US and Canada are what will kill it. Some places like Japan or Scandinavia maybe where they have decent infrastructure (but caps?) could pull it off. It feels like a narrow market segment of people who can't afford the initial console outlay of what, 300 bucks? But the first package is 169? Plus ongoing? IDK, just save a couple months and buy a damn Xbox and gamepass, done and done.
I see mentions of people talking about playing Assassin's Creed on a tablet in an airport, and have to wonder what airport they're in because wifi in all the ones I've been in has bee a pile of crap that wanted my Visa.
Data caps aside, you don't need high speed internet to use these services, just good latency, which isn't typically part of your internet plan and is instead a matter of location and the general quality of the network. So it's not really a question of finances whether you can use it or not, just depends on where you live.
When they release the base plan the value proposition is very good, actually better than I thought they'd do. The service is entirely free except the cost of the game you would have had to buy anyway. Or if what you want is on Pro then you pay monthly until you beat it and then cancel. Nothing else can compete with that value unless MS does the same thing in their service.
In my mind, ISP caps and shitty speeds across the country for the US and Canada are what will kill it. Some places like Japan or Scandinavia maybe where they have decent infrastructure (but caps?) could pull it off. It feels like a narrow market segment of people who can't afford the initial console outlay of what, 300 bucks? But the first package is 169? Plus ongoing? IDK, just save a couple months and buy a damn Xbox and gamepass, done and done.
I see mentions of people talking about playing Assassin's Creed on a tablet in an airport, and have to wonder what airport they're in because wifi in all the ones I've been in has bee a pile of crap that wanted my Visa.
Data caps aside, you don't need high speed internet to use these services, just good latency, which isn't typically part of your internet plan and is instead a matter of location and the general quality of the network. So it's not really a question of finances whether you can use it or not, just depends on where you live.
You need both. Low latency to put a bandaid on the inescapable input delay problem, and high bandwidth to stream gameplay at a resolution, frame rate, and bitrate that doesn't look like ass.
The Giant BeastCast folks brought up a really good point about Stadia:
This product desperately needs a 7 day trial window and demos. Give people a chance to see if it works in their environment and with their equipment. I'm now very shocked they didn't announce that.
There'll be a free version of Stadia next year when it launches for everyone who isn't a founder (at least that was my understanding from the announcements), so any "demo" will likely be up to individual publishers/developers for their individual games.
The Founder/Pro stuff isn't necessary to use Stadia, well...at least after the wider launch; and the Founder stuff comes with a "buddy" pass that is the Pro version, so that might help spread it around before the "regular" version of Stadia launches?
I mean it is certainly a whole can of worms being opened (with rights, ownership, etc), but with the way you'll access the games it sounds like it'll be relatively trivial for whoever is offering any given game to simply let anyone to try the game for a specific set of time before having to buy it. In fact it would probably be more ideal than the traditional demo situation, since they wouldn't even have to create a demo, simply give an hour or two or something access and then have that account locked out without buying the individual games. Games on the Pro service will just be accessible anyway.
Like any demo system, this could potentially even increase sales depending on the game. For instance, Destiny 2 being on Pro (my understanding was the full current version, not the "new light" version that will be F2P anyway) with cross platform saving now happening, it actually opens up more options to re-sell the game to players who want to play on other platforms and keep their stuff. Myself as an example, I play on the PS4, but I actually would be more interested in also buying the game on XB1/PC additionally now that I'll be able to simply log out on one platform and log back in on another. I already own the game so I'm an easy sell; but someone trying it out for the first time via Stadia might enjoy it and have friends who play it on PS4. With Bungie making the pricing/content model more accessible to new players means that individual player may very well buy more copies on other platforms, further increasing personal investment, and increasing the chance they'll spend money in-game and buy future content.
There's a lot of arguing over details of Stadia, and it is absolutely not a for-sure thing (though game streaming, IMO is), but I believe there are a lot of business side aspects that make more sense to publishers and developers than us players are really considering or would even think about, that makes the entire concept all the more appealing to them, which in turn increases the likelihood of long-term success. Also, on the topic of immediate profits, remember the type of company Google is. They wouldn't be doing something like this to suddenly be a "real" game company. They'd be doing it because they figured out that it would expand their already existing cash cow of customer information and advertising. This broad of an initiative isn't something that happens on a whim, and how absurdly expensive the upfront costs have to be, means they've got a plan. Again, it doesn't mean it will pan out, as many have pointed out, Google is no stranger to dropping projects. But they are also no strangers to making more money than god, and even some missteps doesn't change that.
In my mind, ISP caps and shitty speeds across the country for the US and Canada are what will kill it. Some places like Japan or Scandinavia maybe where they have decent infrastructure (but caps?) could pull it off. It feels like a narrow market segment of people who can't afford the initial console outlay of what, 300 bucks? But the first package is 169? Plus ongoing? IDK, just save a couple months and buy a damn Xbox and gamepass, done and done.
I see mentions of people talking about playing Assassin's Creed on a tablet in an airport, and have to wonder what airport they're in because wifi in all the ones I've been in has bee a pile of crap that wanted my Visa.
As a Canuck, I call say with total certainty that it's a nonstarter here, it would eat a month of our internet bandwidth in a week and Rodgers couldn't carry a reliable connection in a bucket.
i just personally don't understand the crossover for wants to play games, can't afford expensive console, but can afford expensive internet.
the travel case is interesting, but i've almost never traveled somewhere that would have internet fast enough to do this sort of streaming. most hotels i struggle to get text down the pipe more or less 1080p/4k streaming video where any latency is a dealbreaker.
One of the things that makes this less scary then it could be is that it has strong 'solution in search of a problem' energy, yeah.
I would rather be accused of intransigence than tolerating genocide for the sake of everyone getting along. - @Metzger Meister
“Interact with powerful hardware through a series of dumb devices that cater to a variety of use cases while allowing complete continuity between devices,” doesn’t sound like a solution in search of a problem, it sounds like a sci-fi promise we’re surprisingly close to reaching.
I absolutely get concerns over this, but I’m kind of surprised that the idea is being treated as unimaginable or absent of potential benefits. Some variant of this technology has been a science fiction staple for decades, and we’ve been inching closer for a long time.
Edit: Just to emphasize an important bit, this will absolutely fuck some people over, probably a lot of them, and probably those who get fucked over by society on a regular basis. We need to address that (as well as we ever do), but I don’t think it’s going to stop the push for mass virtualization.
“Interact with powerful hardware through a series of dumb devices that cater to a variety of use cases while allowing complete continuity between devices,” doesn’t sound like a solution in search of a problem, it sounds like a sci-fi promise we’re surprisingly close to reaching.
I absolutely get concerns over this, but I’m kind of surprised that the idea is being treated as unimaginable or absent of potential benefits. Some variant of this technology has been a science fiction staple for decades, and we’ve been inching closer for a long time.
Edit: Just to emphasize an important bit, this will absolutely fuck some people over, probably a lot of them, and probably those who get fucked over by society on a regular basis. We need to address that (as well as we ever do), but I don’t think it’s going to stop the push for mass virtualization.
It's science fiction, because it is science fiction - while some of the issues are purely artificial, those issues are big. And then there's the laws of physics problems such as signal propagation, or the range issues that the 5g wavelength brings, which play into the issues of geography and infrastructure.
I would rather be accused of intransigence than tolerating genocide for the sake of everyone getting along. - @Metzger Meister
If we’re talking about hitting zero latency any time soon, I’d call it fiction. But we’re talking about hitting acceptable latency. That’s happened in various industry and consumer sectors over the last decade (at least). Remote desktops aren’t the consumer standard, but as connectivity increases, companies are going to increasingly offer it. 5G might do it, but we’ll see what kind of deployment it gets and what real world results look like.
You don’t need to break physics to make something that’s good enough for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of circumstances. Providing access to the vast majority of people will take much longer.
We’re already playing extremely twitchy games online with varying degrees of lag and people generally just live with it. We can’t pretend games are latency free now, even locally - most people aren’t rocking CRTs or getting their TV settings right in the first place.
I think I asked, earlier in this thread, how playable the current streaming services were. One poster said he tried the Project Stream beta with Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and it worked okay, albeit with noticeable input lag. I was also wondering how well PSNow streaming works, since that's apparently been active since 2014, but no one responded to that.
In my mind, ISP caps and shitty speeds across the country for the US and Canada are what will kill it. Some places like Japan or Scandinavia maybe where they have decent infrastructure (but caps?) could pull it off. It feels like a narrow market segment of people who can't afford the initial console outlay of what, 300 bucks? But the first package is 169? Plus ongoing? IDK, just save a couple months and buy a damn Xbox and gamepass, done and done.
I see mentions of people talking about playing Assassin's Creed on a tablet in an airport, and have to wonder what airport they're in because wifi in all the ones I've been in has bee a pile of crap that wanted my Visa.
As a Canuck, I call say with total certainty that it's a nonstarter here, it would eat a month of our internet bandwidth in a week and Rodgers couldn't carry a reliable connection in a bucket.
i just personally don't understand the crossover for wants to play games, can't afford expensive console, but can afford expensive internet.
the travel case is interesting, but i've almost never traveled somewhere that would have internet fast enough to do this sort of streaming. most hotels i struggle to get text down the pipe more or less 1080p/4k streaming video where any latency is a dealbreaker.
One of the things that makes this less scary then it could be is that it has strong 'solution in search of a problem' energy, yeah.
Hey - also Canadian and I have a widely commercially available gigabit connection via Bell. No caps. You can also get nearly the same thing through Rogers now I believe.
I’m not sure at all how you’re figuring internet infrastructure here is a “non-starter”.
+1
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
I shall now patiently await the day when every AAA publisher has their own streaming service.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
In my mind, ISP caps and shitty speeds across the country for the US and Canada are what will kill it. Some places like Japan or Scandinavia maybe where they have decent infrastructure (but caps?) could pull it off. It feels like a narrow market segment of people who can't afford the initial console outlay of what, 300 bucks? But the first package is 169? Plus ongoing? IDK, just save a couple months and buy a damn Xbox and gamepass, done and done.
I see mentions of people talking about playing Assassin's Creed on a tablet in an airport, and have to wonder what airport they're in because wifi in all the ones I've been in has bee a pile of crap that wanted my Visa.
As a Canuck, I call say with total certainty that it's a nonstarter here, it would eat a month of our internet bandwidth in a week and Rodgers couldn't carry a reliable connection in a bucket.
i just personally don't understand the crossover for wants to play games, can't afford expensive console, but can afford expensive internet.
the travel case is interesting, but i've almost never traveled somewhere that would have internet fast enough to do this sort of streaming. most hotels i struggle to get text down the pipe more or less 1080p/4k streaming video where any latency is a dealbreaker.
One of the things that makes this less scary then it could be is that it has strong 'solution in search of a problem' energy, yeah.
Hey - also Canadian and I have a widely commercially available gigabit connection via Bell. No caps. You can also get nearly the same thing through Rogers now I believe.
I’m not sure at all how you’re figuring internet infrastructure here is a “non-starter”.
And how much do you pay for that internet? And how many Stadia data centers will Google pay for? Stadia needs custom blades, it's not something that runs on standard servers, datacenters will need specific retrofit to support it - and how many do we even have? Spread out towns will also worsen the speed of light induced latency.
What genre's are good for this versus what are bad for it? And which are popular on console versus PC (bearing in mind this seems aimed at console fans).
Like, it appeals to me for games like X-com, Civilization....turn based stuff. It's immediately a laughing stock (to me) when I consider games like Street Fighter or, potentially, even FPS.
There's weird edge cases. I actually used a Vita to remote play my PS4 while at work so I could farm the Loot Cave in Destiny 1. I only did it for a day or two and mostly as a lark / to use the Vita, but it was "neat".
I have no idea how well a Platinum Games game would run given the physics problem of distance and lag.
Gotta say, the launch list I've seen doesn't play well to the technical limitations of the plat.
Jeep-Eep on
I would rather be accused of intransigence than tolerating genocide for the sake of everyone getting along. - @Metzger Meister
In my mind, ISP caps and shitty speeds across the country for the US and Canada are what will kill it. Some places like Japan or Scandinavia maybe where they have decent infrastructure (but caps?) could pull it off. It feels like a narrow market segment of people who can't afford the initial console outlay of what, 300 bucks? But the first package is 169? Plus ongoing? IDK, just save a couple months and buy a damn Xbox and gamepass, done and done.
I see mentions of people talking about playing Assassin's Creed on a tablet in an airport, and have to wonder what airport they're in because wifi in all the ones I've been in has bee a pile of crap that wanted my Visa.
As a Canuck, I call say with total certainty that it's a nonstarter here, it would eat a month of our internet bandwidth in a week and Rodgers couldn't carry a reliable connection in a bucket.
i just personally don't understand the crossover for wants to play games, can't afford expensive console, but can afford expensive internet.
the travel case is interesting, but i've almost never traveled somewhere that would have internet fast enough to do this sort of streaming. most hotels i struggle to get text down the pipe more or less 1080p/4k streaming video where any latency is a dealbreaker.
One of the things that makes this less scary then it could be is that it has strong 'solution in search of a problem' energy, yeah.
Hey - also Canadian and I have a widely commercially available gigabit connection via Bell. No caps. You can also get nearly the same thing through Rogers now I believe.
I’m not sure at all how you’re figuring internet infrastructure here is a “non-starter”.
And how much do you pay for that internet? And how many Stadia data centers will Google pay for? Stadia needs custom blades, it's not something that runs on standard servers, datacenters will need specific retrofit to support it - and how many do we even have? Spread out towns will also worsen the speed of light induced latency.
About $200 with other things bundled in. I'm not sure how anybody is supposed to answer those other questions but it's really not the point. You were saying the internet here was a non-starter and that's not really the case.
In my mind, ISP caps and shitty speeds across the country for the US and Canada are what will kill it. Some places like Japan or Scandinavia maybe where they have decent infrastructure (but caps?) could pull it off. It feels like a narrow market segment of people who can't afford the initial console outlay of what, 300 bucks? But the first package is 169? Plus ongoing? IDK, just save a couple months and buy a damn Xbox and gamepass, done and done.
I see mentions of people talking about playing Assassin's Creed on a tablet in an airport, and have to wonder what airport they're in because wifi in all the ones I've been in has bee a pile of crap that wanted my Visa.
As a Canuck, I call say with total certainty that it's a nonstarter here, it would eat a month of our internet bandwidth in a week and Rodgers couldn't carry a reliable connection in a bucket.
i just personally don't understand the crossover for wants to play games, can't afford expensive console, but can afford expensive internet.
the travel case is interesting, but i've almost never traveled somewhere that would have internet fast enough to do this sort of streaming. most hotels i struggle to get text down the pipe more or less 1080p/4k streaming video where any latency is a dealbreaker.
One of the things that makes this less scary then it could be is that it has strong 'solution in search of a problem' energy, yeah.
Hey - also Canadian and I have a widely commercially available gigabit connection via Bell. No caps. You can also get nearly the same thing through Rogers now I believe.
I’m not sure at all how you’re figuring internet infrastructure here is a “non-starter”.
And how much do you pay for that internet? And how many Stadia data centers will Google pay for? Stadia needs custom blades, it's not something that runs on standard servers, datacenters will need specific retrofit to support it - and how many do we even have? Spread out towns will also worsen the speed of light induced latency.
About $200 with other things bundled in. I'm not sure how anybody is supposed to answer those other questions but it's really not the point. You were saying the internet here was a non-starter and that's not really the case.
Indeed, pay 75$/month for uncapped 600 megabit here in western canada. Latency concerns me but data caps/speeds are not an issue.
My experience is that “here” varies wildly from area to area.
Hell I can’t get Verizon since the lines end up the street so my comcast prices are like 20% higher than people a block over and I have a cap and they don’t.
+2
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
If we’re talking about hitting zero latency any time soon, I’d call it fiction. But we’re talking about hitting acceptable latency. That’s happened in various industry and consumer sectors over the last decade (at least). Remote desktops aren’t the consumer standard, but as connectivity increases, companies are going to increasingly offer it. 5G might do it, but we’ll see what kind of deployment it gets and what real world results look like.
You don’t need to break physics to make something that’s good enough for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of circumstances. Providing access to the vast majority of people will take much longer.
We’re already playing extremely twitchy games online with varying degrees of lag and people generally just live with it. We can’t pretend games are latency free now, even locally - most people aren’t rocking CRTs or getting their TV settings right in the first place.
The amount of trickery required to make people think they're playing lag free is astounding. Just out of the gate. Net code today is becoming increasingly a game of predictive guesswork and sleight of lag.
Adding another buffer of lag to and from the Stadia server and making it feel as fast as current setups is going to be a monumental task.
One of the things that makes this less scary then it could be is that it has strong 'solution in search of a problem' energy, yeah.
The "problem" here is that the console audience has been pretty stagnant. Total mainstream console sales this generation are barely at 200 million. It's slightly shrunken since the age of the Wii and PS2. Microsoft is talking about "reaching 2 billion gamers" in connection with their xCloud for a reason.
I don't know that this actually works in the end, but that's the drive behind it.
I don't see people lamenting that mods are basically nonexistent for this very much. That's a bummer and certainly one thing for the negative column.
Because in most cases they aren't actually that widespread and popular. Its a thing for a minority of players on the minority (PC) platform, whose few AAA exclusives are always online games anyway.
It's popular enough that Steam put them in and several people have full time jobs running Nexus.
That's a real impressive stat next to the billions of game sales on completely locked down platforms.
Stadia is supposed to be a console replacement in the first place. Its signature hardware is a console controller. That audience is already used to having next to zero mod options.
Skyrim added mod support on consoles! Mods are a good thing and we should be moving towards having more options for them, not less!
We can easily have that level of curated, walled-garden mod support on Stadia or xCloud if the devs wanted it. The hurdles to modding on Stadia are similar to those on any other console, approval, indexing and storing in a central database, and relying on PC devs to create them.
Anyway I don't see the relevance of "should" when talking about whether people will actually buy something. I've freaking made mods, I don't have any illusions that most people even know what they are or can figure out how to install them.
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Which is part of the problem. For Stadia to be successful Google has to be prepared to lose money on it for a good while. It absolutely will not be profitable at launch
Hm, I had bought gnomoria on desura and wound up with it on steam via a key. I don't recall exactly how that went down though.
Microsoft is likely to announce their streaming service this E3. And if Phil Spencer gets his wish you'd be able to access it on everything. Plus all signs point to it being a flat subscription fee and MS has an immense library to offer.
Nintendo experimented with streaming on the Switch in Japan not long ago.
Sony I assume also have plans in motion. They'd be foolish not to.
This product desperately needs a 7 day trial window and demos. Give people a chance to see if it works in their environment and with their equipment. I'm now very shocked they didn't announce that.
How would you reasonably do that? There's a hardware purchase necessary to use Stadia. I'm sure there will be a return policy.
It seems like their initial launch is pretty targeted to early adopters and doesn't include the base version. So in general I don't think they're ready to tell the "this is how grandma can get started" strategy.
That's not the case, it works with any controller and any device (at least when it's fully launched).
https://killedbygoogle.com/
Many of those are "and then were replaced by X" but frequently X didn't have all the features of the things which were killed, so I'd still count it.
Some, like Google Video, aren't - it was completely obviated by YouTube. And other things are basically features within other apps, like Inbox for Gmail.
I think the internet tends to blow Google's cancelations out of proportion (and I used to use Reader and Picasa), but people can go to that page and decide for themselves if discontinued Chrome extensions and URL shorteners signify that Google's going to lose interest and discontinue a game streaming service after six months.
Discontinuing a paid service, especially when it causes you to lose access to games you paid for, might be another matter.
"Google kills their products" has been a meme for quite a while now.
Honestly, I think it's mostly that Google has their beta tests be external instead of internal.
Which ends up infuriating when you like something that they decide not to go with.
I just don't think it's going to be a good experience for many, or even most people, even with the Top Men(tm) on it.
I see mentions of people talking about playing Assassin's Creed on a tablet in an airport, and have to wonder what airport they're in because wifi in all the ones I've been in has bee a pile of crap that wanted my Visa.
I suspect Amazon will be content to just host other people trying to compete instead of creating their own, but we'll see.
the travel case is interesting, but i've almost never traveled somewhere that would have internet fast enough to do this sort of streaming. most hotels i struggle to get text down the pipe more or less 1080p/4k streaming video where any latency is a dealbreaker.
Data caps aside, you don't need high speed internet to use these services, just good latency, which isn't typically part of your internet plan and is instead a matter of location and the general quality of the network. So it's not really a question of finances whether you can use it or not, just depends on where you live.
When they release the base plan the value proposition is very good, actually better than I thought they'd do. The service is entirely free except the cost of the game you would have had to buy anyway. Or if what you want is on Pro then you pay monthly until you beat it and then cancel. Nothing else can compete with that value unless MS does the same thing in their service.
You need both. Low latency to put a bandaid on the inescapable input delay problem, and high bandwidth to stream gameplay at a resolution, frame rate, and bitrate that doesn't look like ass.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
There'll be a free version of Stadia next year when it launches for everyone who isn't a founder (at least that was my understanding from the announcements), so any "demo" will likely be up to individual publishers/developers for their individual games.
The Founder/Pro stuff isn't necessary to use Stadia, well...at least after the wider launch; and the Founder stuff comes with a "buddy" pass that is the Pro version, so that might help spread it around before the "regular" version of Stadia launches?
I mean it is certainly a whole can of worms being opened (with rights, ownership, etc), but with the way you'll access the games it sounds like it'll be relatively trivial for whoever is offering any given game to simply let anyone to try the game for a specific set of time before having to buy it. In fact it would probably be more ideal than the traditional demo situation, since they wouldn't even have to create a demo, simply give an hour or two or something access and then have that account locked out without buying the individual games. Games on the Pro service will just be accessible anyway.
Like any demo system, this could potentially even increase sales depending on the game. For instance, Destiny 2 being on Pro (my understanding was the full current version, not the "new light" version that will be F2P anyway) with cross platform saving now happening, it actually opens up more options to re-sell the game to players who want to play on other platforms and keep their stuff. Myself as an example, I play on the PS4, but I actually would be more interested in also buying the game on XB1/PC additionally now that I'll be able to simply log out on one platform and log back in on another. I already own the game so I'm an easy sell; but someone trying it out for the first time via Stadia might enjoy it and have friends who play it on PS4. With Bungie making the pricing/content model more accessible to new players means that individual player may very well buy more copies on other platforms, further increasing personal investment, and increasing the chance they'll spend money in-game and buy future content.
There's a lot of arguing over details of Stadia, and it is absolutely not a for-sure thing (though game streaming, IMO is), but I believe there are a lot of business side aspects that make more sense to publishers and developers than us players are really considering or would even think about, that makes the entire concept all the more appealing to them, which in turn increases the likelihood of long-term success. Also, on the topic of immediate profits, remember the type of company Google is. They wouldn't be doing something like this to suddenly be a "real" game company. They'd be doing it because they figured out that it would expand their already existing cash cow of customer information and advertising. This broad of an initiative isn't something that happens on a whim, and how absurdly expensive the upfront costs have to be, means they've got a plan. Again, it doesn't mean it will pan out, as many have pointed out, Google is no stranger to dropping projects. But they are also no strangers to making more money than god, and even some missteps doesn't change that.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
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As a Canuck, I call say with total certainty that it's a nonstarter here, it would eat a month of our internet bandwidth in a week and Rodgers couldn't carry a reliable connection in a bucket.
One of the things that makes this less scary then it could be is that it has strong 'solution in search of a problem' energy, yeah.
I absolutely get concerns over this, but I’m kind of surprised that the idea is being treated as unimaginable or absent of potential benefits. Some variant of this technology has been a science fiction staple for decades, and we’ve been inching closer for a long time.
Edit: Just to emphasize an important bit, this will absolutely fuck some people over, probably a lot of them, and probably those who get fucked over by society on a regular basis. We need to address that (as well as we ever do), but I don’t think it’s going to stop the push for mass virtualization.
It's science fiction, because it is science fiction - while some of the issues are purely artificial, those issues are big. And then there's the laws of physics problems such as signal propagation, or the range issues that the 5g wavelength brings, which play into the issues of geography and infrastructure.
You don’t need to break physics to make something that’s good enough for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of circumstances. Providing access to the vast majority of people will take much longer.
We’re already playing extremely twitchy games online with varying degrees of lag and people generally just live with it. We can’t pretend games are latency free now, even locally - most people aren’t rocking CRTs or getting their TV settings right in the first place.
Hey - also Canadian and I have a widely commercially available gigabit connection via Bell. No caps. You can also get nearly the same thing through Rogers now I believe.
I’m not sure at all how you’re figuring internet infrastructure here is a “non-starter”.
And how much do you pay for that internet? And how many Stadia data centers will Google pay for? Stadia needs custom blades, it's not something that runs on standard servers, datacenters will need specific retrofit to support it - and how many do we even have? Spread out towns will also worsen the speed of light induced latency. Gotta say, the launch list I've seen doesn't play well to the technical limitations of the plat.
About $200 with other things bundled in. I'm not sure how anybody is supposed to answer those other questions but it's really not the point. You were saying the internet here was a non-starter and that's not really the case.
Indeed, pay 75$/month for uncapped 600 megabit here in western canada. Latency concerns me but data caps/speeds are not an issue.
Hell I can’t get Verizon since the lines end up the street so my comcast prices are like 20% higher than people a block over and I have a cap and they don’t.
The amount of trickery required to make people think they're playing lag free is astounding. Just out of the gate. Net code today is becoming increasingly a game of predictive guesswork and sleight of lag.
Adding another buffer of lag to and from the Stadia server and making it feel as fast as current setups is going to be a monumental task.
The "problem" here is that the console audience has been pretty stagnant. Total mainstream console sales this generation are barely at 200 million. It's slightly shrunken since the age of the Wii and PS2. Microsoft is talking about "reaching 2 billion gamers" in connection with their xCloud for a reason.
I don't know that this actually works in the end, but that's the drive behind it.
We can easily have that level of curated, walled-garden mod support on Stadia or xCloud if the devs wanted it. The hurdles to modding on Stadia are similar to those on any other console, approval, indexing and storing in a central database, and relying on PC devs to create them.
Anyway I don't see the relevance of "should" when talking about whether people will actually buy something. I've freaking made mods, I don't have any illusions that most people even know what they are or can figure out how to install them.