Google Stadia (Cloud Gaming)

[Results45]

20 hours ago, S w a t s o n said:

I think google is using these right now?

 

https://www.amd.com/en/products/professional-graphics/radeon-pro-v340

 

SR-IOV, 2 vega 56 on one card. made to do this workload

 

Edit: This supports the streaming while you play.

 

 

Sure. I'll buy it, but man if only AMD released a consumer version of the Pro v430. It would be a total RTX killer. Just imagine...........VEGA 112 RAYMASTER.

 

Who needs tensor and RT cores when you have over 7,000 shaders, 32GB of VRAM, and 25.4 TERAFLOPS with overclocking?

 

But then again both it's price and performance would be similar to an overclocked Titan RTX with comparably worse ray-tracing.

[Taf the Ghost]

5 hours ago, Results45 said:

 

Sure. I'll buy it, but man if only AMD released a consumer version of the Pro v430. It would be a total RTX killer. Just imagine...........VEGA 112 RAYMASTER.

 

Who needs tensor and RT cores when you have over 7,000 shaders, 32GB of VRAM, and 25.4 TERAFLOPS with overclocking?

 

But then again both it's price and performance would be similar to an overclocked Titan RTX with comparably worse ray-tracing.

MxM GPUs are rough for gaming because of Driver & Engine issues. It's not that it has never been doable. It's just that people didn't buy more than 1 GPU enough. It'll be a few years before we see dual-chip Gaming GPUs, but we know it's coming. AMD just has to design the architecture around being able to do it.

[Results45]

Yeah like this article says we seem to get a string of them and then another a few generations later (i.e. 590/690, HD6990/HD7990, Titan Z, R9 295x2, and Radeon Pro Duo/Pro Duo Polaris).

 

Dual-socket graphics cards seem pretty powerful. Both the Titan Z and R9 295x2 were released in 2014 and can still pick a pretty good fight against a RX 580 and GTX 1060.

 

I think it's time we get another from Team Green with Ampere and Team Red with Navi -- or with whatever architecture comes after.

[chiller15]

I do think that GaaS (Games as a Service) will change the gaming industry forever. I know this has been attempted before with OnLive, but the infrastructure and support wasn't there at the time. As technologies have improved and companies like Google and Microsoft have the resources, I do think this will work and it will stay. On the flip side, I don't think it'll dissuade people from the next generation of consoles from Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony, but it'll be used in-conjunction with and may eventually take away from that.

 

Who else has the capacity and presence to pull this sort of thing off? I can only think of Microsoft (who we know are annoucing their version at E3) and Amazon. Even the likes of Sony don't have the raw data centre and Internet presence required for this sort of thing, unless they team up with someone like Amazon.

 

I would imagine that Google would buy or create game studios so that they can compete with other first party providers.

 

Price wise, I would imagine that it is going to be a fairly expensive monthly subscription, at least at first. New technologies usually are expensive at first. I would also imagine that there would be multiple tiers of subscriptions, not just for the quality of game you want to stream (1080p/4K, etc) but also tiers for the types of games, such as pay xx to access 5 games or pay yy to access all games on their service.

 

As for game ownership, I expect it to be all subscription based, like the Xbox Game Pass. As long as you pay the subscription, you can play the game. You stop paying, you can no longer play it.

[Ertman]

^ 

I do thing the GaaS is likely the future for most gamers. Microsoft and even Sony are clearly pushing in that direction, and it is likely the XboxTwo and PS5 could be the last of the traditional consoles. There will still be a place for PC gamers for quite some time, but eventually the convenience might or probably will take that market too, it would just be quite some time.

 

However, the biggest stumbling block is the infrastructure, for the most part, we just aren't there yet. For North America it might take 10 years for the infrastructure to catchup to serve the majority of users. There will still be many users that will be left behind once GaaS reaches a tipping point in market penetration and they will have to rely on PC gaming or whatever console maker is still available. Maybe the console makers will continue the next generation consoles for more than a decade seeing cutdown versions of then "current" games to still give people with poor internet to participate.

 

I might be pessimistic, but Google also doesn't have the best track record for staying with projects for the long term, so I look forward to seeing how this works out.

 

 

[Hellion]

Got to love how all these "cloud" gaming services completely overlook and fail to mention that unless you have what would equate to a $150+ /month internet plan where I am located the experience will be complete trash due to latency problems.

 

At that price, you could essentially build your own machine in 8-10 months that will be solid for 3 years, actually own something tangeble, and do with as you please.

 

Another pointless product.

[Shadow_Storm56]

I have to ask, am I the only one who thinks this will be really limited? Your latency + the servers and anything else Is going to make this limited to good internet. Even if it's normally good and slows down a bit one day you will have a bad time at that point. Plus if you have an internet cap you are screwed for sure...I think it's a cool idea but I wonder if it will be any good for most people? 

[Citadelen]

On 3/21/2019 at 10:34 PM, Hellion said:

Got to love how all these "cloud" gaming services completely overlook and fail to mention that unless you have what would equate to a $150+ /month internet plan where I am located the experience will be complete trash due to latency problems.

 

At that price, you could essentially build your own machine in 8-10 months that will be solid for 3 years, actually own something tangeble, and do with as you please.

 

Another pointless product.

There's no way capped plans in the US can last, I can't believe they've lasted this long. As far as I'm aware, the UK at least, and possibly most of Europe as well, had uncapped internet since at least 2010. 

[skywake]

The way I see it the main selling point of game streaming has always been that you can have high end visuals on low end devices. Think of the NVidia Shield or the Wii U GamePad. Despite the lack of commercial success the entire point of those products was that you could have relatively high spec visuals on a semi-portable device. Laugh at the Wii U if you want but in 2012 the idea of having Assassin's Creed on the Wii U GamePad was pretty compelling given how far behind the Vita and 3DS were.

 

The issue I have with Stadia though is that this key selling point isn't as compelling as it was 5-10 years ago. Worse it's getting increasingly less compelling as the years go on. Think about it, what makes the Switch less compelling today than a high end gaming PC or an XBOne X? Not really the games it can run so much. More the fact that the Switch is only doing 720p/30fps most of the time and those higher spec machines are pushing 4K. But with Stadia, because it's streaming, you're giving up framerate and resolution anyways. So why not just leverage the increasing power of the mobile GPU in your devices instead?

[The Benjamins]

AdoredTV video talking about the service

 

 

[Taf the Ghost]

3 hours ago, The Benjamins said:

AdoredTV video talking about the service

 

 

In-game advertising is something no one else has noticed as being extremely likely, but it's a good point.

 

However, this really isn't a PC Gaming problem. This is a 4th Console. Without the games, it's worthless. But it has to be new, mainstream games. Even the standard CoD players aren't going to be too interested. Google's only play is to act the space that Nintendo and Mobile Games circle around. If they can hit that, they'll have a product. If not, it'll just be a curiosity.

[The Benjamins]

10 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

In-game advertising is something no one else has noticed as being extremely likely, but it's a good point.

 

However, this really isn't a PC Gaming problem. This is a 4th Console. Without the games, it's worthless. But it has to be new, mainstream games. Even the standard CoD players aren't going to be too interested. Google's only play is to act the space that Nintendo and Mobile Games circle around. If they can hit that, they'll have a product. If not, it'll just be a curiosity.

Google made a studio and its head has made some good games in the past.

In another article a google rep stated their games will be Stadia only, so if they make a hit (like halo) they should be able to pull people over.

 

https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/20/18274811/google-stadia-interview-phil-harrison-gdc-2019

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-google-stadia-phil-harrison-majd-bakar-interview

 

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

2002    The Sims Online
2007    Assassin's Creed
2009    Assassin's Creed II 
2009    Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines
2013    Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist
2014    Watch Dogs
2015    The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot

[Taf the Ghost]

4 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

Google made a studio and its head has made some good games in the past.

In another article a google rep stated their games will be Stadia only, so if they make a hit (like halo) they should be able to pull people over.

 

https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/20/18274811/google-stadia-interview-phil-harrison-gdc-2019

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-google-stadia-phil-harrison-majd-bakar-interview

 

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

2002    The Sims Online
2007    Assassin's Creed
2009    Assassin's Creed II 
2009    Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines
2013    Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist
2014    Watch Dogs
2015    The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot

Producer and Exec Producer credits, so at least those got out on time. 

 

But that's not really the space Google needs to head towards. They aren't going to peel people away from Call of Duty or FIFA. What they can do is target the non-hardcore market. Think Wii Sports and Mobile Games. The consumers that will buy something if they can get in right after seeing a video on it on YouTube. At least, on the assumption their model is selling games. If it's a monthly service, they'll need a catalog really fast and the make sure all of the Free To Play games are on the service. Then there's the question of how much of a cut Google is going to want from microtransactions. 

 

I foresee Google buying up games to put on the platform that would have released somewhere else. People are annoyed by the EGS exclusivity, just wait until Stadia Exclusivity gets going.

[Doobeedoo]

Nah. Nothing new, we knew what they'd show up though. Google was never know to be supportive to gaming in general, they just want to sell a service like everyone these days.

Cloud game streaming just puts a sour taste in general. The latency, even demoed is just so bad, so that's a one thing that will always exist. We've yet to see how compression hold up, especially with lower speeds they claim, it will be horrible. 

In short, it's an instanced fully controlled environment from Google with many shortcomings, zero control over anything and all for a monthly fee that won't be cheap you can bet.