Thoughts on Game-streaming services?

[Anakim]

Hi guys,

What you think about the new "streaming" services that are coming for gaming?
I'm talking about:

• PlayStation Now
• Xbox Game Pass
• Google Stadia
• GeForce Now
• Jump
• Project xCloud
• Shadow

Is this really the future of gaming?Consoles and PCs with hardware like GPUs will be still relevant?or it's too early to launch these services?

 

Personally,the only thing that I like about these new services is that people with a PC will be able to play PS and Xbox exclusive games.

For now I tried only Xbox PC Game Pass that is not a real "streaming" platform,it's just a subscription and you still need to download and install games on your HDD,but you have access to a lot of games(even triple A titles) for a fixed price per month(5$ to 15$) and I found it a pretty good deal.

[Mira Yurizaki]

If you rotate through games regularly and you have an excellent internet connection to minimize lag, then I can see this as a good deal.

 

However, in the end you don't own anything so if the service decides to remove a game, there's nothing you can do about it.

[jiyeon]

I certainly prefer owning games personally rather than streaming games. I like that feeling of owning the games I buy since I only play a handful on each platform.

Additionally, I don't like relying on the internet to play games so it's not really a good method of gaming for me.

[kpluck]

34 minutes ago, Anakim said:

Hi guys,

What you think about the new "streaming" services that are coming for gaming?
I'm talking about:

• PlayStation Now
• Xbox Game Pass
• Google Stadia
• GeForce Now
• Jump
• Project xCloud
• Shadow

Is this really the future of gaming?Consoles and PCs with hardware like GPUs will be still relevant?or it's too early to launch these services?

 

Personally,the only thing that I like about these new services is that people with a PC will be able to play PS and Xbox exclusive games.

For now I tried only Xbox PC Game Pass that is not a real "streaming" platform,it's just a subscription and you still need to download and install games on your HDD,but you have access to a lot of games(even triple A titles) for a fixed price per month(5$ to 15$) and I found it a pretty good deal.

I tried Shadow. Keep in mind, Shadow is not just a gaming platform. It is a Windows 10 cloud based virtual machine that you can game on. They had a free trial so I decided to try it out and found it worked pretty well.  I was able to install Steam and use the games in my Steam library without issues. I like the idea of being able to use standard copies of Windows games that I can use on my own system should the service shutdown. Of course, Shadow is more expensive than the other game services.

 

I don't think that these services are necessarily the future of gaming, at least not for everyone. They are just another option that has pros and cons. The question in my mind is how big is the market for these and how many can survive long term. It will be interesting to watch.

 

-kp

[HarryNyquist]

Dumb.

 

These companies should invest in getting internet to more people in rural areas & licensing games for release worldwide instead of giving ISPs another thing to throttle for ""performance concerns""" (read: money).

[DumbAsshole32]

.

[SPARTAN VI]

It would need to be a BYOG (bring your own games) structure where I basically rent the hardware to stream my own library. The reason why I prefer this is I have dozens of friends and family who are (or were) casual PC gamers who don't have the budget or experience to keep up with hardware maintenance/upgrades. If they could simply get a cheap off-the-shelf box with a browser that can stream their library of games remotely, it's both a load off my shoulders and more accessible to my "users." 

[EldritchMoose]

I have...concerns:

 

- This will only work in areas where the internet coverage is good. Lag and latency are bastards at the best of times, but this makes them both so much worse in bad situations.

- There has already been talk of publishers starting their own subscription models. I'm not looking forward to paying for a sub to Ubisoft streaming on top of Google Stadia.

[Arika]

Games-as-a-service, in what ever form that takes, is a bad idea. Especially given the history of some of these developers who will screw you over at the drop of a hat/moneybag

[vanished]

I think it has the potential to be good in theory but in practice, between technical reasons and practical reasons, we're not ready.

On 8/15/2019 at 3:12 AM, Ryan_Vickers said:

I'm not sure why it even requires a console at that point.  Every modern device is capable of decoding a video stream at sufficient resolution, quality, and framerate.  They just need an app for smart TVs and other devices.  I can imagine wanting to sell a dedicated unit I guess but they better make it like $50 or less.  Tbh, because it's obviously going to require a subscription to cover the cost, they may as well make it free if you sign up for a year or something like that.

 

As for the tech itself, it's certainly not the first time it's been tried and I doubt it will be the last.  There's pros and cons, but mainly the latter at this point.  Needing a constant internet connection - and a good one at that - for a start.  Even if it is good, the latency will only add to the already near unacceptable levels most people are dealing with due to gaming on slow TVs rather than a monitor.  Then there's the cost.  I guess this will vary by person but I'd imagine that the expense for this vs a local unit + games will ultimately be more in the long run.  To top it all off, the visual quality will not be as good due to video compression.

[AlexOak]

3 hours ago, HarryNyquist said:

Dumb.

 

These companies should invest in getting internet to more people in rural areas & licensing games for release worldwide instead of giving ISPs another thing to throttle for ""performance concerns""" (read: money).

Good Sir,

It has come to our attention that you suggested for cloud companies to start investing internet solution. We will put a stop to that by lobbying and suing. 

 

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association & American Cable Association.

 

No really that's not going to work. 

[Anakim]

Yeah the main problem is the internet connection. You need a really good connection to "play in streaming".

This kind of service was tried before and all of these companies are releasing just a BETA version of these services for now, 

but we cant ignore the fact that Google itself jumped right into the game. I mean, Stadia is not that appealing for now but i dont think that all of these companies invested in something so big without having something in mind...money aside...(i hope lol)

 

It would be cool if they could provide a service like "Netflix but in reverse" where you mainly download games locally for the best experience at a fixed price monthly and "stream" them as an option when you maybe have no memory left on your hardrive or you just dont want to install them.(I think it's something Playstation now does but only with the console)

But yeah I would subscribe for a couple of months just to play God of war or red dead redemption on my pc lol.

[Princess Luna]

Ironically it's still easier buy good hardware than get a good internet plan so.... owning games it is.

[Anakim]

3 hours ago, SPARTAN VI said:

It would need to be a BYOG (bring your own games) structure where I basically rent the hardware to stream my own library. The reason why I prefer this is I have dozens of friends and family who are (or were) casual PC gamers who don't have the budget or experience to keep up with hardware maintenance/upgrades. If they could simply get a cheap off-the-shelf box with a browser that can stream their library of games remotely, it's both a load off my shoulders and more accessible to my "users." 

I tried this but locally : with Steam Link I tried to stream my library on a amazon firestick and on my iphone 6, and it worked, but i still have to fix the connection cause with 2.4 ghz it sucks...

well remotely would be a dream came true.

[Zodiark1593]

Given my only internet is 6 GB worth of cellular, I'll just say "What can go Right Wrong?"

[Andreas Lilja]

My main issue is that they're going to remove content like Netflix does. At least Steam allows you to keep the game even if it's delisted from the store. 

[isaactechcrap]

I use Xbox game pass so I'm biased but I hate having to renew the subscription.

[The King of the Undead]

I get it for games where it is online anyway. however you won't see me playing minecraft on stadia.

[Kisai]

On 8/21/2019 at 11:15 AM, Anakim said:

Hi guys,

What you think about the new "streaming" services that are coming for gaming?

These are all bad, and will only have success in markets with extremely good internet connectivity (so South Korea, Japan, Taiwan.)

 

Most of North America has rubbish-tier internet, and high-latency to boot. 5ms latency fiber-to-fiber end points if you have your fiber directly from a Tier 1 telecom. For everyone not on fiber, you're looking at 6ms on unbonded VDSL and 20ms on unbonded cable. That cable latency, already destroys your ability to stream a game not designed to deal with latency as that's already adding one frame of lag. 

 

People who have access to fiber systems however can get these 2-8ms latencies that might afford playing a game about as well as it is local. However competative games will be tilted entirely in favor of people who live within 5 miles of the data center, since they will have the lowest latency. This is already the case, where people in SF, NYC, or Montreal enjoy much better MMO gaming when they connect to servers in their time zone.

 

But what will kill it in the end is that nobody wants to pay for "data capped" internet, including both wired lines and wireless. LTE is actually faster and lower latency than many people's cable internet, because the fiber is run right to the MSC at the base of the tower. Will 5G make that even better? VERY DOUBTFUL. All wireless tech suffers from line-of-sight and multi-pathing issues, and that's why your cell phone bandwidth and latency tanks when in an area with a lot of people (such as conventions, protests, parties, theme parks, rapid transit, ferries, and so forth.) CDMA basically works by having everyone speaking at the same time but different languages, so as more people are in the area, more people have to speak louder and only people closest to each other can hear each other.

 

For any of these services to survive, particularly Google's implementation, the streaming networks must partner with the ISP's to ensure that everyone has a low-latency fiber link to where the servers are. Google will not be able to centralize all their servers in California and service anyone in Central/Pacific time. Meanwhile over in Japan and South Korea, their fiber networks already exist, and their gaming culture is already built around having high speed, low-latency links.

 

Somehow I doubt any of these will fare well unless it's forced on the user (eg PS5 having no disc drive, no hard drive, only allowing you to play games by streaming)