Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

[leadeater]

11 minutes ago, Kisai said:

But you're not having 100's of people using the VMWare server as a desktop replacement simultaneously.

We have concurrent session count of 350, up to 96 sessions per server. Call centers have in the multiple thousands. VMware View deployments can be absolutely massive. What they aren't used for is game streaming, even though you can and I have. Playing games with View works, quite well but probably not as good as Stadia etc because it's not supposed to be for gaming.

 

Quote

With the industry’s largest number of public reference deployments of more than 5,000 seats, VMware View is a great solution for large-scale deployments.

^ 2012

https://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2012/05/demystifying-vmware-view-large-scale-designs.html

 

https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/vmware-horizon-view-large-scale-reference-architecture.pdf

 

11 minutes ago, Kisai said:

it's not a REQUIREMENT to stream, but it is a requirement to stream to all current streaming systems (Twitch, Youtube, Tiktok, etc)

We are talking about game streaming not any of the above.

 

Not streaming game play, Stadia. Streaming a game.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

We have concurrent session count of 350, up to 96 sessions per server. Call centers have in the multiple thousands. VMware View deployments can be absolutely massive. What they aren't used for is game streaming, even though you can and I have. Playing games with View works, quite well but probably not as good as Stadia etc because it's not supposed to be for gaming.

 

I would hate to see the experience of 350 people trying to play the same game on the same server when the dGPU requirements for even 10 year old games like Skyrim is still 2GB. 

 

Like AFAIK Stadia probably had to provision servers to not be shared if there was any hope of a 4K experience.  Just to spin up a Stadia session took several seconds, probably because the physical server had to have local copies of all the games on a local SSD.

AMD Radeon Pro V320

That card, you're only getting one game on.

 

Anyway, the argument is generally that unless the streaming server is close enough, the performance and experience will be miserable.

 

[leadeater]

45 minutes ago, Kisai said:

I would hate to see the experience of 350 people trying to play the same game on the same server when the dGPU requirements for even 10 year old games like Skyrim is still 2GB. 

Well I said you shouldn't, Horizon View is not for playing games. Also game streaming servers use the same GPUs as VDI servers you just don't chop it up as much across so many sessions.

 

You can get 4 double wide full length GPUs in to an HPE DL385 Gen11 so if you went with say 4x A40 that's 192GB of total video memory however you are still partitioning the CUDA cores so really wouldn't go above 4 per card, 2 if you want to do 4K and 1 if you wanted to do 4K Ultra at which point you stop using datacenter GPUs, violate Nvidia ToS and use Geforce cards.

 

Anyway like I said Horizon View/VDI isn't for playing games and the protocol are optimized to restrict frame rate, image quality etc so it would be a little silly to use it for 4K Ultra RT On heh.

 

45 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Anyway, the argument is generally that unless the streaming server is close enough, the performance and experience will be miserable.

Was never saying otherwise. But you can and should attempt to do the sorts of things I mentioned since they have measurable impacts and improvements even on local network VDI. You just can't go as far with some things since for gaming you really do care much more about the image quality and accuracy compared to Word/Excel/Web Browser.

[LAwLz]

6 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

The big issue with game streaming is that unless you have a good library of free titles to go with the service I don't think it will get off the ground. Paying a subscription and having to pay for the games just feels bad to alot of people especially when the gaming experience is objectively worse than local hardware. 

That's exactly what the Xbox streaming service is... You pay a flat monthly fee and get access to all games. You don't pay for the streaming capabilities and then also pay for the games. All the games are included and free... 

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

That's exactly what the Xbox streaming service is... You pay a flat monthly fee and get access to all games. You don't pay for the streaming capabilities and then also pay for the games. All the games are included and free... 

I am not sure how the service is set up but if it cost more than simply game pass then I am not sure how many would be keen on using it. I could see it as being a sorta extra that people use but I doubt you will see people getting rid of local hardware simply because most people like to be able to play games that are not in Microsofts library. It might be a nice thing for on the go or maybe being able to play titles at higher fidelity than your local hardware is capable of but I think game pass is already pretty compelling on its own. If it was included for free or for a small fee then I could see some opting in. 

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

I am not sure how the service is set up but if it cost more than simply game pass then I am not sure how many would be keen on using it. I could see it as being a sorta extra that people use but I doubt you will see people getting rid of local hardware simply because most people like to be able to play games that are not in Microsofts library. It might be a nice thing for on the go or maybe being able to play titles at higher fidelity than your local hardware is capable of but I think game pass is already pretty compelling on its own. If it was included for free or for a small fee then I could see some opting in. 

It's a feature of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. I don't use it and I have done very little research on it, but from what I understand it's 17 dollars a month (or 25 dollars a month for the family plan, with up to 6 accounts) and you get:

• Game streaming
• Free EA Play membership
• Xbox Live Gold membership (required if you want to play games online on the Xbox, and it's 10 dollars a month if bought separately)
• Access to games that you can download and install like normal games (not streaming).
• Discounts for games
• Some additional perks that change from month to month (this month it was three months of free Discord Nitro, some Apex Legends stuff, some Battlefield 2042 stuff, some mount in TES Online, and so on)

 

Honestly, judging by how often some people seem to buy new games, play them for like 2 months, and then buy another game, I think it is a pretty good deal, even if you ignore the game streaming aspect. It's something that Microsoft is heavily pushing. Not just the game streaming aspect, but the service as a whole.

 

Even if the game streaming aspect doesn't pan out for various reasons, I still think the "game pass" model where you pay a monthly fee instead of buying games will become the dominant form of playing games in the future.

[Brooksie359]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

It's a feature of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. I don't use it and I have done very little research on it, but from what I understand it's 17 dollars a month (or 25 dollars a month for the family plan, with up to 6 accounts) and you get:

• Game streaming
• Free EA Play membership
• Xbox Live Gold membership (required if you want to play games online on the Xbox, and it's 10 dollars a month if bought separately)
• Access to games that you can download and install like normal games (not streaming).
• Discounts for games
• Some additional perks that change from month to month (this month it was three months of free Discord Nitro, some Apex Legends stuff, some Battlefield 2042 stuff, some mount in TES Online, and so on)

 

Honestly, judging by how often some people seem to buy new games, play them for like 2 months, and then buy another game, I think it is a pretty good deal, even if you ignore the game streaming aspect. It's something that Microsoft is heavily pushing. Not just the game streaming aspect, but the service as a whole.

 

Even if the game streaming aspect doesn't pan out for various reasons, I still think the "game pass" model where you pay a monthly fee instead of buying games will become the dominant form of playing games in the future.

Ok that makes sense. I mean it's probably going to work out simply because game pass is popular but not necessarily that a ton of people will use the feature. Most likely it's like I said it will be a nice feature to have as icing on the cake. I can see plenty of people using it when they want but I don't think gaming streaming will ever be something that people will exclusively game on. 

[williamcll]

See if Sony made good exclusives we woudln't have these kind of arguments in the first place.

[Stahlmann]

On 7/14/2023 at 11:04 AM, LAwLz said:

It's a feature of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. I don't use it and I have done very little research on it, but from what I understand it's 17 dollars a month (or 25 dollars a month for the family plan, with up to 6 accounts) and you get:

• Game streaming
• Free EA Play membership
• Xbox Live Gold membership (required if you want to play games online on the Xbox, and it's 10 dollars a month if bought separately)
• Access to games that you can download and install like normal games (not streaming).
• Discounts for games
• Some additional perks that change from month to month (this month it was three months of free Discord Nitro, some Apex Legends stuff, some Battlefield 2042 stuff, some mount in TES Online, and so on)

 

Honestly, judging by how often some people seem to buy new games, play them for like 2 months, and then buy another game, I think it is a pretty good deal, even if you ignore the game streaming aspect. It's something that Microsoft is heavily pushing. Not just the game streaming aspect, but the service as a whole.

 

Even if the game streaming aspect doesn't pan out for various reasons, I still think the "game pass" model where you pay a monthly fee instead of buying games will become the dominant form of playing games in the future.

I'm getting huge flashbacks on what it was like when Netflix was the big movie streaming service and there was no real competition. It's ironic that their service was best when they were a monopoly and it got worse over the years as their market share shrunk. They had everything you'd ever want, and over the years more and more of their content became exclusive at some other service. Now Netflix has lost the appeal for many of it's (former) users and frankly streaming as a whole lost a lot of appeal. You need a new subscription for every other show you want to watch. I really hope this won't happen to Game Pass and seeing as Microsoft buys so many studios i don't think it's gonna happen anytime soon.

 

Since i mostly play older games, and i already have a huge Steam library and plenty of backlogged games i couldn't justify Game Pass yet. But for people newer to the hobby that like to play current games and don't really have their own game library i see Game Pass as the best deal atm. Offering compelling value such as this is actually the best way to combat piracy, not integrating intrusive DRM and shit like that.

[BradTheRad]

I plan on starting a game company and all of the aqcuisition stuff worries me. I am concerned that I won't be able to be successful because of all of this.

[Mark Kaine]

2 minutes ago, BradTheRad said:

I plan on starting a game company and all of the aqcuisition stuff worries me. I am concerned that I won't be able to be successful because of all of this.

you're looking at it the wrong way:

>make game company (lol? tf actually but ok)

>sell for billions to Microsoft 

.

>profit?

 

 

i mean, yes.