Stadia: A new paradigm for gaming?

Old Duck

Old Duck
Hellakitty said:
That's all well and good, regarding the image quality and HDR and colour gamut etc.

But none of that will win you a clutch last-second peek-a-boo gunfight when it's double OT and you have your rank to play for. A fast display with a GPU driving high frame rates and consistent low frametimes will.*

*player skill notwithstanding, of course. You get my point.
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I do get your point. I'm not suggesting that framerate should't matter to you, it just doesn't matter as much to me and many others. I also make a valid point that as resolution goes up, the need for higher framerate goes up, which means that I can personally be satisfied with 60 fps on a 1080p display, whereas I can actually see the "stutter" on a 4K display at 60 fps, especially during panning (due to the image having to jump across pixels when framerate is low).

All that said, I am fairly confident that this Stadia device will not be marketed to competitive eSport champions, LOL ;)

Speaking of, I'm assuming your competitive gameplay is happening on a LAN, because Internet latency will far outweigh any benefit you would get from a 240Hz display, unless all your friends are connected to the same ISP via fiber (and even then you get router latency not found on a LAN). And for anyone thinking this is off-topic, you'll note my first post is all about the LATENCY of this Stadia device being the true enemy of its success.
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Incidentally, for anyone that's actually interested in this service (rather than in complaining about its shortcomings) there's another similar service around at the moment which I've heard fairly good things about called Shadow.

https://shadow.tech/gben
 
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Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
Alec Turner said:
Incidentally, for anyone that's actually interested in this service (rather than in complaining about its shortcomings) there's another similar service around at the moment which I've heard fairly good things about called Shadow.

https://shadow.tech/gben
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There is at least twobother ones since I watched a netstuff nerd compare 3 gaming streaming services just a couple of months ago.
He dint recommend any of them for the likes of FPS players since input lag was always a major issue.
 

Hellakitty

Hellakitty
Navigare Necesse Est said:
There is at least twobother ones since I watched a netstuff nerd compare 3 gaming streaming services just a couple of months ago.
He dint recommend any of them for the likes of FPS players since input lag was always a major issue.
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Battle(non)sense.

This is the video:

[video=youtube_share;eY_zjGAXs_8]https://youtu.be/eY_zjGAXs_8[/video]
 

Jakester13

Jakester13
Interesting video from Battle(non)sense, cheers.

So ultimately this is a service for the future when everybody's internet connection is lightning fast, and Google have got powerful server hardware in every city.

Not too far away then! And by that time they'll have got every major developer on board and us consumers, well, we'll be left without much choice.

But that's OK. By that time I'll be sitting on a beach somewhere warm (in my dream retirement place!)

o7

PS Personally, because I can afford the hardware (altho I'm a generation back with my Core i7 2600K and trying to justify the upgrade), I like having a powerful PC that can run games locally in glorious resolutions at good fps. But millions could have access if the hardware required to game was much cheaper.
 
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Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Old Duck said:
You have the words "complaining" and "shadow" in the same post. Are you baiting me? [haha]
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LOL - hadn't actually spotted your new catchphrase. So what's up with shadows? I thought they were pretty cool?
[video=youtube_share;hzu3ijpGdn0]https://youtu.be/hzu3ijpGdn0[/video]
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
Alec Turner said:
LOL - hadn't actually spotted your new catchphrase. So what's up with shadows? I thought they were pretty cool?
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Well I suppose some people think that 70s disco is cool, but these flashing disco shadows on PS4 are HORRIBLE!!!!

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...hose-shadows?p=7018855&viewfull=1#post7018855

EBL is just another type of broken shadow, which are just really badly-written graphics shaders. The shadows used to look good on PS4, but Frontier broke the game with their first major update (2.4) and it's only gotten worse since :(

Bringing this back on-topic, the idea of a cloud-based "gaming machine" rendering ED in ultra-quality mode appeals to me, but without the bandwidth to support it, I question its viability. Someday, perhaps, but odds are I'll be upgrading to PS5 before then.
 

who?

who?
These kinds of solutions are interesting, but still the "worst case scenario" needs considering, as opposed to the average or best case.

If there are issues anywhere between your PC to the game servers - even if it's just a handful of times in a month of heavy gameplay - that could be enough to kill the service. You're going to win a race and then... [WAITING FOR STADIA...], or you're going to shoot a player to win the match, then the framerate/input lags and when it's restored you missed and are already dead.

There are plus-sides, in that you don't really have to worry about your console dying. Or a new, faster model coming out. Or long delays when updating your games. These all become server-side issues from which they can insulate the users. But it's the worst-case scenario that I think will keep the mass-market away from services like this initially.
 

Hellakitty

Hellakitty
I think the idea behind it is solid enough. There is only one reason you'd choose between a PC and a console these days, and that's cost. And even then, spending a few extra bucks to get a mid-range gaming PC far outweighs the negatives of purchasing a console.

Previously one of the big selling points of a console was convenience, but now with tens of gigabyte day one patches on physical media games, live service shenanigans and everything else, that convenience has totally disappeared.

Cloud gaming makes gaming convenient again. It's problematic as a whole, but I can see the sell of it from a 'plug and play' perspective that consoles have increasingly lost.
 
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Backer42

B
Jakester13 said:
I personally can't wait for the day I can buy a sub-£200 chromebook and enjoy AAA, AA and indie titles without having to upgrade my hardware every couple of years.
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Already have that. ;)

Henkka77 said:
In my experience, it depends on the size of your monitor. I played many years with 28" FHD monitor but when i bought 32" monitor, FHD was way too "pixelated".
Now i have 4K 32" and wouldnt go back to FHD anymore. :)
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I use 1080p60 on 40". It's a matter of viewing distance.

The whole thing about yet another cloud game streaming service (Google again pulling a "me too") boils down to one time cost vs. recurring cost. I prefer one time cost. I can stop buying CDs and still enjoy listening to music, can stop buying movies and still enjoying watching what I have, I can stop buying video games and still play them etc.

When I cancel payment for a cloud subscription, I lose everything. So I don't like the idea.
 

Backer42

B
Hellakitty said:
Previously one of the big selling points of a console was convenience, but now with tens of gigabyte day one patches on physical media games, live service shenanigans and everything else, that convenience has totally disappeared.
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The convenience of consoles is not having to to deal with a bunch of buggy launchers/updaters/malware for each publisher on the planet, cumbersome management of CD keys or the forced maintenance of the Windows operating system.

I can see the sell of it from a 'plug and play' perspective that consoles have increasingly lost.
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I don't see this. Consoles have improved a lot since they got Internet access. I see some trolls complaining about consoles having hard drives and installing games on them (something which has been the standard on PCs since the 90s) or consoles getting access to digital distribution, which is somehow bad when it happens on a console.

I view both as positives and and going with the times. The convenience is everything happening automatically in the background. You don't have to roll back Windows updates, "verify game files" after a failed patch. Or suddenly notice a physical disc not functioning anymore, because the DRM has been updated too far. (Did you know, that Steam doesn't recognize its own discs anymore? Yes, you can throw them away now, you download everything, if you want or not.)

For a console the rule is still: "Have the disc, play the game". Obviously a lot of stuff happens automatically, when you insert it, but why should I care? I don't have to do anything manually. I don't have to enter cryptic codes, remember account credentials I locked this game into or download DRM launcher of the week. If I have the console and the disc, I'm playing the game. Might take while for the first launch, but nothing I personally need to attend to.
 
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Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
It won't survive long.

As was already mentioned, Google has a terrible track record at doing anything beyond basic maintenance on services that aren't related to their core businesses (ads, privacy violation, and copyright infringement). Why are they doing it? Because they have too much money floating around, it's good advertisement, and R&D is very interesting when it comes to taxation.

It's also a very hard to provision service. Ideally you want games on there that don't use a lot of resources; the most critical and expensive would be RAM and GPU power, and that's exactly what games need a lot of. You also don't want your servers to idle while at the same time preventing players queueing up. Ultimately that means you want to host games that are in the long tail of their lifecycle, with little or no new content pulling in lots of players. Sub-prime MMOs would be a good fit, those also don't have major issues with a bit of input- and display latency.

On top of that, the USA are presumably a vital target market, and the ISPs over there will very quickly try to gouge their customers for the privilege if it turns out to be a significant thing against all odds.
 

Chris Simon

Chris Simon
I'll just leave this here.

a3P1N9q.gif
 

Hellakitty

Hellakitty
Backer42 said:
The convenience of consoles is not having to to deal with a bunch of buggy launchers/updaters/malware for each publisher on the planet, cumbersome management of CD keys or the forced maintenance of the Windows operating system.


I don't see this. Consoles have improved a lot since they got Internet access. I see some trolls complaining about consoles having hard drives and installing games on them (something which has been the standard on PCs since the 90s) or consoles getting access to digital distribution, which is somehow bad when it happens on a console.

I view both as positives and and going with the times. The convenience is everything happening automatically in the background. You don't have to roll back Windows updates, "verify game files" after a failed patch. Or suddenly notice a physical disc not functioning anymore, because the DRM has been updated too far. (Did you know, that Steam doesn't recognize its own discs anymore? Yes, you can throw them away now, you download everything, I you want or not.)

For a console the rule is still: "Have the disc, play the game". Obviously a lot of stuff happens automatically, when you insert it, but why should I care? I don't have to do anything manually. I don't have to enter cryptic codes, remember account credentials I locked this game into or download DRM launcher of the week. If I have the console and the disc, I'm playing the game. Might take while for the first launch, but nothing I personally need to attend to.
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I've not had a physical media drive in my PC for years. My case doesn't even have a bay for one. Verifying game files takes mere seconds on raid0'd SSD's.

I'd rather take the sometimes admittedly finnickity Windows environment purely for the massive uplift in performance I get with a PC over a console.
 

Fishy

Fishy
Let's just say that with my glorious 6Mbps DSL connection and its dodgy random latency, that thing is not happening for me in a loooooong time.

No interest in the concept either right now as I can afford my hardware and enjoy the control, but that said, if the Irish ISP infrastructure sorts itself out, well, who knows. It's not that many years ago that I'd have laughed at the ludicrous ideas that Steam or Netflix seemed to be, and yet these days there's no way I'd go back to collecting and storing cds/dvds, so...
 
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Old Duck

Old Duck
Backer42 said:
The convenience of consoles is not having to to deal with a bunch of buggy launchers/updaters/malware for each publisher on the planet, cumbersome management of CD keys or the forced maintenance of the Windows operating system.

I don't see this. Consoles have improved a lot since they got Internet access. I see some trolls complaining about consoles having hard drives and installing games on them (something which has been the standard on PCs since the 90s) or consoles getting access to digital distribution, which is somehow bad when it happens on a console.

I view both as positives and and going with the times. The convenience is everything happening automatically in the background. You don't have to roll back Windows updates, "verify game files" after a failed patch. Or suddenly notice a physical disc not functioning anymore, because the DRM has been updated too far. (Did you know, that Steam doesn't recognize its own discs anymore? Yes, you can throw them away now, you download everything, I you want or not.)

For a console the rule is still: "Have the disc, play the game". Obviously a lot of stuff happens automatically, when you insert it, but why should I care? I don't have to do anything manually. I don't have to enter cryptic codes, remember account credentials I locked this game into or download DRM launcher of the week. If I have the console and the disc, I'm playing the game. Might take while for the first launch, but nothing I personally need to attend to.
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You get a hearty "Amen!" from me :D

That said, there are some things about consoles I do not like. The number one thing I dislike is the paid subscription to play certain online games. Now on the flipside, many of the games we get to play this way used to be subscription-based themselves (ESO comes to mind), and for a much larger yearly fee, so I suppose it could be worse.

The other thing I don't like is the lack of simulator-like games. ED is the closest game I own to this genre, and it "maps over" very well on console IMO, graphics notwithstanding. I really miss the Silent Hunter series and a good flight simulator. Oh, and better mods would be nice...

As for PCs offering far better graphics - absolutely, no doubt about it. But as someone who used to be on the PC treadmill, frequently upgrading my graphics card for the price of an entire gaming platform (console), here's what I discovered over the years - today's $300 console is yesterday's $10,000 gaming machine. Tomorrow's console will be today's $10,000 gaming machine. In other words, if you look at it in a timey-wimey, I am playing on a top-end gaming machine. I just had to wait a little longer :D
 
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