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DarkOne
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Hmm

I am not sure what to think yet.... what are your thoughts? There is no mention of cost and what is involved yet, sounds like there would be a subscription cost ....?


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D.C.Elington
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I'll follow my own little antitrust policies and vote NO regardless of the quality and price of the service.

Besides any political considerations I'm not sure that makes much sense for the environment either. For latency the servers will probably have to be clustered by region so with no "longitude-based" sharing efficiency. Also the hardware will likely have to be constantly maintained to play AAA games at maximum settings. Compared to a situation where many gamers make do with their aging rig that's even more GPUs going to landfills in Africa 🙁
And of course there's the infrastructure cost for providing the necessary bandwidth...

Just my two cents ^^


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SpaceCaptain
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While the idea is nice, I don't think the infrastructure will allow most people to use this, sadly. In a couple of years, maybe.


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DarkOne
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Oh I definitely agree about bandwidth and hardware that would be needed to accomplish this. What ever year google would have to replace thousands or millions of top tier gfx cards.... haha that would be so expensive. Yeah google could sell the older cards to gamers and they would buy them up at a discount.

For instance I go to the philippines 1-2x a year and the bandwidth there on a good day in Manila is 10mbps. This whole country wouldn't be able to use this technology unless major infrastructure changes happen... and there is over 121 Million people there.

I don't think even the USA infrastructure could support this personally. I live in upstate NH and I have a decent connection over 100mbps, but when you have several people in the house maybe gaming or watching netflix that would affect your experience in my opinion.

I will be watching this closely this year for more info and reviews on how this actually runs.


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D.C.Elington
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A little anecdote: I'm using a chromecast to stream Netflix to my TV. Last year Google fumbled with something somewhere and for about one day like lots of users I just could not connect to the device. Objectively not a big deal for sure... However it was not a failed firmware update but rather apparently some live remote problem at Google. In other words while in my naive mind the service I wanted to use was relying on my ISP and Netflix, I became aware that Google was somehow involved too. And I was not so happy about it...

Also I'm probably getting too old 😉 but this everything-in-the-cloud doctrine makes me feel more and more uncomfortably dependent on an increasingly complex remote infrastructure. The situation reminds me of the "Hyperion" novels (Dan Simmons). In this universe the whole civilization is based on the "farcaster network": portals which enable instantaneous travel (physical and data streams) between any two locations. The technology is so advanced that the chic is to live in homes with rooms physically placed on different planets.
And one day the network collapses... ^^


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Pinback
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Did read that they had a successful test of the system before Christmas using the latest Assassins Creed game. Also recall that some one tried this about a decade ago but the internet infrastructure was not good enough, pretty sure D1 had a thread about it some where on the forum.

Also I can't see the other big game publishers or console makers letting Google grad the biggest market share as Valve did with Steam and Apple did with music, so we could end up with 4 or 5 competing networks.


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DarkOne
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I been looking around into Stadia here is some facts and some thoughts I have:

  1. It will not cost us a thing, will probably be a plugin to our chrome browser or an app on our TV/Phone/Tablet.
  2. You would need to have a minimum of a 20-30mbps connection (my guess you would need to have a good home network setup as well)
  3. Google will have a store, to probably buy games from.... will they allow this service to hook into Steam and services like that don't know?
  4. With all this Epic and Steam drama, now you are adding Google which probably has the biggest pockets on the planet and could buy any dev to exclusively put their game on their service....
  5. Companies are trying to remove ownership of games in my opinion.... the majority of PC game sales are digital its only a matter of time before a company can just remove access to a game that you bought
  6. Offline play impossible with your game?

You are right D.C. in your worries, even though I love seeing new tech. I always know there is going to be a cost to that tech and we aren't just talking about money here. I mean when you think about it on a grand scale, Google will own all of the content we do online for the most part. They would be the largest single monopoly out there. Think about what control they would have over society/governments....?

I guess in the end we were always just Lemmings 😉


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D.C.Elington
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Yes Pinback you're certainly right about the likely competition. Provided it's a fair one this should alleviate part of the danger. However I agree with D1 about the global push to shift from a "product" to a "service" business model, and game streaming just looks like the next step in the way. Pretty nice for the industry to have "captive" customers and the associated regular revenue (hello Amazon Prime) but for us I'm not sure if the benefits are worth the collar. Especially if in the long run we end up completely relinquishing our computing power at home, and so are left with no alternative to streaming.

Anyway IMHO from the technical standpoint the whole concept is pretty flawed: in effect it's the equivalent of having a monitor cable a few hundreds of kms long! And as a matter of fact that's the one with the largest data rate around the PC!


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Pinback
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Have seen a figure of $30 a month being quoted, pulse a lot of people will have to upgrade their internet, which will add to the cost. They might even go for a daily rate, who knows what sort pricing structure they will come up with.

I think this the way the games industries wants to go as D.C.Elingto said, they want a "captive customers". Pretty sure we going to see the games industries and games media trotting out the same 3 advantages that they always say, when we have a format change.

1 less piracy.
2 more choice.
3 cheaper games.


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DarkOne
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Is 'Less Piracy' even an issue any more? I just bought Watch Dogs 2 this weekend when it was on sale for $15, it came out last year and that Gold version was $99. Prices drop so fast and quick on these games there is really no reason to pirate them anymore.... plus with some many of these games having those anti-cheat tools or need to connect to a server it almost makes pirating not worth the effort or risk any more.

But I definitely agree with 2,3.


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Cody
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I dislike the 'subscription model' idea, wherever it rears its ugly head.

[rant deleted]

Oolite Naval Attaché


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Pinback
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Think we will end up paying a lot more for games when they go to streaming model in the next few years.

I would guess piracy still going, streaming may knock it out or may just change to some sort of hacking.


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Pinback
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Google announced their basic price of a tenner a month and they also have said user will be able to buy into a publisher library for an added cost. so far only Ubisoft has announced a price for their back catalogue, which will be another $15 on top of the google price.

Looks like this is going to get very costly very fast and I don't feel like paying 200/300 a years for a bunch of games I will never play.


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D.C.Elington
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IMO such services would make much more sense if software licenses were valid for all available distribution platforms: own one, use one whatever the source. Not the case by far 🙁


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DarkOne
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Agreed and that would be a good idea to pay once and have your game available across all platforms. Because Microsoft is also doing a subscription service as well, just not with Stadia.

But these monthly costs could get hugely expensive, maybe with publishers doing this more.... in a way its like trying to destroy third party distributors like Steam/Epic/GOG etc.... cause if they after flat monthly rates and give people access to all games then that may be a worth it depending on the costs.

But this will suck to buy a game and you can only play it on stadia and not on anything else you might have.... but I guess their way around it is that you can use stadia on multiple devices.


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Pinback
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Good vid here from Metal Jesus about why he is not going to be using it.


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DarkOne
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Yeah this is going to flop hard I think. There is really no need for it personally, consoles are pretty cheap and the ability to move my gaming experience to different medias (tv, tablet, pc, phone) is really not a huge selling point for me I could care less about that feature.

If games cannot be redeemed on console or pc if stadia dies in two years and google shuts down the servers you loose your library that is just wrong.

If your a real gamer stay far away from this.


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DarkOne
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This goes live tomorrow.... will be interested to see the reviews over the next few weeks. Here is the official support game launch titles:

  1. Stadia's Day One Titles include:
  2. Assassin's Creed Odyssey
  3. Attack on Titan: Final Battle 2
  4. Destiny 2: The Collection (available in Stadia Pro)
  5. Farming Simulator 2019
  6. Football Manager 2020
  7. Grid 2019
  8. Gylt
  9. Just Dance 2020
  10. Kine
  11. Metro Exodus
  12. Mortal Kombat 11
  13. NBA 2K20
  14. Rage 2
  15. Rise of the Tomb Raider
  16. Red Dead Redemption 2
  17. Samurai Shodown (available in Stadia Pro)
  18. Shadow of the Tomb Raider
  19. Thumper
  20. Tomb Raider 2013
  21. Trials Rising
  22. Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Destiny 2 and Mortal Kombat are really the only solid action games in this list that would really need bandwidth to be successfully played. Hmm, the majority of the other titles are single player with some MP option.

This post was modified 4 years ago by DarkOne

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Pinback
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Reaction to this seems to be anything from the worst thing ever to it works as long as you have a fast internet connection and no one else is using it. Most of the complaints I have seen are about overheating dongle, overpriced and limited section of games, lack of launch features and having to use a phone app to log in or change settings. Even read that Google is not happy with the take up of device, which is bad news for the long term as Google has a reputation for abandoning devices which don't sell well.  


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natansharp
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Google stadia make no sense for me. If you calculate the costs over three years it's the same that buiyng a console.

For a pc gamer it's even worse! You play on pc because you want cutting edge graphics but playing on streaming means a lot of stuttering, bitrates drop, input lag and so on...why i should leave a good hardware pc to play with a lesser quality on stadia since they have also to compress the bitrate that means less contrast and an unstable resolution?

And there is also to consider that with stadia google will dominate the market...it's never a good thing when someone control everything...

About the games prices drop down...it's not that good for developers...it mean's you work for lesser...


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Pinback
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Is this still going as I not seen much about it.


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natansharp
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What do you mean?

 


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Pinback
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Posted by: @natansharp

What do you mean?

 

I meant Stadia but after a quick google it appears to be still going, although still not that many games on it.


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natansharp
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Ok...yes is still going but it's a poor choice. Google, sony, nvidia, microsoft...all of them are trying to make grow streaming services but the hardcore gamer knows that it's not convenient. At the end you spend the same that buying hardware or console or slightly less with all the problems that gaming on stream has. And let's say also that a real gamer LOVES is hardware. I love my pc and my console...this is it!

Gaming on stream it's for casual gamers in my opinion.

p.s. I started with an amiga 500 many years ago...i know what means "love your hardware"...that was the golden age of gaming!


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DarkOne
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I saw a Stadia ad on Youtube just the other day so they are obviously still trying to promote it even though I agree with @natansharp its basically shit service.... unless you have fiber going to your house your not going to have reliable gameplay never mind the graphic levels they are never going to get PS5/XboxX style graphics over streaming. 

I think if they did a xbox live type of thing where you pay monthly and get all the games you want that may be worth it for the casual gamer. But I would advise everyone to not waste their money or time with this one. 🙂


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