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Google gets into game streaming with Project Stream
- twtw 8y agoI hate that Google can pour money from its infinite ad revenue into other things and beat out competitors by virtue of being able to sustainably run unsustainable (for others) businesses. EDIT: For people who are interested in this, I would recommend studying the history of AT&T, especially the 1956 consent decree.
- vntok 8y agoAs a user I am strictly better off that way.
- untog 8y agoNot necessarily. It'll always be a small project for a company like Google and will eventually be merged into some larger corporate structure (YouTube Game Stream or whatever). It'll take product cues from that larger entity, so won't be as dedicated to propose as a small start-up would be (already in this thread we've discovered the site is Chrome only). But it'll still dominate enough of the market that the small start-up will not be viable.
- ALittleLight 8y agoA fundamentally better service may be strangled in the cradle by Google operating at a loss for years and then shuttering the service, raising prices, or making some other negative trade off.
- maxxxxx 8y agoThat's how the big guys can kill innovation.
- Jagat 8y agoThe other player at the moment happens to be Amazon. So any competition is a good thing.
- twtw 8y agoAmazon? Are you thinking of Twitch, because this isn't that. Parsec, Paperspace, GeForce Now, Shadow, ... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_gaming https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_gaming
- remir 8y agoMicrosoft are also reportedly working on their own game streaming service.
- tapoxi 8y agoPlayStation Now is interesting, mostly because Sony has a pretty great exclusive game library.
- justicezyx 8y ago> beat out competitors by virtue of being able to sustainably run unsustainable (for others) businesses. Is there other providers of similar services?
- twtw 8y agoYes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_gaming https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_gaming
- justicezyx 8y agoWow, never thought of there are so many contenders in this area. I thought Google is the only one having the tech to provide the service in a large scale that possibly can transform the industry. Then your statement makes sense. I was fantasizing that Google is actually innovating before others. Turns out there is indeed no new ideas in IT.
- forgotmysn 8y agoPretty much all major tech companies do this. Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.
- fx32s 8y agoIf they can push the industry forward I am all for it. In general some innovations are not sustainable but are still beneficial for the end users, getting these otherwise neglected fields funded through other income streams doesn't seem too bad.
- Aunche 8y agoWhen has Google succeeded in doing this? To me, it seems like Google burns a lot of money on a project just to deprecate it a few years later.
- notjackson 8y ago"Sorry, this project is currently open in the U.S. only" can someone make images of the webpage, please. thank you https://projectstream.google.com/aco/location https://projectstream.google.com/aco/location
- cbuq 8y agoI tried, but it's also only for Chrome https://i.imgur.com/xcqYdjA.png https://i.imgur.com/xcqYdjA.png
- josteink 8y agoSo following Google’s gold-standard for accessibility then: both geo AND user-agent blocked. How could it possibly fail?
- jsgo 8y agoBecause it is a test. One would imagine they want to limit the scope initially and expand out as time (and gravitation towards being a full fledged product) allows. This doesn't seem particularly shocking. Shadow just recently (I believe) opened an east coast data center which now allows for their streaming service to work on the east coast, so perhaps Google is only allotting their US data centers to support this (one would assume initially and that if it is a hit/worth continuing, it'd expand out). Chrome is their browser so either: a) they're wanting to keep support requests limited to things within their control (or at least, reduction of variables is important in the phase they're going). b) they're wanting to be a full fledged gaming platform so they're not interested in supporting others.
- vatueil 8y agoAny US visitors to that particular URL will see the same thing you're seeing. You probably want this page, though currently it just lets you request an invite: https://web.archive.org/web/20181001174931/https://projectstream.google.com/aco/signup https://web.archive.org/web/20181001174931/https://projectst... Their blog post has more information: https://blog.google/technology/developers/pushing-limits-streaming-technology/ https://blog.google/technology/developers/pushing-limits-str... As well as the help and FAQ support articles: https://support.google.com/projectstream/ https://support.google.com/projectstream/
- boxerbk 8y agoHave you checked out my company https://parsecgaming.com https://parsecgaming.com? We offer this but also the ability to connect to your own computer and invite your friends to connect to your computer too.
- mooman219 8y agoI think you're being down-voted because the comment is kind of advertise-y (maybe that'll be different in an hour). Since it is your company, do you have any insight into potential challenges that the average reader wouldn't consider? I understand that a benefit to "game streaming" is that a game originally not networked (like splitscreen only) can be played by multiple people over a streamed connection.
- ASalazarMX 8y ago> I think you're being down-voted because the comment is kind of advertise-y. It would have been upvoted if it was a reply on one of the top comments that complain about Google, though. Placement.
- boxerbk 8y agoHey. I have a lot to say :), and I provided a lot of thoughts to this FastCompany article about the industry - https://www.fastcompany.com/90225352/microsoft-is-the-right-company-to-build-the-netflix-of-gaming https://www.fastcompany.com/90225352/microsoft-is-the-right-.... Generally, as we have seen media wants to be streamed. And in this case, streaming is a great solution for distributing content and unlocking games from the hardware they've been walled off in. That being said, streaming video games is a very different proposition technically and financially. People have been asking for the Netflix of gaming for a long time, and companies really want to build it because it puts them at the center of an entertainment industry that is growing extremely fast and grabbing more attention every year. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics now says that the average American's day includes 60% more time playing video games than it did in 2011, and people who do play games play for 2.4 hours each day. Most of the technical challenges with this have been worked out. Streaming video at 60 FPS or greater and at 4K is possible. We do it all day at Parsec, but the economic challenges are real due to the requirement that you need to render video in real-time. Rendering in real-time requires each user to have access to a GPU or 1/2 of a cloud GPU until newer technologies allowing for true virtualization appear on the market. Cloud GPUs are generally very expensive to operate, and as many of us know, the cloud providers charge a lot to use them for gaming and/or ML. Companies with scale can lease them at lower rates and have lower energy costs lowering the overall cost to serve, but they are still very expensive to operate. Even if you get the rates down to $0.15 per hour, you're still looking at overall hardware costs at $10 per month. Your subscription price will have to cover the hardware and the content license. The content itself is very expensive to license as well because we consume games very differently from the way we consume TV and media. When people binge on Netflix, they're binging on many shows or many movies. When people binge on games, they're playing 1 game for 100s of hours. You can see this in the Steam Spy data. The median Steam customer only buys 1-2 games each year - https://galyonk.in/steam-in-2017-129c0e6be260 https://galyonk.in/steam-in-2017-129c0e6be260. Many cloud gaming companies and game companies are aiming to increase the market for AAA games via streaming from the cloud. They're trying to reach the latent gamers who don't play games any more. In our opinion, that's a lot less exciting than delivering something valuable to current consumers of games. Consumers don't switch to a new distribution technology because it's a cool technology. They switch when it gives them something unique that they couldn't get before the technology existed. This is why, at Parsec (https://parsecgaming.com https://parsecgaming.com), we're focused on delivering unique experiences around games via streaming technology. We make it so you can find other people around you and invite friends to play local co-op games with you online. We're recreating the couch gaming experience we love and making it available online. This experience brings a new element to gaming that gamers today benefit from and enjoy.
- wpdev_63 8y agoI've used various game streaming services and have found parsec[0] to be the best in this domain. Their service prioritizes latency above all else and it performs well though there's alot of artifacts. It runs on top of amazon services so server placement is a non issue. [0]:https://parsecgaming.com/ https://parsecgaming.com/
- boxerbk 8y agoThanks :). Really appreciate your support.
- bspammer 8y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong but these services are quite different no? The idea of Parsec is that a machine you own is rendering and uploading a game that you also own. Google seems to be playing around with the idea of games as a service, where they render a game you don't own on a machine you don't own, and let you play it for presumably a monthly subscription.
- wpdev_63 8y agoWell you don't upload but parsec provides everything google is planning on offering with the freedom of allowing you to use it as your own computer. So I am not sure what you are getting at. Unless google undercuts competing small businesses in the same space, they're dead on arrival. They do not offer anything that's not on the market today.
- tedajax 8y agoWhoo another streaming service that will be bad
- jamesgeck0 8y agoIf anyone has the resources and technical expertise to make it work, it'd be Google.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 1stranger 8y agoI don't have much hope. Hangouts is still rarely a flawless experience whether due to software or connection issues.
- scotth 8y agoMy experience so far as a beta tester has been very positive, for what it's worth.
- kevingadd 8y agoResources and technical expertise don't matter if you're as bad at deploying and maintaining non-critical-to-your-business services as Google is
- desmondw 8y agoOh good, the company that constantly bails on it's ventures is starting a new one in a space that is far from being realized still. Seriously, if what's the goal? Being a supporting network for gaming infrastructure?
- tspike 8y agoGoogle's promotion and incentive structure is built around launching products. This will launch, putter along for a couple of years and then get shuttered unless it's a surprise success.
- lsiebert 8y agoSure, though technology or ideas from products that aren't successful is often incorporated in future projects. Honestly there's a really good blog post/article waiting to be written grouping and classifying shuttered google projects into groups based on purposes, because for a lot of them, they aren't created to be successes or make money, but for other business reasons, legal precedents, creating competition or disrupting a particular business segment, etc.
- throw_away 8y agoWhether the motivation for their behavior is because of a promotion-based incentive structure or some sort of deep 3d chess corporate strategy, neither makes me excited to use their products when released. Fool me once... I'll wait until my mom tells me about it.
- fooey 8y agoIf they make it work, Chromebooks just magically turned into gaming machines.
- remir 8y agoChromecast, too.
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- EKLM-ZK88 8y agoHow is this different from https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/geforce-now/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/geforce-now/ or http://onlive.com/ http://onlive.com/ ?
- merb 8y ago> OnLive is in the process of liquidating its remaining assets it is not on liquidating (at least not yet)
- EKLM-ZK88 8y agoThe company may be liquidating but the service looks identical.
- FartyMcFarter 8y agoTiming and the amount of funds / data centers available to sustain this, at least. OnLive came out in 2010. I assume that there has been a significant improvement in average consumer Internet connection speed in the last ~8 years.
- jonandersense 8y agoSeems similar to me, I've been exclusively using geforce now for the past 6 months. Works extremely well if you're just a casual gamer with no dedicated gaming computer (I'm playing on my Mac). I'm curious to see how it stacks up against it and what the price of it would be
- mooman219 8y agoLooks like there is an older article but it didn't float as quickly as this one [0]. This is a direct link to the signup page [1], and this is a link to the about page [2]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18115445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18115445 [1]: https://projectstream.google.com/aco/signup https://projectstream.google.com/aco/signup [2]: https://blog.google/technology/developers/pushing-limits-streaming-technology/ https://blog.google/technology/developers/pushing-limits-str...
- deburo 8y agoLink 2 is really the link I'm looking for. It's the source to all of these other 3rd-party articles. Sidenote: can't stand how much space the header and footer (related articles) takes up on that page on desktop. The scroll-up-to-view-the-header pattern is disgusting with an header that big.
- josteink 8y agoNot to be overly negative, but could they have come up with a less inspired and creative name than that? “Project” also make it sound like a ongoing effort of sorts, and not a (finished) product.
- azurezyq 8y agoI think you read it correctly. As described in the post, it's a "technical test", not a product. The gap between a "test" and a product is huge. I don't think it's wise to dump resources into building a product based on unproven technology.
- concernedctzn 8y agoTotally valid criticisms
- vatueil 8y agoI think there's something to be said for choosing an obvious and informative name such as "Project Stream" over a flashier but non-intuitive name. Also, at least for now it really isn't a finished product. Perhaps they'll re-brand if the test pans out and they actually start selling a service, or maybe they'll just keep the moniker like Project Fi has.
- remir 8y agoI'm sure if the test is successful, they will change the name or integrate it with Youtube Gaming.
- grezql 8y agoDoesnt even work on firefox or IE. It tells me to use Chrome which I recently ditched due to privacy violation concerns.
- Jonnax 8y agoIt's amazing how Chrome has become the Internet Explorer 6 of the modern web era. Instead of ActiveX I wonder what would be an appropriate way to describe it.
- taneq 8y agoTrojan?
- azurezyq 8y agoI don't see problems here. It's a tech pilot, not a product. The goal is to prove it viable, maybe the team size is even small. Spending much time on browser compability too early may not be that wise if they just need hundreds or thousands of testers.
- utopcell 8y agoIt is an outrage. I also opened it on Lynx, and all I saw was some weirdly rendered characters. Why, Google ?
- restingrobot 8y agoThis is literally testing streaming to Chrome. I'm guessing that optimizing this required some serious client side support, so it would make sense why it would only work for Chrome. That being said if it takes off, I can easily other browsers supporting a standard.
- phjesusthatguy3 8y agoAFAIK Ubisoft was already planning to stream AC: Origins to the Nintendo Switch in Japan (it's not coming to the Switch outside of Japan, I think). I wonder if they'll sell it on cartridge; that'll have to be one of the first games where the publisher can turn off the server and you now have a cartridge that doesn't do anything.
- bunnycorn 8y agoIt's nothing new in Japan, it's normal. https://kotaku.com/in-japan-the-nintendo-switch-is-streaming-games-that-i-1829071837 https://kotaku.com/in-japan-the-nintendo-switch-is-streaming...
- nikkiofearth 8y agooh wow. another google + lol
- azurezyq 8y agoReally feel sad about recent prevailing sentiment across HN. Some comments seem to suggest Google needs to provide the following for this kind of "tech test": * Available for all browsers and comply all web standards. * Available for all languages across all regions, with accessibility features. * Promise not to "launch and shutdown in a few years". * Imply a real future product. But I'm guessing what Google wants to do is to just prove if "game streaming" is technically / financially viable for mass crowds based on their technology in hand. If not, maybe shelf and wait for a couple of years without dumping a lot of resources and drawing bad sentiment. What requirements are you thinking which should be applied to such a "tech test"?
- org3432 8y agoI'd like to see a contingency in the agreement that allows one to download the games you own if they shut down the service. Would have been nice if OnLive had done that.
- icebraining 8y agoGood luck getting agreement from the game publishers.
- tweenagedream 8y agoThis seems to be a test that may turn into a future cloud product? Google has a lot of Pops which provide great latency for users, If they start filling these pops with gpus so that companies like ubisoft or epic or $gamecompany can pay for the infrastructure and let users pay them a subscription and then I don't have to drop 500+ dollars every year to stay relevant with AAA titles, maybe it all works out?
- flavmartins 8y agoThis is the reason MANY people don't get into PC gaming and opt instead for a console. Yes, it's a downgrade from what you can get with a PC, but having to drop $500+ every other year on the latest graphics card is not something many want to do. And the browser-based approach seems like a great solution for the platform issue. Being a Mac user I often miss out on steam games since they are mostly focused on Windows releases.
- beezischillin 8y agoThe biggest bottle-neck to any game streaming service is latency and I've some major doubts that they're going to be able to resolve it unless the client is located really close-by to servers. I messed around with Steam InHome Streaming, Xbox Streaming and PS RmotePly a bunch from work where we have the same ISP as I do at home. The speed between the two is around 6-700mbit and yet the added latency can still be felt and I don't live very far from work. From my own experience the extra delay can be tolerable in a few game genres, especially on console-optimised games where, to my knowledge, developers optimise controls for higher latency due to a possibility of a slower tv. Obviously PC FPSes and the like suffer the worst. It does work really well on the same LAN, though: I decided to use a tiny SteamLink for my living room gaming needs instead of messing around with long HDMI cables and the added fiddliness of having to directly use the desktop launch games. I wouldn't really sign up and pay for a service operated by Google, tho. By the way, while a future affordable game streaming service that works well might lower the bar of entry to the hobby, I have a serious fear of such a thing enabling the worst parts of the video game industry to take over. The software-as-a-service model and renouncing the last vestiges of actually owning a copy of a game seems like a terribly tempting way to turn the entire industry off of actual creativity and onto even more "whale-chasing".
- srge 8y agoIn the old days, Google would have bought an existing player and scale it. Now seeing Google bootstrap this kind of mainstream business seems awkward. Also I personably am very doubtful of any new app/service that Google releases.
- icebraining 8y agoGoogle has always bootstrapped services, especially stuff from their 20%-time program. Orkut, Google Lively, Google Video, Wave, Google Offers, Google Health, and on and on.
- PostOnce 8y agoDoes this mean I'll now need a Steam, Uplay, and Google account all simultaneously logged in to play an offline game by myself? And if something goes wrong, I can expect absolutely zero tech support? And I'll lose access to all my games in 11 months when Google kills it? And it'll post my Achievements and owned games to my Google+ account automatically and try to make it Social? And if I get banned from the games stuff for some reason, I'll lose my other Google accounts like Gmail, since they're all linked? With all that value-add and free extra latency, I basically HAVE TO sign up! What a deal!
- utopcell 8y agoClearly you are not happy with the announcement. :-)
- PostOnce 8y agoRather I'm not happy with the foreboding. I really like video games, and they keep getting worse... not the games themselves, but everything around them (due to "business" concerns), such as my above concerns, and IAP/DLC, and Xbox Live/PSN/Nintendo all charging money to play games on your already-paid-by-you internet connection, where it used to be free (since you can act as a server). For DLC, in some cases, it's never sold on physical media, so for example you buy a playstation game, and half the game is DLC, and then 5 years later Sony shuts down the service that delivers the DLC, and you're left with half a game, so when your kid turns 10 and you want to show him this cool game, now you only have half of what you paid for. Games now require mandatory updates to play alone by yourself (GTAV needs gigabytes of updates, no option to play the game offline alone and update later)... so you get home after work and want to play for 30 mins but have 2 hours of updates to download or more. And a million other little things. Pardon me for not wanting Google to pour more gas on the garbage fire.
- restingrobot 8y agoTo be fair, many of the problems you just described are specific to console games. But more specifically to your point this service would actually eliminate the need to keep the game up to date, as the centralized server would maintain an update product. So this might actually improve your game experience, as you would never have to wait for an update again! Plus it runs in chrome so you don't even have to worry about installing/tweaking settings/finding the disk anymore either.
- bribri 8y agoGeForce now has been great for me
- CM30 8y agoThe big challenge here isn't the tech side, it's getting the games that people want to play. Many, many companies fail to compete with the likes of Steam for instance because they can't attract enough interest from developers and publishers, meaning their libraries are lacking. Google partnering with Ubisoft is promising here, but the question will be whether they could get the likes of Activision, EA, Square Enix, Capcom, Konami, Take Two, etc to work with this service as well. If they can't, they'll end up with the streaming equivalent of Origin or what not, while whoever does get everyone on board will take the market.