5 ms·

Is Google Stadia Doomed?

20 points by baud147258 8y ago

WestCoastJustin 8y ago
Maybe think of it this way. How many people watch movies by going out and renting/purchasing a dvd. I'm willing to bet a lot less than 10 years ago. We're all doing it on-line. It sort of sounds like these cloud based gaming services want to mirror what netflix is doing. Sure, this is already happening to an extent.. but we still have to purchase the gaming console (dvd player vs just using your computer/smart tv). I guess that will have implications for the gaming blockbuster stores out there. If you look at it from that viewpoint it seems almost inevitable that it will happen eventually. Plus, from a consumer perspective you are isolated from having to cycle one less piece of hardware all the time. 10 years from now, how many people will have dedicated gaming consoles vs streaming online.. I'm willing to bet a lot more than today. I own maybe a handful of physical dvds and movies now.. its is all online. I'm totally happy about that too. Same thing happened with cell phones. You used to have a walkman, dvd/cd player, a camera, a calculator, a pager, flashlight, notepad, etc. Now, you just have a phone.. add the gaming console to this list (and most other electronics too).
- strikelaserclaw 8y ago
  Streaming gaming as a service is the future, not sure how far away it is though, there are alot of infrastruce upgrades that need to be done in many parts of the country to have it be useful.
- badsectoracula 8y ago
  I think you should read the article because it is more about the (lack of) ownership and its constant erosion and less about the question asked in the title :-P.
  - WestCoastJustin 8y ago
    Yeah, I did read it. This line of thinking answers the question about ownership too. We already know the answer. People don't care.
- deogeo 8y ago
  > how many people will have dedicated gaming consoles vs streaming online.. Why not try playing on a PC then? No need for anything 'dedicated'.
  - WestCoastJustin 8y ago
    You still need an expensive GPU and constantly messing with drivers and upgrading your system. I guess we'll just have to see what happens but this seems like an inevitable evolution.
    - deogeo 8y ago
      Upgrade cycles are slowing, and you only need to keep up if you want the most cutting edge graphics on AAA games - most everything else will run just fine on old mid-range cards. And having Windows automatically install the right drivers seems like even more of an 'inevitable evolution'.
  - davidjnelson 8y ago
    Pc gaming is awesome. Not everyone can afford it though. If stadia can actually get low latency 60fps ultra settings graphics on low end hardware that will change everything. One issue here though is exclusives. Many of the best games are console only, or even ps4 only. I don’t see how Stadia could overcome that, but I guess we’ll see.
    - baud147258 8y ago
      Is it possible to get 60fps with current network speeds?
      - deogeo 8y ago
        More importantly, is it possible to get the responsiveness of 60 fps with current network latency.
    - badsectoracula 8y ago
millstone 8y ago
I'm not worried about the loss of ownership and the rise of "disposable games" that the article identifies. Most games, like most movies, are good the first time but not worth a second run, and that's completely OK. We shouldn't expect "games as an art form" from AAA studios. So why not have a model that reflects that reality? I'll start worrying if indie games got sucked into this, to the point you could no longer purchase them. Indie games are more likely to become high-replay classics (Braid, FTL, Papers Please...) and don't require a powerful gaming PC. I'll also start worrying if ads start appearing in-game, and that seems like a much more likely outcome.
- davidjnelson 8y ago
  It depends on what you like to do. If you’re really into modding Bethesda games you can easily do many playthroughs. I guess with Stadia modding is no longer a thing, or only supported on a limited and expensive basis using systems built directly into the game such as Creation Club.
tapoxi 8y ago
This is an awful argument. The author begins by nitpicking at the "gaming is not a box" argument, while Google has positioned Stadia as you targeting a _datacenter_, multiple GPUs can be utilized at once and the very fast networking between Stadia nodes is an ideal environment for middleware like SpatialOS. That's what they mean by 'a box', it's not confined to one node. There's the expected rant about digital ownership, but I imagine more people will warm to this if it's a Netflix-like model, or if a Stadia purchase grants you a downloadable copy of a game as well. The rest is a complaint about games the author doesn't like, implying that Google's main focus is Ubisoft and that Ubisoft makes games he forgets about.
DKnoll 8y ago
I'm in the Nvidia Geforce NOW beta at the moment. It's fantastic. If you want to get in the beta it's running until early May. Invites are going out fairly quick at the moment (a friend just got on with a one week wait). Their pricing is not released yet (the beta is free with unlimited use, you just have to disconnect and reconnect every 3 or so hours), it might be hourly or monthly. They do not provide the licenses for games, you just log into Steam (or one of the other publishers launcher you have your games on) and play any of the supported titles. I am able to play every game (Conan Exiles, PUBG) I've thrown at it on max settings and the servers are peered very well so it's very low latency to my machine and also the game servers I am using. It's crazy to be able to play modern games on ultra at 60+ fps with a near-native experience on a machine I built 10 years ago. These streaming game platforms definitely have legs.
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  Finally something to justify my 250mbit connection. Going to try this out. Thanks for the suggestion.
- Nullabillity 8y ago
  Just as with any other X-as-a-service, it quickly becomes cheaper to just buy it outright than to rent it. And even if the pricing itself isn't that clear-cut, not having the constant stress of "I'm spending $x/h, I had better enjoy every minute of it" (or, on the flip side, "I'm already spending $x/mo, so I need to use it as much as possible") makes it a lot easier to enjoy the experience.
  - DKnoll 8y ago
    If you play games a lot it will quickly become cheaper to buy a high end PC. But if you're like me and only game a couple hours a week on average, it ends up being cheaper than getting a new top-of-the-line PC every 3 years to continue playing new games on max settings. Right now it's free.. can't get any cheaper than that. :P
Lowkeyloki 8y ago
I'm also concerned about the fading concept of ownership. But, IMHO, the author gives up most of his credibility by spending the first half of his opinion piece picking a semantic argument over an advertising tagline.
- noworld 8y ago
  It's funny how things come full circle. We're coming back to pumping quarters into arcade machines.
SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
The first part on if servers are box-shaped or not misses the point. The future is not _a_ box, just like the present of running code in the cloud is not _a_ box, it's a provider running _multiple_ boxes for you on demand, and transparently updating and replacing them behind the scenes, with individual boxes lying below the threshold of things that you need to care about. Same with serverless "Functions as a service". Of course there are still servers. But you don't have to worry about them any more. Running games in data centers won't live or die depending on the question "is there a box or not?", rather it will depend on "is the latency acceptable?".
- badsectoracula 8y ago
  It is a joke.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
    As a joke, I found it painful and pointless. Wrong target.
m-p-3 8y ago
Personally, I believe that the savings made on not needing a good computer and sufficiant network bandwidth to run games with Stadia aren't worth it. And there's nothing that will stop Google from pulling the plug on the service like they did with other projects.

20 points by baud147258 8y ago

Maybe think of it this way. How many people watch movies by going out and renting/purchasing a dvd. I'm willing to bet a lot less than 10 years ago. We're all doing it on-line. It sort of sounds like these cloud based gaming services want to mirror what netflix is doing. Sure, this is already happening to an extent.. but we still have to purchase the gaming console (dvd player vs just using your computer/smart tv). I guess that will have implications for the gaming blockbuster stores out there. If you look at it from that viewpoint it seems almost inevitable that it will happen eventually. Plus, from a consumer perspective you are isolated from having to cycle one less piece of hardware all the time. 10 years from now, how many people will have dedicated gaming consoles vs streaming online.. I'm willing to bet a lot more than today. I own maybe a handful of physical dvds and movies now.. its is all online. I'm totally happy about that too. Same thing happened with cell phones. You used to have a walkman, dvd/cd player, a camera, a calculator, a pager, flashlight, notepad, etc. Now, you just have a phone.. add the gaming console to this list (and most other electronics too).

strikelaserclaw 8y ago
Streaming gaming as a service is the future, not sure how far away it is though, there are alot of infrastruce upgrades that need to be done in many parts of the country to have it be useful.
badsectoracula 8y ago
I think you should read the article because it is more about the (lack of) ownership and its constant erosion and less about the question asked in the title :-P.
- WestCoastJustin 8y ago
  Yeah, I did read it. This line of thinking answers the question about ownership too. We already know the answer. People don't care.
deogeo 8y ago
> how many people will have dedicated gaming consoles vs streaming online.. Why not try playing on a PC then? No need for anything 'dedicated'.
- WestCoastJustin 8y ago
  You still need an expensive GPU and constantly messing with drivers and upgrading your system. I guess we'll just have to see what happens but this seems like an inevitable evolution.
  - deogeo 8y ago
    Upgrade cycles are slowing, and you only need to keep up if you want the most cutting edge graphics on AAA games - most everything else will run just fine on old mid-range cards. And having Windows automatically install the right drivers seems like even more of an 'inevitable evolution'.
- davidjnelson 8y ago
  Pc gaming is awesome. Not everyone can afford it though. If stadia can actually get low latency 60fps ultra settings graphics on low end hardware that will change everything. One issue here though is exclusives. Many of the best games are console only, or even ps4 only. I don’t see how Stadia could overcome that, but I guess we’ll see.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    Is it possible to get 60fps with current network speeds?
    - deogeo 8y ago
      More importantly, is it possible to get the responsiveness of 60 fps with current network latency.
  - badsectoracula 8y ago

millstone 8y ago

I'm not worried about the loss of ownership and the rise of "disposable games" that the article identifies. Most games, like most movies, are good the first time but not worth a second run, and that's completely OK. We shouldn't expect "games as an art form" from AAA studios. So why not have a model that reflects that reality? I'll start worrying if indie games got sucked into this, to the point you could no longer purchase them. Indie games are more likely to become high-replay classics (Braid, FTL, Papers Please...) and don't require a powerful gaming PC. I'll also start worrying if ads start appearing in-game, and that seems like a much more likely outcome.

davidjnelson 8y ago
It depends on what you like to do. If you’re really into modding Bethesda games you can easily do many playthroughs. I guess with Stadia modding is no longer a thing, or only supported on a limited and expensive basis using systems built directly into the game such as Creation Club.

tapoxi 8y ago

This is an awful argument. The author begins by nitpicking at the "gaming is not a box" argument, while Google has positioned Stadia as you targeting a _datacenter_, multiple GPUs can be utilized at once and the very fast networking between Stadia nodes is an ideal environment for middleware like SpatialOS. That's what they mean by 'a box', it's not confined to one node. There's the expected rant about digital ownership, but I imagine more people will warm to this if it's a Netflix-like model, or if a Stadia purchase grants you a downloadable copy of a game as well. The rest is a complaint about games the author doesn't like, implying that Google's main focus is Ubisoft and that Ubisoft makes games he forgets about.

DKnoll 8y ago

I'm in the Nvidia Geforce NOW beta at the moment. It's fantastic. If you want to get in the beta it's running until early May. Invites are going out fairly quick at the moment (a friend just got on with a one week wait). Their pricing is not released yet (the beta is free with unlimited use, you just have to disconnect and reconnect every 3 or so hours), it might be hourly or monthly. They do not provide the licenses for games, you just log into Steam (or one of the other publishers launcher you have your games on) and play any of the supported titles. I am able to play every game (Conan Exiles, PUBG) I've thrown at it on max settings and the servers are peered very well so it's very low latency to my machine and also the game servers I am using. It's crazy to be able to play modern games on ultra at 60+ fps with a near-native experience on a machine I built 10 years ago. These streaming game platforms definitely have legs.

Waterluvian 8y ago
Finally something to justify my 250mbit connection. Going to try this out. Thanks for the suggestion.
Nullabillity 8y ago
Just as with any other X-as-a-service, it quickly becomes cheaper to just buy it outright than to rent it. And even if the pricing itself isn't that clear-cut, not having the constant stress of "I'm spending $x/h, I had better enjoy every minute of it" (or, on the flip side, "I'm already spending $x/mo, so I need to use it as much as possible") makes it a lot easier to enjoy the experience.
- DKnoll 8y ago
  If you play games a lot it will quickly become cheaper to buy a high end PC. But if you're like me and only game a couple hours a week on average, it ends up being cheaper than getting a new top-of-the-line PC every 3 years to continue playing new games on max settings. Right now it's free.. can't get any cheaper than that. :P

Lowkeyloki 8y ago

I'm also concerned about the fading concept of ownership. But, IMHO, the author gives up most of his credibility by spending the first half of his opinion piece picking a semantic argument over an advertising tagline.

noworld 8y ago
It's funny how things come full circle. We're coming back to pumping quarters into arcade machines.

SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago

The first part on if servers are box-shaped or not misses the point. The future is not _a_ box, just like the present of running code in the cloud is not _a_ box, it's a provider running _multiple_ boxes for you on demand, and transparently updating and replacing them behind the scenes, with individual boxes lying below the threshold of things that you need to care about. Same with serverless "Functions as a service". Of course there are still servers. But you don't have to worry about them any more. Running games in data centers won't live or die depending on the question "is there a box or not?", rather it will depend on "is the latency acceptable?".

badsectoracula 8y ago
It is a joke.
- SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
  As a joke, I found it painful and pointless. Wrong target.

m-p-3 8y ago

Personally, I believe that the savings made on not needing a good computer and sufficiant network bandwidth to run games with Stadia aren't worth it. And there's nothing that will stop Google from pulling the plug on the service like they did with other projects.